By Gabrielle Kennedy
Alumnus Aurelie Hoegy will exhibit this coming weekend at Palais de Tokyo in Paris along with other Design Academy Eindhoven current students and alumni during the Do Disturb II event at Palais deTokyo. For more information check the link below.
Aurelie Hoegy’s multidisciplinary approach pushes boundaries while redefining the design discipline. Since graduating with a Masters in Contextual Design from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2013, she has established herself as one of Europe’s most dynamic and exciting young designers.
After earning her bachelors degree from École Supérieure d’Art et de Design in Reims, France, Hoegy was not clear in her own mind about what direction to take. “I wanted to create, I wanted to use my hands, but being a product designer was not what I meant by that,” she says. “For me it had to be something more – a place where my heart and my head, and all my inspirations and references could come together as one.”
The Dutch design system has a strong reputation in France, but Hoegy initially had her sights set on the vibe of London, not Eindhoven, a small city in the south of the Netherlands, to continue her studies. Encouraged by friends though she decided to pay the school a visit. “I met the heads and alumni and I saw the workshops,” she says. “I really liked the atmosphere and could see from the projects a broader way of embracing design which really made sense to me.”
Hoegy enrolled and immediately took advantage of everything the academy had to offer – she experimented with plastics, wood, silk screening and textiles; reveled in the exposure to artists, critics, and theorists, and made the most of her interaction with students from around the world. “I was in the right place,” she says. “I quickly learned that design is not just about objects that function. It is an unlocked discipline – open to other meanings. It can be political and it can be social. I can be a comment or an observation. In France this is not yet such a widely accepted position.”
Even Hoegy’s early projects mixed the demands of research and materiality with her broader interest in cinema, theater, and dance. Like her big inspirations - cult directors Hitchcock, Lynch and Tati and choreographer William Forsythe - she likes to make story boards, short movies and to experiment with an interdisciplinary or hybrid approach.
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. “There is a lot of pressure in Eindhoven,” Hoegy continues. “There is an atmosphere of excellence and an expectation that everything is done right. The first version is never enough. We are pushed to go as far as we can with every idea so there is never any cutting corners, or becoming too general. Everything has to come from the individual, which is something I wasn’t used to– that trust, that push and enthusiasm from a teacher to keep me on track and to keep my work original.”
In the Contextual Design department Hoegy was under the watchful eye of department head Louise Schouwenberg, renowned for her strong and unwavering opinions. “It is a fine line and she treads it effectively,” Hoegy says. “Louise and all my teachers gave so much of themselves, but they do it in a way that doesn’t detract from what I had in mind for myself. So they are a strong influence without treading on the will of the individual. They never tell you what to do, but rather grab at what you have to offer and then help you to extract and reveal that further. It is really subtle and when I think back, an extremely rich and interesting method.”
Hoegy’s designs dance back and forth along the border between normal and abnormal. She questions and toys with that demarcation in an attempt to encourage and even challenge people to acknowledge their own levels of acceptance.
For her graduation project, “Macguffin Lamp” Hoegy was searching for a way to up the ante on an everyday action without alienating everyday users. She wanted her object to look and feel familiar, but to disrupt a ritual that has become so instinctual that we are left blind to the related designs. Her lamp – which is attached to the end of a 700 meter cord - creates a sense of alarm, of the unknown, and even of something slightly crazy. It is a nod to that dash of “abnormal” in all of us that we spend a lifetime learning to suppress. The end “product” is effective because even with the overdose of poetic madness, the lamp works, producing the necessary amount of light. Madness, the logic tells us, doesn’t have to spell total dysfunction.
“The idea of losing control and admitting our inner madness scares most people,” says Hoegy who thinks this fear raises questions about free-will and identity. But design can play a role; it can confront us with the unknown and surround us with crazy or unexpected objects that we instinctively strive to find a connection with. Interacting with something “mad” can even provide comfort, or a type of relief.
Hoegy’s most recent project “Dancers” won the 2015 Rado Jury prize in France, and the 2016 Pure Talent Contest at IMM Cologne. It started as a series of small models, which were spotted by Alexandra Jaffré who asked her to produce one in life-size for the biennale in Saint Etienne. That making entailed a complicated material experimentation with latex and cotton that demanded not just a practical solution, but the creation of a physical space for the imagination. The result is a mysterious collection of chairs that blur the boundary of movement and stability with a nod to the beauty of gesture.
And while people can rest on “Dancers” - they function and are recognizable as chairs – it is the interaction with them that matters most – it creates a different story to the one people expect. It is in this difference that Hoegy’s strength as a designer is best understood. Her products are a tool that prod people towards a different understanding of the world around them and even of themselves - they mirror the user who is obliged to bring something to the interaction - both in the physical communication, but also in how they react to the way the objects push and pull at the boundaries of what might be considered “normal”.
“I am fascinated with perception as a concept,” Hoegy says. “It is not just the perception of a single thing, but how we rely on a certain way of viewing the world, which ultimately says a lot about us.”
See Aurelie this coming weekend April 8, 9, 10, 2016 at the Do Disturb II event at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. More than 50 experimental projects fusing performance art, dance, sound, design and circus including seven projects from current students and alumni of Design Academy Eindhoven will be there.
PALAIS DE TOKYO / 13, av. du Président Wilson -75116 Paris www.palaisdetokyo.com