Who

‘Life on Planet Orsimanirana’ is a project by Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop together with Macao and Assemble, and is curated by Emanuele Braga, Amica Dall and Jerszy Seymour.

Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop

Jerszy Seymour is a designer and co-founder and director of the Dirty Art Department in Amsterdam. Jerszy Seymour Design Workshop was founded in Berlin in 2004 working with many collaborators creating industrial and post industrially produced objects, installations, performances and situations which serve as real and symbolic prototypes of world building. He sees design as the creation of situations whose goal is the transformation of reality. His work is defined by the idea of the Non-gesamt Gesamt Kunstwerk, the Every-topia, and a quixotic form of humour. He positions his role as a designer as a research into contemporary utopian possibilities and alternative world building strategies through the creation of both practical and symbolic situations in order to formulate possible alternative systems and ways of being, with the intention for them to act as living unauthorised models in a decentralised and autonomous reality in themselves.  www.jerszyseymourdesignworkshop.com  www.dirtyartdepartment.com

Macao

Macao is an independent center for art, culture and research founded in 2011 in Milan and is run by an open assembly of artists, activists, misfits and beautiful people in an occupied former slaughterhouse. Part of the network of the historical anarcho-left Centro Sociale in Italy and singular in its forward-thinking approach, Macao serves the daily needs of the local community, is an avant-garde nightlife hotspot and uses its collective power to produce both real actions and symbolic models for social change.

Beginning with their legendary occupation of the Torre Galfa in 2012 with a viral campaign that brought thousands of people out in support, the collective has engaged in subsequent activism to create new laws for community use of abandoned buildings, campaigns for the rights of precarious workers  and support for underrepresented groups. With the creation of Freedom Coop, the crypto-currency Common Coin and their multi-year experiment with Universal Basic Income, we can see Macao as a living breathing social sculpture and a gateway to an alternative reality. www.macaomilano.org

Assemble

Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work including winning the Turner Prize in 2015, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen.

They have set up and continue to future three embedded community organisations, Blackhorse Workshop (2011-), Baltic Street Adventure Playground (2013- ) and Granby Workshop (2015-), alongside running a range of affordable workspaces in London, including Sugarhouse Studios and Fabric Floor. www.assemblestudio.co.uk

MK&G

With approximately 500,000 objects from 4,000 years of human history the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) is one of the most influential museums for arts and crafts in Europe. Opened in 1877, the MKG tells the remarkable story of human creativity. The top-class collections range from Ancient art to Contemporary art and include the European, Islamic and East Asian cultural regions. On about 10,000 square meter, the MK&G displays its extraordinary collections of Graphic Art, Poster, Photography and New Media, Design, Fashion, Musical Instruments and Ceramics and provides an insight into epochs such as Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism, Art Nouveau und Modernity. Highlights are famous Art Nouveau rooms, unique expressionist dance masks, and the orange canteen of Danish designer Verner Panton, an icon of Pop Art, originating from the publishing house of German magazine Der Spiegel. The MK&G connects epochs and cultures, past and present and highlights recent and historico-cultural topics in a thought provoking manner. Captivating exhibitions on Tattoos, Comics and animated films, plastic garbage and the dark sides of fashion, fashion icons such as Coco Chanel and Alexander McQueen, the Design of brands and products or the role of classic and new media in wars and revolutions have made the MK&G one of the most popular museums in Hamburg. www.mkg-hamburg.de