Jan Kubasiewicz (US)

Founder and coordinator of the Dynamic Media Institute (2000–2016) — a prestigious master’s program at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, USA, integrating visual communication, moving information, UX/UI, and digital media. Curator at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University — since 2016, curator of the Giedrojć Gallery, where he carries out internationally scoped exhibition projects.

His extensive curatorial and artistic output includes: Occupying Paris: 1968 and the Spaces of Protest, Poles Apart — Poland’s Culture Wars, Politics on Paper: Contemporary Polish Poster Art (Harvard University). His work has been present in globally recognized cultural institutions, including more than seventeen solo exhibitions, e. g. at Re:Medium Gallery, Łódź; Big Arts Gallery, Sanibel, USA; Skydoor Gallery, Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan; Harvard University, Cambridge, USA.

His works are held in collections across the USA, Europe, and Asia, including the British Library, London, UK; the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany; the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York, USA; the National Museum in Warsaw; and the Museum of Art in Łódź.Author of numerous publications and conference presentations, such as Łódź-ORWO. A Project by Jan Kubasiewicz (2019), Objects in Motion (2017), the essays Motion Literacy and Mapping the Experience of Dynamic Media, as well as many talks delivered at international conferences (Venice, Dublin, Beijing, Milan, Seoul, Sydney, etc.).

Communication design and its discontents

This talk shares the insights of a designer and design educator with nearly fifty years of experience while exploring the timelines and cycles of technological determinism that have influenced the history of communication design since the 20th century.

The ideas presented here were inspired by many hours of seminar discussions with students at MassArt in Boston, where we examined questions from philosophy, theory, and the history of communication and design that we didn’t have time to cover in studio courses focused on design practice. Students were encouraged to investigate the complex relationships between human expression and communication technologies by reading McLuhan, Flusser, Kittler, Han, and others.

Recognizing how technology has driven innovation while also recycling historical design concepts, forms, and language was just the beginning of the journey. Why do the promises of a better world through design and technology often fall short because of unintended side effects? Why do designers sometimes tarnish their reputation by arrogantly believing they can solve all the world’s problems with a click? Some of these issues will be discussed in this talk.