Aric Chen - Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam

♫ Welkom bij Designers Inc. Een podcast over de zakelijke kant van de ontwerpdrachtijk. In Designers Inc. praten rolstaforienes met ontwerpers over hun samenwerking met optrachtgevers of met elkaar, over strategie, ontwikkeling en groei en over hun eigen positionering en zichtbaarheid. Kortom, Designers Inc is een podcast voor jou, de ontwerper die vooruit wil. In deze episode we spelen met Erik Chen. Until this week is a general and artistic director at a new institute in Rotterdam. With the career spanning the US, China and Europe, Erik is one of the most thoughtful voices on design as a global, political and deeply human practice. We talk about why designers need to look beyond their immediate surroundings, what it means to stay curious and how to embrace complexity rather than avoid it. Listening to Erik Chen, a curator, a connector and shop observer who urges us to embrace contradiction. In just as important, not to overthink things. Wil je naar aanleiding van deze podcast meer weten over de zaaklijke kant van de ontwerpdrachtijk of zoek je daar ondersteuning bij? Kijk dan op www.bnopentenel of bijel met één van onze advisseurs. Thank you so much for having me here today in het nieuwe instituut in Rotterdam. Thank you. With a beautiful view on the pot, as we say it. My first question always is who are you and what do you do? So, I'm Erik Chen, that's my name and I am currently the general and artistic director for the new institute. Though as we speak, you could say I'm maybe the outgoing general and artistic director for the institute. You worked here for four years, approximately. You were trained as an architect and cultural interpolice, am I right there or is that? Well, I went to architecture school but I never thought of this training because by that point, I already knew I wasn't going to become a practicing architect. But yeah, I studied architecture for my undergraduate degree in the US and soon added anthropology to that. It was a conscious decision but it became increasingly clear over the years that it made sense for me at least and then design history. How did that fill in your lap? Yeah, you know, I guess I was always a little bit of a go with the flow kind of guy. You could say whether that's a result of instinct or just a kind of blind faith. I don't know but architecture was my first love. I grew up in Chicago in a neighborhood that was a city that's really known for its architecture, kind of like Rotterdam and also very proud of its architecture. And so that was always in the era. So when it came time to study, it was a natural thing for me to want to do. But while I was in school, I soon realized that I had other interests that also needed some attention, you know, cultures and the way that the things that make us human in a more qualitative sense were always of real interest to me. And it didn't hurt that the anthropology building was right across from the architecture building. So I just started walking over the anthropology more and then eventually formalized that. Could it have been something different if something else was on the opposite side of the road? Yeah, possibly, but maybe it's good just to leave things to fate sometimes. So probably there's been a very long journey, but what has led you here to Rotterdam? Yeah, so the fast forward quite a bit. After graduate school, I wound up writing for magazines and newspapers based in New York, always about design and architecture, but then also more broadly speaking art and culture, and a bit of lifestyle stuff as well. And that led to curating more and more over the years. And by the time I was contacted by New Institute or the head hunter, at least, I was living in Shanghai. And at first, I wasn't quite happy in Shanghai. I wasn't looking for a job. Most of my life, I worked independently. And when the head hunter first approached me, I was like, thanks, I love New Institute. I loved Premzola. I loved the Netherlands Architecture Institute to the predecessor organizations that became that were merged into New Institute, but but I'm not looking. She said, let's just have one Zoom call. And I said, okay. And then I thought about it. And really, it occurred to me that if there was one institution in the world that I would want to lead, it would be this one, because there really is no institution in the world like this, a place where you can really work across disciplines. You have this incredible collection. So you have the heritage aspect, but also the experimental ethos that's very firmly looking towards the future. You have a public-facing side with your exhibitions and programs, but also the other half, which is maybe not as well seen, which relates to the various kinds of policy level and policy-oriented work that New Institute does. You bring that all in together with the mandate to work locally, nationally, and internationally across design, architecture, and digital culture. And you have a very, very interesting and I would say powerful combination that no other institution of our size in the world has. So this was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. So I threw my name in. Yeah, from which capacity did you have got a perspective on the Netherlands? Yeah. So as far as it's much more difficult to realize where we are and where we stand, even if you described the New Institute, I think maybe the importance or the presence or the visibility of that abroad outside our country is maybe even larger than in the Netherlands. Yeah, so I guess you could say I came of age professionally as a writer during this period of, let's say, peak Dutch design and architecture in the world. I mean, towards the end of it at least. Yeah, almost that's two thousandths. Yeah. So this was, you know, this whole super Dutch thing was well underway. Drogue was already fairly well established in the global design landscape. Then so, you know, Dutch design architecture were fairly there were a real force to reckon with arguably, you know, if you're talking about one sort of geographic geographically defined, you know, a design architecture discourse, you know, the Dutch were yet, you know. So