in conversation with: gabriel roland
Gabriel Roland, festival director, VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. Photo ©Erli Grünzweil.
Gabriel Roland (born 1989) is the director of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. Besides leading the team organising Austria’s largest curated design festival, he is directly responsible for many of its international relations, commissions and special projects. For example, he initiated the Virtual Festival Headquarters of 2020 and curates the festival’s renowned ‘Passionswege’ format, which brings together design and craft. Roland has a background in textile design as well as fashion and art writing. Besides VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, he was involved in projects bridging topics as diverse as toys, digital media, pop culture, and the contemporary art market.
LUCIJA ŠUTEJ: We share a background in textile and fashion design. Do you see a connection between the influence of your specialization with the curatorial approach to the design festival?
GABRIEL ROLAND: It's not directly related, but my textile design background gave me insight into an industry past its prime in Austria, as in many places in Europe. During my studies, there was little awareness about textile design processes despite textiles being ubiquitous. There was always the feeling that we were doing something that wasn't recognized by a lot of people - which is funny because everyone has and uses textiles all the time. But if you went to a party (laugh) and people asked you what you did, textiles are always identified as fashion design. There was and is no awareness of the process and what it means - and this experience informs how I run a design festival. Many design fields are similarly overlooked despite their pervasiveness.
We are all faced with having to use objects all the time but rarely do we think about their design and neither do we have the tools to reflect on those objects. From a curatorial perspective, this can lead to poor taste and unsustainable consumption. And people making bad decisions in their consumption, leads to the destruction of the planet, leads to social inequity and people not having the possibility to participate in something that is a fundamental part of our society. There are clear discrepancies in how people approach or don't approach objects and don't even consider there might be an agenda behind the design they just encountered. And it is my heartfelt conviction that if a larger portion of society starts thinking, reflecting, and critiquing the way our material culture looks - it becomes a powerful way to voice our interests.
Fighting about how objects, spaces, and environments look essentially means fighting about our living conditions. This relates to who controls which aspects, who works for whom, and who has a say. While changing a coffee cup's design won't create a just society, thinking about why it looks the way it does can lead to more fundamental questions. The design field must critically examine where formal considerations and creating new objects lead us - Is there a broader perspective, or is it just a continuous growth cycle? This connects to marginalized positions in society. Textiles relate to feminism and the notion that the preoccupation with aesthetics and superficiality is ascribed to "the other" - never the powerful. These power dynamics in dismissing others' interests are very present in textiles and I think should be considered more broadly in design.
LŠ: Did you work as a design curator before joining Vienna Design Week?
GR: I never worked as a design curator apart from within Vienna Design Week, where my role involves both curation and organization. I previously worked as a journalist, which allowed for in-depth conversations about objects. I also did some independent curatorial projects dealing with things like new currents in digital art or children’s toys. Additionally, I had a small textile accessory startup with a colleague.
LŠ: Oh yes? What was the company like?
GR: It's been a long time (laugh) and the company still exists. But it has developed quite a bit since I was involved. It's a company that makes wallets. My co-founder Yasmin Proksch still runs it and it is now very successful. I think I am a very bad business person (laugh).
LŠ: Also what interested you about digital arts? Could we reflect on some of the questions that occupied your mind via projects you realised?
GR: I think it’s always interesting to examine when new types of content, technical possibilities, or new audiences generate friction by extending what we perceive as art. A durational video screening by German artist Kurt Prödel based on the complete works available on YouTube by a certain Austrian rapper; an art edition in the .gif-format exclusively saved on a limited number of USB drives: Those were improvised, light-hearted projects I did with friends almost ten years ago. But they were profound in the sense that they taught me what independent platforms are capable of. More recently, I curated and organised a playable design and art exhibition for children together with my partner Johanna Pichlbauer. That was interesting too.
LŠ: Vienna Design Week has been running for 17 years. How do you see its impact on the city and quality of life? Which programmes are you particularly proud of - and why?
GR: We're a small, independent, agile organization with a limited budget. But, we're seen as institutionalized because we've been around so long (laugh), but we're actually a small nonprofit. The festival grew out of the founders' (Tulga Beyerle, Thomas Geisler and Lilli Hollein who are all museum directors now!) desire to create a platform for Vienna's creative industries and design output. I think that we've shaped a distinct profile focusing on what we're good at. Since 2006, it's been timely to think about crafts and how site-specific approaches can feed into the design process - by creating experiences and content that make sense in a specific place for specific people, rather than just aiming for a high volume of interactions.
