Istanbul Design Biennial live talk for VDF discusses how the pandemic led to a redesign of its upcoming edition

Virtual Design Festival is joined by the organisers of the Istanbul Design Biennial for a live Screentime conversation about how its fifth edition has been rethought in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Tune in live from 4:00pm UK time.

Biennial director Deniz Ova and curator Mariana Pestana will speak to Dezeen's founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs about the new format and structure of the event, which will now run from 15 October to 15 November.

They will also reveal how the biennial will address the theme of its fifth edition, Empathy Revisited: Designs for more than one. This focuses on how design can embed care and empathy into the world and will be explored through a programme of digital projects, physical exhibitions and participatory events.

"Working collaboratively with designers, artists, architects, activists and thinkers, the biennial explores designs for multiple bodies, dimensions, and perspectives," the organisers explained.

"The projects that the biennial presents encourage us to rethink practices of care and civility at this critical moment in time, and to collectively build new systems and structures for reconnecting."

Originally planned for September, the biennial is now opening in mid-October of this year. It will be centred around three groups of content, starting with a weekly, virtual cooking show hosted by different practitioners and thinkers within the field, who will explore the connections between food and ecology, economics and geopolitics.

The programme will also include a physical exhibition at Istanbul cultural centre ARK Kültür, showing work and research initiatives from designers and thinkers investigating our relationship with agriculture and food production.

"Driven by research, care and activism, these practices use design in an imaginative way to rethink territories through our relationship with soil and water, in order to reveal the less visible networks of food production," the organisers said.

The biennial also offers a programme of participatory outdoor events across Istanbul entitled New Civic Rituals.

Organised together with the Pera Museum, the programme is designed to bring people together following the coronavirus pandemic, through communal cooking, gardening, film screenings and public discussions.

"These projects have a restorative function, providing experiences of being together, reconnecting, and caring for the city and its multiple inhabitants," the organisers said.

The biennial has invited a roster of international designers, thinkers and architects to take part in the event. These include Virtual Design Festival collaborators Nelly Ben Hayoun and Lucy McRae, as well as South African architecture firm Counterspace, among others.

Founded in 2012 and organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, the Istanbul Design Biennial has has previously been curated by figures such as the creative director of Design Academy Eindhoven Joseph Grima in 2012, writer and critic Zoë Ryan in 2014, architectural historians Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley in 2016 and design critic Jan Boelen in 2018.

Pestana, who was chosen in 2019 to curate the fifth edition of the event, has previously curated exhibitions such as Eco Visionaries, which premiered at the MAAT in Lisbon and last year travelled to the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

She has also been the curator of exhibitions at the V&A in London and ArkDes in Stockholm, Sweden.

About Virtual Design Festival

Virtual Design Festival runs from 15 April to 10 July 2020. It brings the architecture and design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances.

To find out what's coming up at VDF, check out the schedule. For more information or to join the mailing list, email vdf@dezeen.com

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