Royal College of Art Vehicle Design Department Lecture, 4/26/10

Re: car design, we don't notice it when we drive one, then park it and leave it. Cars are the most ubiquitous and overlooked form of design in our lives. Personally, i don't differentiate between a well done Porsche, plate or Picasso. However, much of contemporary car design reminds me of mainstream Hollywood films: produced for the lowest common denominator, and in the process, vastly underestimating the capacity of the public to appreciate good industrial design (and film!).


For example, why does the Prius look like the equivalent of cod liver oil or an orthopedic shoe—its as if it was created to be like a dose of medicine; shut your eyes, open your mouth, this is good for you. Not to mention the G-Whiz, which looks like a stubby toe. Surely, good design doesn’t cost prohibitively more than bad design, and even if there was a slight premium, I think people would gladly step up.


If you look at how spectacularly well the classic car market has preformed in the face of the world’s worst recession, this phenomenon is almost certainly a reaction to the homogenized design of most contemporary vehicles. Some of which can be said to reflect regulatory control but probably more so a lack of imagination and determination on the part of the auto industry.


One possible model going forward (sorry for pun) is that based on the movement of Design Art, a term coined by Phillips auction house to delineate furniture and design objects produced in limited editions. Although after much speculation in the market that saw a chaise lounge by Marc Newson (who also did an unproduced car for Ford) go for over $1.5m, the segment is settling in and here for the long run.


I don’t believe Design Art was sheer marketing folly to create exclusive things for exclusive people but rather a way to encourage experimentation in processes and materials for objects otherwise too labor intensive to go into mass production. Besides, the fact is that high-end furniture cost the same, or very close to, limited edition designs, so why not enjoy the possible upside of such an investment?


In 2006 I commissioned the London based Iraqi Pritzker prize winning architect of the upcoming Olympic swimming stadium, Zaha Hadid, to design a concept car based on her notion of (near) future transport. Its not as far fetched as it seems as in the past she has designed the BMW factory, and a parking lot in France—so why not focus on what gets made in the factory and parked in the lot? Though I never got as far as production, they say the car business is an effective way to make a lot of money into a little, I am certain I would be able to sell and sell well, a limited edition car to design and architecture enthusiasts. This is a nimble way to go forward to launch progressively designed cars for a niche market, possibly skinning an existing platform like Gordon Murray’s T25 concept.


Since the Z Car, I have commissioned engineer Cecil Balmond, architects Diller & Scofidio and a handful of artists, architects and industrial designers to do concept cars for a book and traveling museum exhibit. More than anything, I’d like to see one or more on the road! For years BMW has successfully commissioned art cars as a marketing scheme; but it’s beyond me why they wouldn’t have put all or some into production rather than shooting for brief spurts of publicity like the recently announced collaboration with Jeff Koons. And only today, after I posted a picture on Facebook of a Lancia I custom painted, someone commented: “So when will we see a Banksy car?” If only I could afford one!


Marcel Duchamp said art in museums should have a shelf life, then be disposed of from collections. There are many new and unexplored ways forward in car design, like cars with multiple panels that could be changed and disposed of like cigarette lighters, but industry needs to take a more aggressive and progressive stance to make it (and more) happen.

Royal College of Art, Vehicle Design Dept. Lecture, "The Role of the Vehicle Designer – Where is it Headed?"

Incredibly, barely a week goes by without the announcement of a new car company—many with green credentials, hopeful to make the world a cleaner, more efficient place; but just as many are for extreme vehicles with no rhyme or reason in today’s ecologically minded landscape. With markets expanding exponentially in China, India, Russia and the Middle East there are probably more opportunities for expansion in the realm of car manufacturing and design than at any point in history since the industrial revolution. With such flux, paradigm shifting models like the Nano,Tesla and Gordon Murray's T25 are sure to arise with greater frequency including degrees of personal customization unimaginable today.

LOVE IS REAL

I went to a nearly one weeklong bar mitzvah in Israel, previously not one of my favorite destinations, for the daughter of a fabulous art collecting couple from the UK. It kicked off in Herzliya, a beach resort just outside Tel Aviv. To build up tolerance for the marathon parties that were to come I went running or should I say crawling the first few days. If you've ever seen Jeffrey Deitch’s daily turtle like trot along the Basel Miami beach, you know what it means to not be able to give him a chase. The politics in Israel are palpable in a way not many places feel, and feel as relentlessly. The moral and ethical weight of war and existence is felt at every dinner conversation. The planes flying overhead are usually not badged Delta. Hope? Perhaps Middle Eastern art (also good long term buy), better communication and political flexibility could at least help.


In London I am hosting an upcoming (Mid April) exhibit of young artists who have lived and worked in Tel Aviv which show would have had an altogether different meaning in New York, and one which I would probably not have considered staging there. In the UK sometimes there appears to be a subtle resistance to anything with the word Jew associated with it. In fact, the curators were denied a British Arts Council Grant on what I thought were clearly spurious grounds, when even I have received such a grant in the past! Thus my involvement by way of the exhibit in Rove Galley in London’s Hoxton Square for a month called Jaffa Cakes TLV.


Jaffa Cakes is actually the first ever exhibition in the UK devoted to contemporary art from Tel Aviv which will open on April 16 at 33–34 Hoxton Square and will showcase works by seven artists. Although artists from Tel Aviv have started to gain attention in the United States and Europe, they have not been shown as a group in the UK until now. The participating artists are: Maya Attoun, Michal Helfman, Nogah Engler, Know Hope, Yochai Matos, Naama Tsabar and Mika Rottenberg.


