Erik Kessels: Fabulous Failures

Termin: 25. Oktober 2017 
Zeitpunkt: 18.30 Uhr 
Ort: Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien,
Oskar Kokoschka-Platz 2,
Seminarraum 2

The Institute of Design is very pleased to welcome Erik Kessels and invites to his lecture at the University of Applied Arts on October 25, 2017.

About the talk

We live in an age where most of our tools we use are close to perfection. Our computers, phones, applications and navigation systems make no mistakes. Perfection is not a really good starting point to create new ideas, so to sometimes deliberately go towards a mistake and from their find a new direction is actually something good. Society teaches us to avoid mistakes, but for creative people and innovators they are essential.

Erik Kessels will speak about his new book Failed It! How mistakes inspire him and how he makes works out of it.

About Erik Kessels

Erik Kessels is a Dutch artist, designer and curator with great interest in photography. Erik Kessels is since 1996 Creative Director of communications agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam and works for national and international clients such as Nike, Diesel, J&B Whisky, Oxfam, Ben, Vitra, Citizen M and The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel.

As an artist and photography curator Kessels has published over 50 books of his ‘re-appropriated’ images: Missing Links (1999), The Instant Men (2000), in almost every picture (2001-2015) and Wonder (2006). Since 2000, he has been an editor of the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography.

For the DVD art project Loud & Clear he worked together with artists such as Marlene Dumas and Candice Breitz. Kessels writes regular editorials for numerous international magazines. He lectured at the D&AD Presidents Lecture and at several international design conferences such as in Singapore, Goa, NY, Toronto and Bangkok. He has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam), Écal (Lausanne) and at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture where he curated a celebration of amateurism.

Kessels made and curated exhibitions such as Loving Your Pictures, Use me Abuse me, 24HRS of Photos, Album Beauty and Unfinished Father . He als co-curated an exhibition called From Here on together with Martin Parr, Joachim Schmid, Clement Cheroux and Joan Fontuberta.

In 2010 Kessels was awarded with the Amsterdam Prize of the Arts, in 2016 nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and is often seen as the most influential creative of The Netherlands.

Posterdesign: Mato Vincetic