Art direction and visual identity for the exhibition COMPULSIVE DESIRES: The Extraction of Lithium and Rebellious Mountains,Galeria Municipal do Porto, Porto, March—May 2023.
The exhibition, curated by Marina Otero Verzier, featured works by Amável Antão, Anastasia Kubrak, Carlos Irijalba, Giuliana Rosso, Grupo de Investigação Territorial (Antonio del Giudice, Godofredo Enes Pereira, Jacob Bolton, Mingxin Li, Tiago Patatas), Heitor Cramez, Isidro Rodrigues, Jonas Staal & Radha D’Souza, Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, Lara Almarcegui, Leanne Wijnsma, Lithium Triangle Research Studio + Nicolas Jaar, Maarten Vanden Eynde & Edmond Musasa, Medios Libres con la Gira Zapatista, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Natalia de la Rubia Kozlowska, Orlando Vieira Francisco, Povo de Covas do Barroso & Paulo Carneiro, Susana Caló, Susana Soares Pinto, Tanguy Pitavy, Tomás Saraceno & Aerocene Foundation.
The exhibition took as starting point the ongoing lithium extraction plans in the North of Portugal and the struggles sustained by local communities for their lives and rights, exploring the interconnections between social, mental, and environmental ecologies.
The design identity addresses the toxicity linked to lithium extraction and its implication in the discipline, technology and territories. The electric-green-red landscape was digitally sculpted by gestures that reference typographical carving and the removal and extraction of material from the earth. It represents the initial transformation of a soon to become inverted mountain.
The 3D illustration of a rock then used to create the landscape imagery of the identity was developed by Daniel Martins.
Print and digital assets were produced
for this project. A book of the exhibition was produced being framed within an existing collection of Dafne, with design guidelines that were adapted to accomodate parts of this exhibition language.
The exhibition design was developed by Diogo Passarinho Studio (Diogo Passarinho and Gonçalo Reynolds).
Photography by Alexandre Delmar, João Octávio Peixoto and Renato Cruz Santos.
System Identity for X IS NOT A SMALL COUNTRY: Unravelling the Post-Global Era, MAAT, Lisbon, March—September 2021.
The exhibition, curated by Aric Chen with Martina Muzi, featured work by Bard Studio, Bricklab, Ibiye Camp, Revital Cohen + Tuur Van Balen, Jing He, Paulo Moreira, Rael San Fratello, Wolfgang Tillmans and Liam Young.
Interview about the identity here.
The graphic identity of the exhibition attempts to articulate the complexities of the changing global order through the proxy of data. Drawn from the year prior to the exhibition’s opening, a selection of fluctuating datasets – ranging from the market value of Lufthansa (LTH) and of palladium (PALL) to the number of active World of Warcraft (WOW) players – was coordinated with the movement of satellites orbiting the earth.
The resulting system combines variable geometric components with aerial imagery to embrace the unpredictability and seeming randomness of colliding systems on a planetary scale.
Project developed together with Max Ryan.
Print and digital assets were produced
for this project, including an identity system.
We worked closely with the exhibition design developed by BUREAU (Daniel Zamarbide, Galliane Zamarbide and Carine Pimenta).
Photography by Francisco Nogueira and Lisa Moura.
Max and I wrote a small essay on the research behind this identity at MAAT extended.
Fiction Practice, curated by Mariana Pestana, was a project based on 4 workshops hosted by Porto Design Biennale. Each workshop – while sharing the overall theme of design fiction – had its own group of workshop leaders, its own methodological approach, its own theoretical framework and its own terminologies.
The identity aimed to highlight these differences through the use of evocative and unusual terms extracted from each of the the workshop descriptions. (As Wittgenstein writes ”The limits of our language are the limits of our world”, therefore, these terms could evoke other possible worlds). The terms were set in several typefaces encompassing a number of different type categories to symbolise the distinct approaches being explored.
To contextualise this project within 2019’s Porto Design Bienalle theme “Post Millenial Tension”, we took the scroll as a compositional approach and we used hashtags, a popular symbol and tool on online platforms frequented by 'millenials'. The scroll, being an extended roll of information, existed many centuries ago in papyrus form. However it has re-emerged and been re-contextualised through our everyday digital experiences, particularly with the use of smartphones.
The book Fiction Practice: Prototyping the Otherworldy, edited by Mariana Pestana, follows the identity we previously designed for Fiction Practice exhibition.
Designed with Max Ryan
Photographs by Ines d’ Orey & Dinis Santos
Book edited by Mariana Pestana and published by Onomatopee
Fiction Practice book was shortlisted for Best Book Design from all over the World hosted by the Stiftung Buchkunst.
Visual identity and exhibition design for Emergence: Service/Social/Sustainable Design, Design School, London College of Communication, London. September—October 2019. This programme is part of London Design Festival, 2019.
Print and digital assets were produced
for this project, including a website: http://emergenceshow.com
The Emergence identity takes satellite imagery of landscapes that have been affected by humanity and propels these into states of perpetual flux.
The forms created are simultaneously complex yet ambiguous, abstract yet obscured. As the identity shifts between sites of impact examples of environmental disasters, water erosion, mining, deforestation, receding glaciers can be observed.
