5th Istanbul Design Biennial Opens on 15 October

The Map of Empathic Society by The Rodina, 2020

5th Istanbul Design Biennial
Empathy Revisited: Designs for more than one
October 15, 2020 – November 15, 2020
https://tasarimbienali.iksv.org

The 5th Istanbul Design Biennial, entitled Empathy Revisited: Designs for more than one and curated by Mariana Pestana with Sumitra Upham (Curator of Programmes) and Billie Muraben (Assistant Curator & Deputy Editor), opens to the public on 15 October 2020. Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) under the sponsorship of VitrA and with the support of Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the biennial will be held with a new structure with various projects, mostly being produced locally in Istanbul, by participants from various countries and disciplines, intervening in exhibition venues, outdoor spaces in Istanbul and digital platforms. The projects displayed in the exhibition venues will be open to visit until 15 November 2020 whereas the interventions in the city, research projects and video series will continue to evolve until 30 April 2021.

The 5th Istanbul Design Biennial brings together ideas and projects that seek to define a new role for design based on empathy. As a mediator of emotions and feelings, design is presented here as a practice that takes care as its main purpose. Designers adopt sensitive, diplomatic, sometimes therapeutic functions, with the aim of connecting us with one another but also with the world around us, with other species, with microorganisms, soil, water and even the universe.

Aspiring to carve out a space of responsibility and nourish a culture of attachment towards the more-than-human, this biennial explores designs for multiple bodies, dimensions, and perspectives. The projects on display encourage us to rethink practices of care and civility at this critical moment in time, and to collectively build new systems and structures for re-connecting. This biennial offers critical tools and alternative pathways in face of urgent climate and economic crises, a general state of social deprivation, and an exhausted global industrial model. Designs for more than one are those that take into consideration not just their immediate user or client but the many constituents and complex entanglements inherent to any design process.

Mariana Pestana said: “The current restrictions around social distancing became an opportunity to reappraise the standard model of the biennial and rethink our relationship with the environment. I believe that design can help us do exactly that, empathically. The new format of the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial proposes a completely new mode of engagement as we look into how design mediates our relationships with non-human subjects. It meets people where they are – out in the street, in parks or even at homes via Internet – to involve a broad range of people from both the local and global world. This biennial will also be an evolving conversation that begins this autumn and will extend for a longer period with many of the projects becoming long-term installations in the city or continuing their lifecycle digitally, thus, creating opportunities for new beginnings.

I hope that the biennial will create the context for designers to experiment, rehearse and imagine different futures and that it inspires a new, empathetic way to think about design.”

The 5th Istanbul Design Biennial presents a generative programme comprising three main axes: an online series titled Critical Cooking Show, a set of research projects on the Mediterranean basin to be archived at the Library of Land and Sea, and a series of interventions in the city titled New Civic Rituals.