Resonance
The London Design Biennale 2021 at Somerset House, taking place until the 27th of June, is a multi-sensory exhibition where critical thinking is demonstrated through creative installations. Responding to the theme of Resonance, the installations, projects and pavilions approach shared global challenges from culturally diverse viewpoints.
The collective resonance of ideas, to the issues we face, have the power to be transformative. The installations at Somerset House explored important issues like climate change, poverty, waste, anger and the African diaspora to create universal solutions to problems that concern us all.
Forest
Es Devlin’s Forest installation invites visitors to walk within the Forest, featuring 400 trees from 23 local species and with an immersive soundscape. A central clearing features interactive totems each representing one of 17 Sustainable Development Goals. You can explore the goals virtually here
Cold Flux
Artist Ben Cullen Williams’s installation Cold Flux for the Antarctic pavilion features three screens showing an AI-generated video. He created the video using machine learning trained from footage of the Larsen-B iceshelf and images from NASA telescopes of the sun. The project is supported by fashion brand Pangaia.
Spoon Archaeology
The multimedia installation Spoon Archaeology, by designers Peter Eckart and Kai Linke displays a collection of disposable cutlery, staged as archaeological artefacts, design curiosities, and anthropological witnesses of an era that is about to end.
The installation presents the material and immaterial cultural heritage of the past and present and invites guests to resonate sustainable solutions for the future by questioning traditional design culture.
Reinventing Texture
Japan’s installation Reinventing Texture is an immersive installation that resonates with traditional and modern urban textures, objects and sounds in the cities of Tokyo and London.
Walking the streets of Tokyo, textures and objects were photographed and transformed using innovative digital scanning and fabrication technology, into moulds for a papier-mâché wall relief.
African Diaspora
The Pavilion of the African Diaspora aims to spotlight the voices and contributions of people of the African Diaspora. Designed by Ini Archibong, the pavilion is a flexible shelter or screen that doubles as an educational space and a sanctuary to share and listen to stories.
Amplify
Ghana’s Amplify installation by textile designer Chrissa Amuah and architect Alice Asafu-Adjaye, explores the connections between Ghana, Great Britain and Denmark, two of its former colonial rulers, through the centuries.
What if there was a cultural interchange of ideas and trade instead of slave trade and colonisation. Amplify imagines a different history to demonstrate how mutual growth and development benefits all.
The Simbol
From Argentina, designer Cristian Mohaded and artisan Lorenzo Reyes created pieces using the Simbol, a plant that grows in the north of the country, to create an installation that comes alive through light. "Mother Nature offers us everything, we just have to go to the fields and work with our hands," Cristian stated. The Simbol, both as material and technique, thus becomes a technology memory that stores and transfers making expertise and a language specific to the region they come from.
Why this matters
The theme Resonance is an overarching idea that is inclusive and invites people to respond to the different crisis from their own perspective. Everything that is designed or created resonates in the world, we live in an age of hyper resonance, the consequences of which are both exhilarating and devastating. Each idea we generate has the power to reach a mass digital audience undreamt of by previous generations, while the lifespans of the physical products we create often endure long beyond our own. The idea of legacy and leaving a better world for the next generations is growing among people as the issues we face become more visible and serious.