All are visible somewhere amongst the shifting landmasses but remain enigmatic.
The website has been featured
at Hover States.
Project developed and released in September 2017.
In the midst of a global pandemic crisis, interconnected, we observe the formation of a wave of mistrust and uncertainty when facing the future. In parallel, big tech companies are turning to the stars to promise orientation for navigating the present. In the face of the rising number of mobile apps offering cartomancy, astrology, or quiromancy services, Scrolling the Arcane brought together designers, artists, and researchers to reflect and question this context. Why are digital entrepreneurs interested in astrology? What models and predictive technologies coexist in these services’ configurations? What markets feed from the global crisis and anxiety?
Opening and public presentation took place at the Porto Planetarium Dome on the 2 October 2020.
︎︎︎ Visit online exhibition at: https://www.scrollingthearcane.com
︎︎︎ More information here.
Curated and Produced by Joana Pestana
Webdesign and code by Max Ryan
Funded by Criatório 2019
Supported by Porto Planetarium
Projects and essays by: Alice Bucknell*, Christina Worner*, Daniel Martins*, David Benqué, Diogo Tudela*, Eva Papamargariti*, Ken Hollings, Nestor Pestana*, Raquel Peixoto e Tiago Patatas*
* Commissioned projects
Photography: Alexandre Delmar & Maria João Ruivo
Critical-GPS workshop invited to explore the latent potential of public interventions in virtual 'space'. This 4-day workshop took place at the White City campus of the Royal College of Art in November 2018 (29.10 — 1.11).
︎︎︎ Funded by ACROSSRCA.
︎︎︎ More information here.
Calling upon the heritage of 60s site-specific art and analyses of so-called virtual ‘spaces’ and their already established networks present on the internet participants attempted to address the mixed-reality resulting from the overlay of digital dimensions upon the world, challenging the convergence of digital experiences of a space and its physical location.
What does it mean when something which is more commonly regarded in abstract, ethereal terms becomes intrinsically linked to a specific physical space?
Workshop leaders: Christina Worner, Joana Pestana & Max Ryan.
Participants: Ben Mehigan, Amy Frampton, Carolin Schnurrer, Jordan Edge, Dimitra-Elli Antoniou, Lovino Wang, Laura Bivolaru, Max Kohler, Sam Chester, Ewa Ciolek Poniatowska, Paola Estrella Contreras, Maria Cynkier, Laura Bivolaru
“Dir-se-ia que, atualmente, o Estado considera cada cidadao um terrorista virtual. (...) Uma cidade cujas praças e ruas estejam controladas por camaras nao é mais um lugar público: é uma prisao.” Giorgio Agamben cited in Ecologia, Joana Bértholo
Omnisciencia: Estratégias de Fractura e Fuga presented artworks that explore aesthetically and conceptually forms of technological surveillance and strategies to escape or fracture those systems.
The exhibition presented artworks by the following artists: Filipe Vilas-Boas, Jennifer Lyn Morone, Paula Albuquerque, Colectivo Tiago Martins, Joao Correia & Sérgio Rebelo.
Alongside the artworks we selected a group of everyday objects that either attempt to disrupt or reinforce surveillance systems.
Public program (8 November 2021) included a round-table discussion with writer Joana Bértholo and the projection of Fordlandia Malaise, a documentary by Susana de Sousa Dias.
Curated & Produced by Ana Carvalho, Joana Pestana and Patrícia Nogueira
Designed by Joana Pestana
Supported and Funded by Universidade da Maia – ISMAI;
Forum da Maia, Portugal, 2 - 8 November 2021
This exhibition was part of IRI Images do Real Imaginado 2021 – Ciclo de Fotografia, Cinema e Multimédia.
The Extended Times is an ever-growing fictional newspaper with real stories about life extension and digital afterlife. As a critical design project, it speculates about the possible consequences of graphical user interfaces that allude to perpetual progress and continuity.
The newspaper has original contributions from authors Elisabeth Smolarz, Fiorenza Gamba, Hayden Anyasi, Jessica Charlesworth, Max Ryan, Miguel Angel Valdívia, Natascha Nanji and an interview with Oron Catts.
The Extended Times was developed during
my MA in Visual Communication, supervised by Adrian Shaughnessy, Royal College of Art, 2016
The «Phygital World» series invited participants to reflect upon, explore and challenge the frontiers between physical and digital spheres.
Funded by Reachout RCA, 2016.
Among the so-called «digital natives», the workshop raised awareness towards the relevance of materiality, the sense of touch and possibilities of disobeying surveillance technology.
Workshop leaders: Christina Worner, Jin Young An and Joana Pestana
Press about the project here.
Identity for Them or Us! A Project on Scientific,
Social and Political Fiction exhibition curated
by Paulo Mendes and featuring more than 100 artists. Galeria Municipal do Porto, Porto, June—August 2017.
The dichotomy explicit in the exhibition title set the framework to explore the fears towards the contemporary materialisations of the “invader”.
Those conceivable formulations where explored visually through the inclusion of diverse iconographic elements dispersed in the poster, ranging from military to cartographic references, introducing a series of outlandish green 3d elements working as unidentified objects.
Photographs by Dinis Santos.
3d design elements by Christina Worner.
