Competing Utopias is a design collision that should never have happened But somehow, in Los Angeles, in 2014, twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it did.
This installation is a ‘mash-up’ in the most provocative sense of that word. Its force comes from the collision of two design cultures that have been kept apart but have been visually connected in ways yet unexamined. What is proposed is an experimental installation that presents Cold War modern design from East and West in one context.
The Cold War was fought not just with guns, but also with art, design, and culture. Who would formulate the vision for the future of humanity? Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, historians, curators, and artists are investigating the divisions between East and West in their visual expressions of modernity – how were they different and how were they similar? Form knows no political boundaries or foreign languages – in this most basic sense the ‘cultural Cold War’ was a truly global competition of ideas and ideals.
Presented by: Neutra VDL Research House and Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War
Curators: David Hartwell, Bill Ferehawk, Justin Jampol, Sarah Lorenzen, and Patrick Mansfield
Wende Team: Sarah Davis, Kate Dollenmayer, Joanne Kim, Christine Rank and Donna Stein.
VDL Team: Kate Bilyk and Johnny Tran.
