Jerusalem Design Week 2022
Jerusalem Design Week, Hansen House’s flagship event, will take place this year on June 23-30, 2022. In its eleventh edition, the Design Week comprises a multitude of events, exhibitions, installations, and special projects by more than 150 designers from Israel and abroad.
The Annual Theme: For Now
If Einstein was right, and time and space are indeed tightly bound, then our present holds the gravitational pull of a black hole. Ecological threats, technological acceleration, and radical social transformations make the future impossible to predict and, for the very same reason, the past remains impossible to sustain. In between, a ‘thick present’ emerges - one which is not a singular point connecting past to future, but a wide layer in which we operate. In this present, where past and future are short and near, efficiency and measurable time become exceedingly pertinent, and proper use of exercise and meditation minutes, of screen and travel time, become a life mission.
As if lost in a fog, unable to see what lies ahead or behind, the present’s gravitational pull generates plans that can be nothing but short-term, a paralysis in facing any deep future, a constant reconstruction of the past, and an addiction to the immediate and measurable time constants.
For design, which fundamentally echoes, acts in, and serves the Zeitgeist, this persistent present and its short term applications demand a new approach from designers, especially when mated with no longer-deniable responsibilities. Because while ephemerality is at its core, it is also the source of criticism towards design - in gender-related, ecological, technological, social and economical terms.
Jerusalem Design Week 2022 explores the ephemerality of design and the design of ephemerality, and asks how time can be harnessed for a positive effect in uncertain times.
