icing or cake...wear your couch

Bethany Koby and Selwa Sweidanbkoby@mac.comselwa.sweidan@gmail.com

Fabrica Spaattn: Design DepartmentVia Ferrarezza31020 Catena di Villorba (TV)Italy

+39 (0) 33 4106 9452+39 (0) 32 0313 4518

Icing or Cake...Wear Your Couch

“Icing or Cake” is a critique contextualizing the value of objects within the framework of the ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair). Thisoff-site installation takes place in two storefront windows in Manhattan exploring the stories of objects and the relationships between the design, the designer, the producer, the shopkeeper and the customer. We will physically strip the surface and dissasemble a couch to then create and display objects composed of pieces of a couch. Visitors will take with them an object and an experience.

What

What Where and WhenUptown location:

Downtown location:

dates: May 17 - 19

visiting hours: 12 - 5pm

address: Chashama112 west 44th street,between 6th and 7th Avenues

dates: May 20 - 23

visiting hours: 1 - 7pm

address: The Apartment101 crosby street, between Prince and Spring Streets

WhoConcept Design and Development:Bethany KobySelwa Sweidan

Design and Development Collaboration:Eric FagginSam Baron

Concept and Support:Ann PoochareonDaniel HirschmannLinus Nilsson

Wolff Olins (www.wolff-olins.com)Moooi (www.moooi.com)Chashama (www.chashama.org)The Apartment (www.theapt.com)Fabrica (www.fabrica.it)

F A B R I C A

Who The context of the furniture fair, the scenography of our performance, and the communication related to this piece all work together to provoke the participation of visitors to the ICFF by inviting them to wear a couch. Through the performance of stripping the couch we will create a series of parts, wearable pins made out of the “icing” of the couch. For most visitors, the items at a trade fair are looked at and appreciated, but are not fully experienced.

“Icing or Cake” will take place in two separate storefront windows, one uptown and one downtown. In the uptown window, found furniture (couches) from the streets of New York will be stripped of their surfaces and the aftermath displayed in a systematic testimony to its construction and made into wearable badges. Later, in the downtown window, a designer sofa donated by Moooi is being stripped of its surface and reappropriated as wearable badges. Visitors and passersby will be given this memento.

This installation aims to contextualize and activate the fair by involving two very different parts of New York City. “Icing or Cake” invites the visitors into an initiative, independent of industrial demands. This installation creates a situation to explore the relationships between design, designer, producer, shopkeeper and customer. Visitors will take with them an object as well as an experience.

We met as artists in residence at fabrica, the Benetton communications research center, based in Treviso, Italy. At Fabrica, we have developed and complemented our experience as designers, which initiated separately in California, New York, and Tokyo.

Today, our desire to explore unites us. Our experience in the fields of choreography, graphic, interactive and product design, catalyzes the conceptualization and development of our projects, thus creating a distinct visual language. Social observation is our tool. Analyzing social ritual, we create products and adapt environments, as a vehicle to transport relevant issues.

Urban areas fuel our interest for research. We find motivation in the exploration of communities and their resources. It is this curiosity that transforms itself into a platform for new projects.

Our work is not medium specific. We relish our process as much as the result. We deliberately allow instinctual discoveries in our surroundings and daily routines. After the initial instinct, we follow a disciplined execution process. We develop concepts, produce objects, create moments, document process and instigate happenings through our ideas and projects.

Fabrica, the Benetton research and communication center, is primarily a meeting place between people, artistic fields, languages and culture. Fabrica resides in an old villa, restored by renowned contemporary architect, Tadao Ando.

Is fabrica a school? A research center? A cultural reservoir? Fabrica is an institution which does not allow itself to be rigidly categorized. its’ uniqueness lies in being all of the above. As a center for the production of culture, it has been recognized through internationally awarded films, large scale installations, books, cds, dvds, musical projects, exhibitions, objects and international campaigns for major institutions. Each year a group of young artists invited from all over the world, research and investigate in the fields of photography, design, music, video, writing,interactive and visual communication, to uncover the future.

Icing or Cake Description

Artists Statement/Bethany KobySelwa Sweidan

Fabrica

Process

Process

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