as a person who was writing for magazines about design architecture during this period, of course, I got to know a lot of Dutch designers and Dutch architects who were operating globally. I got a chance to come to the Netherlands. My first time in Rotterdam was actually at the invitation of the old NIE, the Netherlands architecture institute. So I remember even joking like, you know, no matter where you went in the world, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a Dutch design exhibition. You know, it was, it was really almost omnipresent. And so when I, and because having become somewhat familiar with many Dutch practitioners over the years, you know, you continue to follow what's happening in the Netherlands. Obviously, the design academy in Eindhoven was very active internationally at that point as well. I think a little bit less so these days were very, very policy and politically oriented reasons. But so I think to ask your question, I mean, when I first realized I was coming here to live, it was a new place for me, but it didn't seem that unfamiliar. No, you're describing 2000s. Do you know why this speaks this much in the 2000s? Yeah, well, I think there was a much more generous subsidy system at that time to support Dutch practitioners and support their, their engagement with, with the wider world. I moved to Beijing in 2008, for example, kind of on a whim and soon thereafter wound up helping to start Beijing design week. And, you know, at that time in China, this was really kind of peak China is the future sort of this moment in which, you know, all eyes were on China. So we worked with a lot of different, especially European embassies who were very interested in creating new engagements with their creative industries was was a term that was being used a lot then that still is. But the Netherlands was really at the forefront of that as well. So with Beijing's ion week, we worked with Dutch DFA, which was a four-year initiative overseen by Christine Deban, focusing on China. I believe it was China, India, Turkey and Germany, if I'm not mistaken, but of course China was really the big fish. So we collaborated a lot with her in bringing a very strong presence over a number of years of Dutch design to Beijing. Why is this international perspective important for Dutch designers or Dutch design? Well, I think the fundamental question to step back a little bit is why is international engagement and contact important period. I can give you a very long wooden answer or I can give you a very simple one which is this is how we develop as humans and as human cultures, you know, no culture in the history of humanity has evolved autonomously and in fact, quite the opposite. The ones that stagnate are the ones that close themselves off, the ones that thrive are the ones that open themselves to other ideas and people and things from other places. So I'd like to see that when we, or I would like to think that when we continue, I would like to think that when we create international collaborations nowadays, we're basically continuing that great tradition that has defined our species and that has brought so much benefit to cultures and places all over the world throughout history not to be too grandiose. And while at the same time nowadays with the world sort of closing itself off, this is not the most original thing to say but I think these kinds of exchanges are more important than ever. Now that's on a very big scale. I think on a more individual level, again, very simply, I think, you know, it's always good to open yourself to new ideas, the people who tend to thrive or the ones who do that the most and who do that the best. And I think that this very much applies to the rationale for engaging with other places. Now the sort of policy justification for a long time was, you know, this is kind of a trade promotion effort, you know, you bring Dutch talent and Dutch designers to the other parts of the world. Maybe they can learn from us and maybe there's going to be work for Dutch designers and architects, especially given how small the market is here in the Netherlands. And yeah, there's still that argument to be made. But of course, I think that's also a very sort of old-fashioned quasi imperialistic way of looking at things. And in this day and age when the world is shifting a lot, things are changing very, very quickly and a lot of the challenges that we face are planetary. The exchange really works both ways in the sense that I think there's a lot that we hear in the Netherlands can learn from what other people are doing abroad. Do you see a specific role for designers, especially in relation to the bigger idea that you sketch? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think designers are really those who can offer us the sort of new imaginaries that we need and while helping us chart out ways of getting there. I mean, no one can do that as well as designers can. And that's what designers are needed more than ever. Now, question is, does the rest of the world understand that this is what designers have to offer? Because this is quite abstract, you know, for most people. I think that's a bit of a challenge. But that's one of the things that we've been working on in kind of rethinking the role of cultural institutions with this powerful combination of all these things that I told you about or that I described earlier. Can we take the sort of knowledge as a perspective and visionary capacities of designers and actually make them more tangible, make them more concrete and real by creating testing grounds for enacting some of these imaginaries. So not just talking about them in panel discussions, not just exhibiting them on the walls of galleries, not even just in terms of prototyping, making an example and then showing it at a design festival or something like that. But in fact, actually making it real, embedding it in actual processes so that you can really see how these theories translate or don't into practice. You also make it real so that these imaginaries that may seem far fetched can start to become more feasible. What is the, in your opinion, the biggest challenge in that? For me, looking back also 25 