VCUQatar Invites Public to Participate in Tasmeem Doha 2013

March 9, 2013
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Tasmeem2013

Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, in partnership with the Qatar Foundation and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art invites the public to participate in its biennial international design conference Tasmeem Doha 2013.

Tasmeem Doha 2013 – ‘Hybrid Making’ is open to the public and will take place at VCUQatar, Mathaf and the Hamad Bin Khalifa University Student Center from 10 to 17 March, 2013.

A major component of the Conference will be the exploration of the role art and design is playing in the transformation of Doha, Qatar—from a small pearl fishing community to a preeminent center for the arts, popular tourism destination, and home to more than 1.8 million—all in just a few decades.  The Conference’s theme of “hybrid making” will explore hybridity within the acts of making, building and sustaining a contemporary society, engaging with art, design and other interventions that have been conceived, designed or fabricated in Qatar.

A significant partner of Tasmeem Doha 2013 is Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art who will be hosting the 13 designer led student laboratories. The Tasmeem Hybrid Making Laboratories are full-scale explorations done through the very act of making. For five days (March 10 to 14), groups made up of 20-25 students and faculty, led by invited international designers and artists, will design and create full-scale semi-permanent structures (walk-in sculptures), performances or other catalytic interventions.  The outcomes of the labs will remain on view at Mathaf through March 31. Visitors to Mathaf will be welcome to walk through the laboratories during the production phase or view the outcomes throughout the month of March.

Lab leaders include interior and product design professor Kristin Bille; award winning wearable artist, eTextile innovator Lynne Bruning; sculpture and extended media professor Corin Hewitt; artists Josh Hoeks & Ryan Rasmussen; urban designers Kelly Hutzell and Rami El Samahy, architect Mary-Lou Arscott and interaction designer Nick Durrant (Carnegie Mellon University); interior design professors Roger Kemp and Anthony Fryatt (RMIT University, Melbourne); interaction designer Ashley John Pigford; photographer and sculptor Steven Pippin; architects and lecturers Sara Shafiei and Ben Cowd; performance art/architecture artist Alex Schweder La; product design professor Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir; architect and lecturer Jeff Turko; and multidisciplinary designer Simone Muscolino, graphic designer Jordan Gushwa and creative head of communications Jorell Legaspi.

The Tasmeem Hybrid-Making Workshops (March 10 to 14) which take place at VCUQatar, are interdisciplinary, collaborative, charette-style workshops designed to produce viable end products by the conclusion of the workshop. Over five days, groups of 15 team members comprising faculty and professional artists and designers, will collaborate to synergistically create innovative end products. These products, or ‘makings’, may be in the form of academic papers, videos, full scale semi-permanent structures, performances or any other form determined by the workshop leaders and/or participants.

The workshops include Felt Case Study # 1: the Material is the Metaphor is the Material; Doha Borrowed City; Re-claiming the wild colors of Qatari voices; Food Preparation as Interface; Objects as Locus of Hybridity and Hybrid Making: Transhistorical and Transcultural Explorations; Geometric Aljamía; Innovative Considerations for Traditional Fashion; Souvenir of the Senses; “Illusions”: A Cross-Disciplinary Project for Dance, Music and Multimedia Design; VJ’ing the Narrative and Five Days with Five Senses. 

All of these activities are summarized and framed by the two-day symposium at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s Student Center on 16 and 17 March. Tasmeem Doha 2013 – ‘Hybrid Making’ will include a series of exhibitions and presentations by artists, designers and architects who have realized projects in the country, or have led workshops and labs during the active phase of Tasmeem Doha 2013. The exhibitions will run from March 1 to 31, in the various spaces of the Hamad Bin Khalifa University Student Center that surround the conference hall.

The exhibitions include: Made in Qatar, curated by Constantin Boym, which will feature invited designers collaborating with local craftsmen and fabricators to produce an exhibition that examines Qatari customs and traditions through the act of making; Departmental Exhibition featuring display works made within VCUQatar’s Fashion, Interior Design, Painting and Printmaking, Graphic Design, Art History, and the Center for Research, Design and Entrepreneurship departments responding to the notion of hybrid making; Faculty Exhibition which will feature works by VCUQatar faculty as well as work produced during the Tasmeem Workshops; Exhibition by Invited Galleries from the local community including Al-Markhiya Gallery, Anima, and Katara Art Center; and the Tasmeem Laboratories, a specially prepared exhibition that documents the Tasmeem laboratory process through photography and video which will be assembled the week of Tasmeem, and exhibited in time for the two-day conference.

For more information about Tasmeem Doha 2013, featured speakers, workshops, laboratories and events, and to register please visit http://www.tasmeemdoha.com/

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