How do you modernise a religious tradition that is more than 1,400 years old? This was the question Dr Mahamoud Bodo Rasch faced in 1974.
Although some traditions are relatively recent inventions, many have become so deeply embedded that they form the backbone of entire societies.
Designers are constantly engaging with these traditions, because both they and their work operate within society. There are many strategies for approaching tradition: it can be rejected, but it can also be reinvented or remixed. There are also many ways to relate to modernization. Sometimes it seems as though modernization and modernity necessarily imply the rejection of tradition, but that doesn’t have to be the case. At other times, it can feel like modernization is simply a glossy veneer applied over tradition — often with a Bauhaus flavor (by simplifying, reducing, and making things monochromatic). What Dr. Mahmoud Bodo Rasch demonstrates is that modernity can take many forms, and that it is never about surface appearances, but about the underlying structures that arise from organizing certain principles—natural principles, mathematical principles, physical principles.
This opens up opportunities for designers from the WANA region (West Asia and North Africa, formerly referred to as the Near and Middle East) to explore new horizons without discarding what makes their societies unique. They are free to cut, paste, sample, and restructure as they wish. In doing so, a new design language emerges — one that revitalizes ancient cultures and makes them meaningful in a contemporary context.
Gerelateerde verdieping items
Tradition is a way of establishing a set of supposedly authentic customs, literally preserving them. Traditions have also emerged in architecture and design, ideas about the correct way to practise these applied arts. However, these traditions are also regularly broken.
(Re)watch the documentaries and videos from the exhibition From Bauhaus to Mecca here.
From 1850, newly discovered evidence of a prehistoric ice age in Europe led to a widespread debate about the potential causes of climate change. These discussions reinforced the idea that human activities could change the climate. A rock-solid belief in the power of technological progress became...
Dance has become a billion-dollar industry, with major entertainment companies calling the shots. Massive dance festivals are held all over the world, featuring an international elite of DJs flying from party to party.
In the Netherlands, in the 1990s, gabber emerged in Rotterdam as a new branch of electronic dance music, joining styles such as house and techno that were already well-known in Europe.
Liberation is ingrained in electronic dance music. It’s crafted to make you dance freely. Drums and rhythm have always been the ritual tools of dance, and that remains true in our time, albeit now generated through electricity.
For centuries being a mum or dad was not a choice at all, simply how things were ‘supposed to be’. The way parenthood itself is viewed has also changed over the years.
In addition to their biological family, many people have one they’ve chosen for themselves: people you’re not related to, people who understand, help and love you.
See them whizzing across the city on their fast bikes: his a men’s model, hers a woman’s. Both wrapped in a puffer jacket and with matching trainers. The dreary ‘ANWB couple’ in trendy jackets.