Porto Design Biennale invites to dig deeper with the understanding of "Monstrous Designs"

Porto Design Biennale holds a conference to thrown about new information and perspective sharing among experts. At Rivoli, on 24 September, from 2pm till 8pm.

Francesco Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher and communist politician. His works are about political theory, sociology and linguistics; but it he most known for his views on hegemonic culture and ideology reproduced by the dominant class, the bourgeoisie, so as to maintain order.

The frequency of references to his famous quote "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters", has increased in the past few years, notably with Brexit or with Trump's election.

This quote is part of an entry of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, notably in Notebook 3, 1930.

The performative conference "Monstrous Designs: A Performative Conference ? The Old Monsters of the New Millennium" is devoted to deciphering Gramsci's words in today's context. It is curated by Ana Teixeira Pinto, professor at the Universität der Künste, Berlin and researcher at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. She is also the editor of The Reluctant Narrator (Sternberg Press, 2014).

What are your views on that?

Find out what invite keynote speakers and lecturers have to say about this, namely Andrew Herscher, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan; Maria Hlavajova, founder and artistic director of BAK, Basis voor Actuele Kunst, Utrecht, since 2000; Zach Blas, artist and writer based in London, whose work on technology and politics has been exhibited internationally; Florian Cramer, reader in 21st Century Visual Culture at Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, and also writer, photographer, filmmaker and theorist, and finally Geert Lovink , the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, whose main aims are to explore and document the potential for socio-economical change of the new media arena.

Venues: Palácio dos Correios, 7th Floor and Rivoli

See here for further information.