The question as to what "home" means has never been an easy one to answer, and in our global age of networked, anonymous, communities, our age of refugees and migrant workers, our age of abstract "Homeland Security" agencies, the question has in many ways become even more complicated. The Lamp Heimat (Homeland) by Berlin based designers Birgit Severin and Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo is an attempt to approach an answer. Birgit Severin and Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo met while studying at Design Academy
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As Noël Coward famously observed, only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, and it takes a similarly laissez-faire approach to life to open an exhibition in August. Everyone, but everyone, it would appear is on holiday. Or has at least like Coward's caribous, lain down for a snooze. Which is probably why the majority of the following five exhibitions open in late August, so after the sun has ceased to be much too sultry such that one must avoid its ultry-violet ray. "Shelter:
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Thanks to a unnecessarily long journey through Sachsen-Anhalt in an unnecessarily warm bus, July 2014 will remain indelibly scorched in our collective memory. On a professional note, July 2014 also saw the exhibitions Unter Zwischen im Ampelhaus, Oranienbaum and Summer Break VA / Neue Arbeiten at Direktorenhaus Berlin, and of course the flood of student exhibitions that arise every summer.
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In 2011 a group of Dutch artists and designers established the Orangemann Trust and set about converting an old, abandoned house in the centre of Oranienbaum into a gallery for contemporary art and design. That Oranienbaum is a village of some 3000 inhabitants situated 150 kilometres south of Berlin, 80 kilometres north of Leipzig and 4 light years from the next railway station, the location could appear somewhat questionable. Could. Were it not for the fact that modern Oranienbaum was
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Tradition being the predictable beast that it is, July and August tend to be quiet months in the design universe – most everyone taking themselves off to their Gîtes, Dachas, Ferienwohnungen, Vakantiehuis and lakeside bungalows for a few weeks of quiet reflection ahead of the autumn trade fair and design week season. Most. But not all. A few hardy souls remain, stocking the furnaces of creative culture with architecture and design based exhibitions intended to inspire, excite and entertain.
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