Inclusion, Natural Mystic, Talisman – these are the subjects of the design competition Amberif Design Award in the previous years. On 14th February 2009 we will find out who and how interpreted the subject POP – AMBER. Meanwhile we present an introduction to this subject by the curator of the competition, dr. hab. Slawomir Fijalkowski. We encourage to take part in the most conceptual challege concerning amber.
POP – AMBER
“It’s hard to be avant-garde today. People have got used to everything.”
(Vivienne Westwood – British fashion designer)
 A long, long time ago, when not everything was manufactured in China and Andy Warhol was only beginning to plot the direction of the evolution, whose results Damien Hirst so successfully takes advantage of today – the term “POP” was not associated exclusively with shallow and mindless commercialism. Today’s transglobal “pop-culture,” effectively plugged by the Hollywood entertainment industry, can only be judged pejoratively or – at best – with indulgence. The consequence of the universal unification of cultural models, which we have already grown accustomed to and even ceased to notice, comes not only as the homogenising of behaviour and customs, but also the standardising of aesthetic canons. Consumer habits are also subject to “formatting,” while constantly perfected manipulation techniques (such as neuromarketing) are being developed in order to define the target ever more precisely and get us to buy ever new objects of mirage. The same goal lies behind the ephemeral character of stylistic solutions, “digested” again and again, according to the self-perpetuating mechanism of restyling, which has become de rigeur in fashion.
Today’s jewellery is also increasingly often “manufactured” according to randomly selected reinterpretations of symbols, images, emoticons and signs mixed with impunity into the oddest combinations, whose semantic superficiality impresses no one anymore. In the convention thrust upon us, religious, ethnic and mythological symbols are “read into” aesthetics taken straight from computer games, text message hieroglyphs and infantile Emo or Kawaii graphics. This mechanism of the quick obsolescence of all images is subject to the logic of seasonality, while the ease with which some ideas find ever new followers and ever new, ever cheaper imitations makes contemporary design increasingly the domain of trendhunters rather than designers.
Up to now individual creators and artists reacted by ostentatiously distancing themselves from everything that could be tagged as POP in the public consciousness. Usually such an attitude is justified by the need to maintain the exclusive character of a work of art. Sometimes, the consequence of such uncompromisingly defined, and thus highly questionable, “elitism” means that the artistic activity fails to account for the need to confront an audience and becomes only a therapy for the artists themselves. This strategy of voluntary alienation usually turns out to be permanently counterproductive versus such an overwhelming phenomenon; all the more so since even the most radically manifested rebellion can be quickly neutralised and repackaged as a new and fashionable trend with a short sell-by date. The subject of this year’s competition aims at provoking artists and designers to critically reflect upon the reasons for and consequences of the trend that is commonly known as POP. Amber, more than most materials, is encumbered by a centuries-old tradition of craft. All the more then does it need artistic interpretation referring to the here and now.
In POP – AMBER, for the first time we so clearly expect solutions referring to current stylistic trends: in a critical, analytical or affirmative way.
Slawomir Fijalkowski
More informations about the competition:
Amberif Design Award
Download:
Regulations (Word)
Entry Form (Word)
Photo: The Main Prize in Amberif Design Award 2008 was awarded to Ewa Wedzikowska and Sebastian Konicz from Lodz 2008-11-06 | 
