MODEN:Mission statement

Mission Statement

Media, Trend and Public Appearance.

A forum for production, exhibition, exchange and dialogue about contemporary practice, trend and lifestyle development. We are looking to see which definitions hide behind the terms "Art" and "Design" and which skills are inherently "artistic". We take forms from everyday life and bend them to become public events. We investigate labor, public service, design practice, conversational skill, public identity and aesthetic prowess. We catalogue lifestyles. We share responsibility between practitioner and viewer. We live by our own design, create our own definitions and enjoy freedom in our occupation. We place a frame around social norms and offer them up for new investigation. We point a finger in a specific direction and request that certain elements be given a closer look. We construct a metaphorical parentheses and we add punctuation. Self Starter. Cottage Industry. Do It Yourself. Be Your Own Boss.

Interpretation of Design in Daily Practice.

We reject the notion that design is exclusively a construct of some sort of exterior system. Design is fundamentally integrated within our normal, daily lives. This department exhibits this in the fundamental habitation and exploration of it's space within the university and projects this belief outwards. Every element of the normal, daily handling between students becomes a design issue, an example, an illustration. The core of this professorship is to have design ethic based in the daily executions of the practitioners. We are less interested in assignments from commercial arenas, or dictates from the design community. We design according to our own lives and our own needs. And we employ these revelations in outward practice. We live by design.

The term "Trend".

We remove this from a primarily commercial, buzzworthy, "next big thing spotting" context and infuse it instead with a more pervasive preoccupation with current event, with lifestyle progressions, and with future-oriented thinking. Our research is to study and create projects that discern between hype and true content. We study popular phenomena and consider their value and usability within projects.

Public Appearance.

We redefine the correlation here from being a type of "decor" to instead become a personal, political and aesthetic stance. This position begins with the representation and association of the department within the university (ie, the students of Media, Trend and Public Appearance IDENTIFY with it, and embody it). Students are trained both in concepts of self-presentation, strategies of display, anthropologic investigation, gender dialogue, and preservation/conservation of materials.