years, I think something like that. I hear us in the industry talk a lot about what design or designer, so design competences can do or a designer's view can do and how important it is for organizations or institutes or whoever to collaborate with designers. Still, I've got a feeling we are talking about this for ages already, but still are not coming through enough. And maybe there's also a little bit of a paradox because if I look around me, everything that we see is designed, whether it being flows, how people walk through a city or the buildings that we look at or the cup on the table, everything's designed. So it's omnipresent in a way, but also omnivisible in a way in a sense that we don't realize that this is something which not only design is there, but also in collaboration with people that are the users of these products or as buildings, etc. Yeah, and maybe somewhat ironically that I would argue is the kind of big weakness of design as a sector right now. We're very bad at communicating what we do, which is ironic because design is also fundamentally about communication and the articulation of ideas, concepts, as well as spaces and things, etc. Is that a universal thing? Or is it very regional? Is that very typical for the Netherlands? Or is it the same in China? Yeah, I think it's, like everything, it's both universal and not. What is specific to the Netherlands? Well, maybe let me step back and respond to something you said earlier or just now, which is if I understood you correctly, I totally agree that I think we have proven that we're very good at talking. And I think maybe a little less talking and more doing would help push things forward a little bit. Let me go back to this era of the 2000s when I was a young writer, journalist, traveling around the world, speaking with designers and looking at what they were doing. And one of the things that I noticed early on as someone was coming from a more like American, especially like in New York back than a context, was I got the very strong feeling that in one of the strengths in Europe, especially Northern Europe, including the Netherlands, was this very rigorous attention to process. When you would listen to designers to talk about their work, 85% of what they said was about process and reflection. Whereas in other places, it was almost the opposite. It was like, this is the goal, this is what we did, this is what this can do, et cetera, et cetera. I always thought, couldn't we find a happy medium because there seemed to be so much focus on the process here that the results got a bit lost. And it's not that everything has to have a tangible result. There is value to sort of open-ended experimentation, but at a certain point, This has to go somewhere. You know, and so I think, you know, this ability to really deeply reflect is a real strength. And this is where I think this notion of a cultural situation as a testing ground can be really useful. And that's something that we've been really trying to develop here at New Institute. As with everything, it's more complicated than it sounds. But I think if as a sector we can create more spaces and opportunities for designers to not just reflect and speculate what these new imaginaries would also like to do and try them out. That would be really good. And in some ways, when you talk to people who look back on that golden age of government subsidy, that was one of the things that the subsidies allowed you to do. It actually allowed you to implement and execute some of the ideas that were being developed. Subsidies always went a little bit of a paradox in a way, because I think it's very important to sort of get something started, but at a certain stage, you also prove your relevance because you don't need any subsidy anymore. So how do you look at that? What is your view on that? Well, I think it just depends on how you design the subsidy system. There's no one one way of doing it. I was just saying that having grown up in the U.S., the word subsidy was like an evil word because the U.S. doesn't have that kind of culture. It's always about software lions and not living on the government doll and so on and so forth. And again, we tend to go to extremes. There are always middle ways, and there are always ways of maybe I'm getting too philosophical here, but I think we need to learn better to negotiate contradiction because we tend to think in such black and white. It's either this or that, or it's either right or it's wrong. Subsidies are either good or they're bad, and if we decide to go with subsidies, suddenly we have to go all out with subsidies and everything has to be subsidized. Of course, I'm oversimplifying here, but that's one thing I have to say that really struck me when I left China. When you come back to the so-called West, at least I found it really did hit me quite hard how much more binary the ways of thinking are here than in China or other parts of the world. The binary is in thinking in contrast, in black and white. It's all one way or it's all the other way. Can you elaborate on how it is different in China? I don't know if this is a good example, but the most obvious one is, yes, we can be communist and capitalist at the same time. But I mean, I'm being a little bit cheeky with that, but I find you do in some ways. It's not always very articulated because of course there are limits of what you can say, but in terms of what you see happening, there's much more nuance and complexity and layers to negotiating different agendas and needs of constraints and possibilities and opportunities. Is there also a difference in the sense of ambition or urgency? If I'm a brand strategist, what I find very interesting is what China does at the moment in electrifying cars, and it goes very rapidly, good cars, high quality, totally different from what it used to be in the past, introducing more and more, where the European car industry is stuck in structures, their own vision, maybe also some arrogance that they buy the built the best cars that the world can have, and I feel that the ambition or the vision or the urgency in China is much more present in a way. So I think you just made the ultimate argument for one of your