We work differently from other design events as we're not closely tied to commercial output. This allows us to challenge some of the boundaries of design like exploring experimental materials from urban sources. Like this, our context can actually be better at promoting the commercial aspects of thoughtful designs to the right audience.
FOCUS: TRASH, Luis Niederbuchner, Photo © Amelie Niederbuchner
FOCUS: TRASH, Hannah Mackaness, Photo © Hannah Mackaness
FOCUS: TRASH, sa/k design studio, Photo © Stina Henriksson
LŠ: What do you see as challenges for design weeks - on your example and internationally?
GR: Design weeks sit on the fence between commerce and culture, between public funding and corporate sponsorship, between political agendas and beautification. They are faced with a seemingly endless offering of products available around the world almost instantaneously. They are expected to make sense of them and to help sell them at the same time. Some even expect design weeks to bring about an alternative. Their audience is over-saturated by marketing messages that made it grow addicted to as well as tired of the promises of design. Somehow events like VIENNA DESIGN WEEK need to tear openings into this situation where the most normal, everyday, mundane stuff all of a sudden appears worth celebrating, examining, criticizing.
LŠ: Your approach and direction of the festival reminds me more of a biennial than a typical design fair.
GR: Yes, we do share similarities with biennials, though we operate on a much shorter time frame. Biennales face the challenge of maintaining momentum while yearly events might risk running out of time if they want to go in depth. Both need to find a balance between consistency and innovation. We must consider how much we can change each year while remaining recognizable.
PLATFORM, Bildrecht | Bildraum 01, ante up, Photo © Julian Linden
PLATFORM, Lena Beigel, Tobias Lugmeier, and Georg Sampl, Photo © Tobias Lugmeier
PLATFORM, MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Photo © Yves Ebnöther
Team VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, Photo © Erli Grünzweil
LŠ: How does the Design Week function as a networking platform and support local manufacturing?
GR: We grew out of the local design scene and are responsible for providing a meeting place and showcase for their work. We also cater to a broad audience, from school children to international journalists, professional buyers to art enthusiasts. We aim to challenge boundaries by working with public entities, companies, and institutions to broaden the understanding of design work.
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, Festival Headquarters, Photo © Kollektiv Fischka/Kramar
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, Urban Food & Design, Photo © Kollektiv Fischka
LŠ: Vienna as a city is prioritizing smart city strategies - is Vienna Design Week working towards the initiatives?
GR: I'm not sure what a smart city is, and I'm not convinced it's the most important question we are faced with. Vienna's more significant achievement is creating a nice, affordable city to live in. That's been their goal since 1919, and I think they should continue to focus on that. If smart city initiatives contribute to that goal, great, but we shouldn't prioritize tools over outcomes.
The design scene needs to critically examine its tendency towards tool fetishism and the constant talk of solutions. Despite claims that design can solve the climate crisis, it hasn't yet. In fact, design has played a significant role in environmental destruction through its part in consumerist society.
Design has an incredible capacity to create desire, which can be used for good or bad. Even “good" products may not be the answer - perhaps we shouldn't want anything at all. However, I believe design can also tell stories that wake people up and potentially disrupt the system it helped create.
It's not as simple as good designers doing good design and evil designers doing bad design. The reality is much more complex, which makes it difficult for the design scene to confidently claim we're solving problems. A new generation might demand more direct answers and conclusions, which could be challenging but ultimately beneficial.
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, Stadtarbeit, Photo © Kollektiv Fischka
Stadtarbeit, Future Problems Architecture Studio, Picture © Future Problems Architecture Studio
LŠ: How do you see the future of design weeks?
GR: I’ve mentioned some of the challenges that design weeks are facing. Speaking of solutions might be a bit too simple but I think that we’ll see a lot of small, very specific formats popping up. It has become so much more rewarding to produce events that attract few people but make a lot of sense to them instead of trying to attract many to have a statistical shot at success. That means design weeks might become less convenient but maybe more rewarding to visit. Like all others they will have to increasingly justify the energy and material they invest and the agendas they pursue. To which end!? For whom!? Ultimately, I think that design weeks need to be able to carry a new image of our material culture into society. Like all fortune telling that might involve some wishful thinking, though.
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, Talks, Photo © Kollektiv Fischka/Kramar