KRISTIAN NOVAK & ALJOŠA PUŽAR
Breakfast With the Author
11:00
Linda van Deursen is a graphic designer who lives and works in Amsterdam. Together with Armand Mevis, she founded the design studio Mevis & van Deursen in 1987. They have creating new identities for various cultural institutions such as The Temporary Stedelijk, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. They have also collaborated on major cultural events like documenta 14 and the 10th Venice Architecture Biennale. Van Deursen has served as the head of the Graphic Design Department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She is also a senior critic at Yale School of Art in New Haven and teaches at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.
Reading Images. Nothing Special
As early as 1983, Vilém Flusser stated in his book Towards a Philosophy of Photography that we are moving towards an image society—long before technology enabled the circulation of images on an unprecedented scale.
The construction of images, where we encounter them, and how we interact with them, seems so incidental and self-evident. We register their meaning and usually know how to read and understand them. Yet, the communicative properties and value of images do not seem to be questioned or discussed that much.
Working with images has often proven to be the most interesting and important part of my work as a graphic designer, especially when working on publications and exhibitions for artists, photographers, and designers.
I have often been surprised that there is no education in reading and editing images and that there is not enough critical exchange about this apparently intuitive work.
In this lecture, I will look at the elusive and often invisible activity of selecting and organising images. I will also discuss some of the projects I have been involved with and initiated as an image editor and contributor.
Linda van Deursen