first questions, as why is it important for Dutch designers to go abroad? You know this because not just because you've been reading a few things in the newspapers, but because you've been to China, and so you've seen it and so you understand it and you can learn from that and that can help inform what you do here. You could make an argument that if more people from the car industry and policymakers were going to China more often and really deeply understanding what was going on there more fully and not just reading the headlines in the economist or what not, the European car industry might not be in the situation it's in now. Maybe something that now realizes that are we not in that respect too much binary anyway in the West because if I think back of all the conferences that have been in the last couple of years, in the West, then it's always the perspective from the West and the Northern Hemisphere and it's never Asia or the Southern Hemisphere, even if you look at how its AI is fed the same. So it's very biased, it becomes very biased. So if you go to marketing conferences you hear talk about all these unicorns in the West, but they totally forget about everything that's happening in Asia. So we, I came to this because in the conversation that we had last week we talked about curiosity and what I'm wondering is how he's still curious enough in this part of the world. Yeah, I think there's no question that there's a trend globally towards becoming more and more inward looking no matter where you're looking. And I think this is where those who manage to stay outward looking are going to have a huge advantage in the coming years because globalization, you know, is not going to go away. The world is interconnected and those who want to sort of, I don't know, now I'm starting to sound like the sort of Thomas Friedman neoliberal. I don't mean it that way and maybe I should choose my words more carefully, but we are interconnected. Sorry, we have some work going on in the building. Are you taking the building with you? We're dismantling it. Just going back to what I said earlier, history has shown us time and time again that those who look outward thrive, those who look inward tend to stagnate. So unfortunately, many places around the world are looking inward right now, but I hope that there are enough still smart and curious enough people in those places to kind of at least keep a more international outlook alive. It may not be the heyday for it. You know, when I was first being interviewed for this job here, because I was living in China then, and I wrote it China was becoming a bit of a sensitive topic, I was sort of asked, you know, what is your position on collaborations with countries where in countries and with people in countries that might raise some nervousness. And the person who asked me was like, because you know, there's all this stuff about how culture is going to save the world, you know, yada yada yada, but really, you know, and I said, well, no, culture is not going to, culture and cultural engagement or creative engagement is not going to save the world, but at a time when ties are fraying so quickly, we can at least pull the last few threads together so that they don't all snap. And so that's, you know, as designers, as curators, as cultural institutions, we're not going to be able to change the tide. But what we can do, again, is to hold onto what can be held onto. You know, until the tide shifts again. Last question, if a designer wants to be more globally aware, where should they start, what to read, what to follow, what to do, where to go? I'm thinking designers listening to the podcast, living in Eintro, from now on, and groaning, or so inspired by what you say about curiosity and its global awareness and how do I start? Yeah. Well, if you're able to just go, you know, And of course, that's not so easy for everyone, but don't shy away of just going to places that you're curious about. There are a million design events in the world going on at any time, and just go even just to have a look. Of course, that's not everyone can just do that, and for those who maybe need a more sort of well-defined reason, you know, there are in the Netherlands many different routes towards becoming engaged with colleagues and others in other parts of the world. Here at the Neesertube, we run international clinics with Dutch culture and stimulering funds where anyone can come with the questions and learn about different routes and channels that they can take for different opportunities to engage with other parts of the world. When people from outside the world, from when people from outside the Netherlands come here to do talks or whatever show up, ask questions, just be curious. I was joking earlier that, you know, I've always found that just going with the flow has worked. It's worked well for me at least, but I don't think you need to overthink it or overstrategize it. Follow your curiosity and over time things will fall into place and you will find collaborations, you will find reasons to collaborate. I think listening to you, I think it's also important for designers to make room for that curiosity. In a sense, I think a lot of designers, especially at the moment, a lot of studios are not doing that well. I'm trying to make ends meet, so you're doing project after project and after project, and sometimes it's not realized enough that also making time and space to have conversations or go outside and go to a museum or read a book or whatever is also part of your work and sort of feeding your curiosity to be able to be a better designer. Yeah, no, absolutely, I think curiosity is the one gift that we all have and we should use it. Thank you so much for this conversation and good luck in London. Thank you. I think it's a combined visit. Yeah, thank you. Great. This was Designers Inc, a podcast for the underneemable developer that you would like to do. Do you want to react or have your suggestions? Let us know via [email protected] and follow us on Spotify so that other developers can also find us. Designers Inc is an initiative by Rool Stavorinus and the B&O and is made possible through Roland Gelen and the Victor Wright Funds.