Keynote Speakers | DHS-NID 2013

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Keynote Speakers
GUI BONSIEPE studied information design at the hfg ulm and
was involved in teaching and research activity at the hfg ulm
until 1968. Since 1968, he has been providing design and
consultancy services for multilateral and bilateral
organizations for technical cooperation and in government
institutions in Chile, Argentina, Brazil; specializing on
design issues in peripheral countries. From 1987 to 1989 he
worked as an interface designer in a software house in
California. From 1993-2003 he was professor for New Media at
the Kln International School of Design. Since 2003 he has been living in Argentina
and Brazil.
His Publications: 1975 Teoria e pratica del disegno industriale (Italy) |1978 Diseo

Industrial, tecnologa y dependencia (Mexico) | 1983 A Tecnologia da

Tecnologia (Brazil) | 1996 Interface Design neu begreifen (Germany) | 1999 Interface
An Approach to Design (Netherlands) | 2008 Historia del Diseo en Amrica Latina y
El Caribe (co-editor) (Brazil) | 2009 Entwurfskultur und
Gesellschaft (Switzerland) | 2011 Design, Cultura e Sociedade(Brazil) | 2012 Design
como pratica de projeto (Brazil).
The Centre/Periphery Antinomies of Design in Latin America
A short overview of the development of design history studies in Latin America is
given, that in part have been undertaken by design professionals due to the general
indifference of traditional historiography to deal with material and semiotic
artefacts of everyday culture as results of a development process including design.
These studies start from the premiss that design should not be considered in isolation
but inserted in the industrial, technological and political context. The role of
design as one aspect in the multifacetious process of emancipation is explained,
furthermore the reasons for the different perspective of design and design practice in
the Periphery compared to the Centre. The effects of opposed economic policies for the
development of design in Latin America are shown by comparing the 1960ies and the
neoliberal programs of the1990ies. The issue of cultural influence, cultural export,
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cultural imperialism, contextuality is addressed, analyzing the reasons for the

opposition between design as modernizing force and the reaction to modernization by
searching for roots of identity in the vernacular.

TAPATI GUHA-THAKURTA is an art-historian, Professor in

History and the current Director of the Centre for Studies in
Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). Her two main books are The
Making of a New Indian Art: Artists, Aesthetics and
Nationalism in Bengal (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and

Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial

and Postcolonial India (Columbia University Press, and
Permanent Black, 2004). She has been involved with the
building of a visual history archive at the CSSSC, and has
curated two exhibitions out of this collection Visual Worlds of Modern Bengal: An
introduction to the documentation archive of the Centre for Studies in Social
Sciences, Calcutta (Seagull, Kolkata, 2002); The City in the Archive: Calcuttas
Visual Histories (Calcutta: CSSSC, 2011). She is at present completing a book titled
In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Calcutta.
New Dispensations of Design in a public festival: The Durga pujas of contemporary
Kolkata
Over the years, Kolkatas Durga Puja (an autumnal week-long festival celebrating the
home-coming of goddess Durga) has been scaling new heights as the most spectacular
event in the citys annual calendar. In recent times, the festival has taken on a
particular artistic and designer profile that is unique to the contemporary city. My
lecture will be studying the anatomy of this newly configured popular art-event that
has brought into the fray new categories of artists and designers and new vocabularies
of public design. It uses the occasion of the festival to reflect on the new
dispensations and vocations of design in an urban public setting. And it offers up the
city of the festival as one of those less-explored post-colonial geographies of
contemporary design histories in India a site for thinking about todays transmuting
vernacular practices of art and craft, where the resources of traditional folk and
ritual arts are brought into continuous dialogue with the needs of modern art
production and mass spectatorship.
The lectures has as its focus a new wave of designer productions that came of age in
Kolkata at the turn of the 21st century and took on the local nomenclature of art or
theme Pujas. As it analyses different strands of this phenomenon, it asks how does
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a design aesthetic provide a special form of branding of the contemporary festival? To

what extent can it transform the ephemeral ritual icon into a work of art? How
effectively can it mediate the commercial publicities and competitions that have
invaded the current economy of the Pujas? What specific kinds of identities of
designers has the festival nurtured in recent years? How does the new vocation of
Puja designing turn our gaze on the many less-elect forms of artistic livelihoods
within and outside the city, alerting us to the ever-slipping lines of distinction
between the artist and the artisan in such domains of work? And, what kinds of
transient exhibitionary worlds unfold every year on the face of the everyday city?

SUJATA KESHAVAN Sujata Keshavan was the first Indian woman to

obtain a post-graduate degree in Design. She graduated from
Yale University with a Master of Fine Arts degree specializing
in Graphic Design in 1987. Her undergraduate degree was from
the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. In 1989, Sujata
founded Ray+Keshavan Design, widely regarded as Indias most
influential design firm and consistently ranked by The
Economic Times as Indias No 1 company in the area of Brand
Design. Her company was acquired by the WPP group in 2006 and
is now part of the Brand Union network. Sujata is regarded as a pioneer in developing
the brand design industry in South Asia. Working across sectors from technology to
telecom, healthcare to banking, infrastructure to consumer products, she has played a
pivotal role, after liberalization, in enabling Indian industry to create vibrant
brands that can compete in the global business environment. A strong advocate of the
transformational power of design, Sujata has brought design into the boardroom by
demonstrating through her practice that design can be used to tangibly alter the
fortunes of businesses. In her career of 25 years, Sujata has received numerous
awards, been a speaker at international design conferences, and served on the jury of
design competitions around the world, including the Cannes jury in 2010. She has been
named one of Indias 30 most powerful women by India Today and recognised as The
Outstanding Woman Professional of the Year by the Federation of Indian Chambers of
Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in 2007. She is ranked No. 18 on Fortune Indias list of
the most powerful women in business. Sujata has served on Yale Universitys Global
Council on reputation and is currently on the World Economic Forums Global Agenda
Council on Design and Innovation. A quarter of her work each year has been pro-bono
for foundations working in the areas of education, health, art, culture and other
democratic citizens initiatives.
Towards post post-colonialism Indias design journey

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Sujatas talk traces the evolution of modern design in India from independence to the
present. Her own role as a practitioner dovetails with roughly half this period, and
her views are informed by observation and experience working in the field, rather than
through academic research. She shall consider the social, political or economic
contexts against which design as a profession has been evolving. She will analyse the
factors that influenced our journey, from the fledgling experiments in nation building
in the fifties, to the impact of economic liberalization as well as of globalization
and technology in the nineties and thereafter. She shall identify those factors that
are, in her view, unique to India. She will also examine the relationships between
art, craft, technology and design.

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