Sit down and think: how many times in one day you see something on the Internet, on the screen of your smartphone or your television and wish you could change it, from major issues such as conflicts and pollution to other problems maybe more personal and involving your own habits? Yet, the real revolution can only happen when we actually start acting to change something and we therefore look for solutions.
The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has for example actively pledged to transform the status quo with an exhibition currently on, entitled "Change the System” (through January 14th).
The event showcases projects by over fifty artists and designers from The Netherlands and abroad who want to transform the world through their creativity.
The story behind the exhibition develops through eight galleries and offers a wide range of solutions to issues such as pollution, conflicts, scarcity of raw materials and political tensions. The event includes previous and new projects, with solutions developed through a wide range of disciplines and with various mediums.
Fashionistas will be able to see Iris Van Herpen's designs from the "Radiation Invasion" (Spring/Summer 2010) collection, inspired by the radiations and waves surrounding and affecting the human body, but also Viktor & Rolf's S/S 17 Haute Couture collection with its collaged garments made by reassembling together their own creations and those of other designers.
Visitors with an interest in fashion and textiles will find even more intriguing projects such as Elisa van Joolen's "One-to-One": the designer got donated items of clothing from four different Amsterdam-based streetwear labels, covered them in ink and used them as a printing tool to create further items and explore the original Vs copy dichotomy.
Exploring the scarcity/plurality juxtaposition, Dutch product designer Christien Meindertsma came up with a fiber market installation consisting in piles of coloured fibers taken from 1,000 discarded woollen jumpers.
But there is more to explore, including Bas van Abel's Fairphone, a project that was launched in 2013 and aimed at developing smartphones that are designed and produced with minimal environmental impact, or Eric Klarenbeek and Maartje Dros's bioplastic made from algae dried and processed into a material that can be used to 3D print objects.
There are also projects aimed at personal well-being such as Yi-Fei Chen's "Tear Gun": a graduate from Design Academy Eindhoven, the designer created a device that freezes tears instantly and fires them in self-defense, a sort of weapon to express repressed anger and emotions without physically hurting anybody.
The most intriguing projects on displays are the ones requiring the active participation of the public: social designer Manon van Hoeckel launched for example the Boijman's Laundrette, a tool to get strangers to talk to one another.
Exchanging your views can be refreshing and enriching, but people hardly speak inside a museum, but the Boijmans Launderette allows to start a conversation while doing your laundry (valid as free admission to the museum – when will other museums follow this example?).
Dave Hakkens has created instead a DIY recycling centre in the museum's central courtyard: visitors can drop by and bring their plastic waste. Hakkens' Precious Plastic Machines transform the discarded plastic materials into something unique and beautiful, such as multi-coloured flower pots. The project shows that plastic can be a valuable material if we treat it properly.
The third project inviting the public to participate was developed by the catering team at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in collaboration with six students from the Food Quality and Design Group at Wageningen University and Research Centre, it consists in the "Change the System" menu, containing only plant-based dishes that minimise waste and the water and carbon footprints.
In a way this exhibition heralds the arrival on the creative scene of a new figure – the changemaker, a designer, artist or researcher hoping to make things better through projects, installations and objects.
The museum hints indeed at the fact that many solutions to some serious issues may be coming in future from creative minds working in different disciplines. "Change the System" could also be interpreted as a message to design students to focus on the key issues of our times and find alternative and technological innovations to answer social needs.
"I believe that creativity is a powerful means to address the big questions of the moment," states curator Annemartine van Kesteren in a press release about the exhibition. "Contemporary design can inspire, initiate change or set a transfiguration of ideas in motion."
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