Regarding the show, a friend wrote: “Read about the upcoming exhibit and was thrilled that the UK Art community will finally see that there's an amazing creative energy in our city TA, and that we are not all about aggression, war etc.” Anyone who knows me knows I’m no proselytizer, but prejudice in any form, well; most of it anyway, makes my back go up. But in the end, we can all rest assured as Julian Schnabel has taken it upon himself to resolve the Arab Israeli conflict singlehandedly with his next film and affair with the Arab screenwriter.


From the first venue the party en massed picked up and move to another: Imagine floating like a basketball in a Jeff Koons tank. That’s the sensation of swimming in the Dead Sea; there is suspension, stillness and thick silence when you close your eyes and float. You feel resistance unwind out of your body. Like the new age suspension tanks they had in early 90s, it’s very meditative and peaceful. With closed eyes it could be between sleep and awareness.


At first your hear blood coursing through your circulatory system. Then one could sleep and drift off to Jordan just across the inlet to the sea. But the prevalent salt is like sandpaper rubbing on your eyeballs when it gets in, and its inevitable lying prone some will. You almost perversely want it to happen at first. When the sea is in your mouth it must be like ingesting millions of McDonald's French fries worth of salt.


To further prepare for the rollercoaster’s worth of partying, I went for a long hike and asked the security guard at the gated entrance of the hotel-a strange thing, that-and asked if it was dangerous to walk for a few miles outside the grounds, to which he replied in broken English "about 50/50". Nice, I imagined my escape route at the thought of getting kidnapped along the mountainous desert road. I was going to send a joke email to my wife that I was abducted but I was afraid I'd be disappointed by her response. I haven't seen so many hitchhikers since the 70s, there's still an unfortunate hippie residue here.


There is a military checkpoint for all to pass through along road leading to the resorts, I was given a sharp glance by a soldier-maybe my ugly MBT walking shoes didn't agree with him. But what a vivid, jarring landscape to have go in! When there are no cars on the highway, there is an eerie silence between sea and mountains. Especially when I am typing away on my Blackberry writing this. I should call my postings Blogberry. 

A few guests I spoke to were largely strong supporters of Israel and ardent in their focus and determination. At one point I got into a fierce disagreement with a German who's family suffered in the Holocaust. The next morning I couldn't quite place what his position was, but maybe that was a good thing.


Sartre described the moment of embarrassment not in looking through someone’s keyhole but in being seen doing so. Sort of like my dancing with extra fervor at one of the parties filled with friends and business associates. What was I thinking? Being on a 5 day whirlwind party celebration with a few hundred people, more than a handful friends and acquaintances, is the closest I will get to a Scientology retreat. Hopefully by the end of the trip some of the many collectors of all stripes will become more than acquaintances. What a trip- jogging, floating, hiking -- then party, party, party.


In the final morning breakfast get together, with most of us on all fours from drink and exhaution, there was an under 10-year old kid industriously selling the costume jewelry trinkets they were giving away at the bash the previous night as party favors. My table mate tried to buy a necklace but had no change to which the kid replied, “I can break a hundred”. Only in Israel, keep obvious jokes to yourself. He will turn out to be the next Bill Gates or behind bars.


We ended the trip in Jerusalem, the old city of which is layered with a series of narrow nooks and crannies seemingly fit for the width of a moderately sized human, but actually serving as roadways. There is a potpourri of religions and their respective temples shoehorned in the old city with practitioners clad in exotic, flowing garb that made me envious for a robe of my own. In what sounds like a one liner, we dined in an Arab restaurant seated next to a table of priests. What is amazing about a city that appears frieze dried in a prior epoch is the promise and possibility it shows for coexistence. I saw a girl walking down the street and when she passed an empty packet of potato chips on the sidewalk she knelt and picked up the garbage. A minor, insignificant event yes, but one that was somehow magical (she should be invited to New York by Bloomberg). In the end if the extravaganza lasted any longer I don’t know if I’d have survived the food and drink, but surely it was something I will never forget.

facebook: meta community or life inhibitor? when the wall comes tumbling down

As the sage John Cougar Melloncapm put it so aptly: Some people say I'm obnoxious and lazy That I'm uneducated And my opinipn means nothin' But I know I'm a real good dancer Don't need to look over my shoulder To see what I'm after Everybody's got their problems Ain't no new news here I'm the same old trouble You've been having for years When the walls Come tumblin' down When the walls Come crumblin', crumblin' When the walls Come tumblin', tumblin' Down Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah

unilateral cyber squabble

“Kenny: You have to learn to post your comments in the thread; you can't only post on the Wall. Cut-and-paste these into the...thread. I am going to delete them in the next hour. Thank you" this was message i just received before my postings were unceremoniously deleted. lost to posterity. all due to not adhering to protocol i was unfamiliar with. ahh the anarchy of the web, you must love it.

Instead of a gentle comeuppance for my lack of net decorum, I received a digital slap-down. Ouch. And to boot, the language i was chided with bordered on didactic. When I crossed the invisible but solid line of facebook etiquette the repercussions were swift and unequivocal.

Why not a kind, soft landing of complaint rather than a scorched earth? Or am I paranoid. We express our own worst fears about ourselves when we claim to criticize others (one of my erased texts).

Our walls are our own(ed) cyber "space", though public and private simultaneously.

TEFAF vs. AFF

While the world descended on the latest iteration of TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation), the Maastricht fair with literally billions worth of art on view, I made it to AFF, (the Affordable Art Fair) the only T being served in the café of the tent in Battersea Park in London that housed the event. While the private jet set mulled the old masters, and cream of the impressionist and modern offerings, I was left adrift in a world of thousands of art works with no discernable, name brand recognition factor to grasp onto. It’s a sobering experience to test one’s mettle and attempt to cull some wheat from so much chaff, only to realize how dependent and complacent I’ve become on the comfort of the canonized.