The habitus as a system of internalised patterns shapes the way of acting in a certain period of time. This action, in turn, is manifested in the concrete – in the artefacts with which people shape their environment. The linguistic relationship also points to this connection: the Latin habitus (from Latin habere = to have) is found, for example, in the Italian abito (dress, clothing) and abitare (to dwell, live in …).
Just as social development influences design, design – understood as ‘active action’ – can also have social effects. The lecture will explore the question of how this action in the present can counter a linearly imagined future with alternative scenarios. In doing so, the potential of the discipline becomes clear when it moves as an interface and field of experimentation between science, industry and society.
On the basis of various exhibition projects, European and global developments as well as works by a young generation of designers are presented who understand their discipline as an expanded space for action in order to provide surprising, speculative or provocative answers to the global challenges of our time.
Alexandra Weigand studied design and art history and works as a curator/lecturer/author across disciplines. The focus of her design-theoretical work is the question of how the formal language of the applied and visual arts reflects social developments. This is the subject of her exhibitions and event series as well as publications, for example Virtual Aesthetics (publication, 2008), Parametrals (panel, 2009), Collage/s (exhibition series, 2010), Habitus, Abito, Abitare – Handeln in der Gegenwart (lecture series, 2012 and 2013) or New.Design.Culture? (panel, 2015). For bayern design, she curated the exhibitions HIT THE FUTURE_ Design beyond the borders and HIT THE FUTURE_Metropolitan Design as part of MCBW 2014 and 2015. Since 2015 she has been a member of the board of Kunstraum München e.V.
She is currently developing sensory textiles in the field of robotics for the DLR (German Aerospace Center). At the Institute for Art History at LMU Munich, she is working on the further development of the exhibition Flow of Forms/Forms of Flow. Design Histories between Africa and Europe, which took place in Munich in Feb./March 2017 and will be on view in Hamburg in spring 2018. She is also a senior researcher in the DFG research project Fashion and Styles in African Cities. She lives and works in Munich.
