Open Call
2023 Jerusalem Design Week: Lies & Falsehoods
The 2023 Jerusalem Design Week will explore the role of design in contemporary culture through an up-to-date look at deceptiveness. Offering a multipronged examination of design’s manipulative tools and the realities they shape, we seek to present works that touch on the significance of illusions, works that conceal and deceive, that conjure parallel realities, as well as works that set out to discover and explore the possibility of truth and authenticity, despite the profusion of lies and falsehoods.
It seems that not only lies, but truth itself also plays tricks on us. Now more than ever, we experience reality through a multitude of translations and adaptations, man-made wonders. We navigate the built environment with the help of preplanned direction and orientation systems. The vast number and variety of brands allow us to switch identities and views at a dizzying speed. We wear filters on social media and on Zoom we boast a background image of faraway destinations. We consume our food in pastoral packaging and cutting-edge technologies – in black boxes. The lie has its own appeal. The illusion is mesmerizing, satisfying, and comforting, it allows us to dream. In the battle between truth and lie, between the beautiful and the ugly – is design by its very essence nothing but trickery and designers – mere illusionist?
As participating witnesses of the information revolution facing the dawn of the digital age, it seems that a significant portion of our life is experienced as an overarching subversion of trust, authenticity, and truth. Phenomena like fake news, deep fake, false images, and disinformation have become prevalent in our everyday life. While a significant share of the world of lie and falsehood takes place online, it is also projected out of the screen. The age of post-truth has taken over both digital and analog reality. Not only has the search for truth been abandoned, it feels that even if we were to find it, we are no longer sure what its worth is, while illusions proves their financial, social, and political effectiveness each day anew.
The designer’s work oscillates between reality and fiction. On the one hand, there is the constant expectation to produce a dazzling spectacle, the continuing longing for beauty, and the impetus to generate desire in order to maximize profits. On the other hand, current design practices have been focusing more and more on establishing transparency, building trust, and taking responsibility. Whichever side they choose, designers will harness their manipulative tools for the task: Simulations and models to convincingly demonstrate messages and concepts, material manipulations and effects to stimulate our senses, enhance reality and impact the natural state of things.
In this game of hide and seek, when do we take pleasure in the comforting beauty of illusions and when do we seek to uncover the truth? Why do we choose to recount fake stories, and why are we still drawn to real stories?
In a future where the “real” is also a type of fantasy, of augmented and virtual reality, of AI that generates images without a human eye or hand, what skills will we claim as exclusively human? What new specialties will we develop and which old skills will we keep? Should designers surrender to the wizardry and wonder that the digital realm summons? Or should they adhere to the material, to the local, and the tangible?
Application timeline
Application deadline: 1.2.23 at 12:00 noon
Applicants that move to the second round will be notified by 20.2.2023
For further info and submission > www.jdw.co.il
About Jerusalem Design Week
Launched in 2011, the Jerusalem Design Week is the largest and most influential public event dedicated to design in Israel, with a variety of events, shows, and international and local exhibitions. JDW is the flagship project of Hansen House, which initiates and hosts extensive and diverse activities to promote design in Jerusalem and Israeli designers in general. Every year, JDW focuses on one theme, exploring unique Jerusalemite and Israeli situations that carry an international relevance. We believe that the singular cultural landscape in Israel makes it a live lab of urgent global issues, and that it is the duty of design to respond and react to these issues. Every year designers and design teams working in a range of disciplines are invited to participate, develop new projects and ideas, and respond to the annual theme in their own way.
The Jerusalem Design Week is an initiative of the Jerusalem and Heritage Ministry and the Jerusalem Development Authority, and is held under the direction of Hansen House and Ran Wolf company.