Report Wim Crouwel Lezing #9

The annual Wim Crouwel Lecture, organised in and with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, this time focused on ‘activism’. The occasion was that Rob Schröder has passed away (6 July 2024), a prominent, radical and activist graphic designer (and filmmaker, documentary filmmaker and lecturer).

After a welcome from Thomas Castro (curator of graphic design at the Stedelijk) and Rob Huisman (co-chair Wim Crouwel Institute), the floor was given to Lies Ros (1952). Together with Rob Schröder (1950) and Frank Beekers (1952), Ros formed the design collective Wild Plakken (founded in 1974), whose committed political and social stance produced beautiful, bright, collage-like posters that strongly influenced graphic design in the years that followed.

Lies Ros’ lecture, titled ‘Idealism is Self-Interest’, was a plea for the search for freedom in design, the freedom to be able to express and visualise outspoken political messages, and thus also the freedom to choose certain clients and ignore others. Lies recalled her father playing Schubert’s Winterreise, in which, in the last stanza, the ‘Leiermann’ (the organ man) is lonely, alone and ice cold forgotten by his surroundings. For Lies, that forgotten organ man is the symbol of indifference, of injustice, of not wanting to notice. For Lies Ros, it was abundantly clear in the 1970s and 1980s that graphic design cannot be ‘neutral’ and must address injustices. And that the world didn't get any better after that, so that graphic design is still an urgent means of denouncing indifference and injustice. Lies ended on an optimistic note: with John Lennon's lyric ‘Imagine’, in which the positive dreamer calls for imagination.

Lies Ros’ lecture, titled ‘Idealism is Self-Interest’, was a plea for the search for freedom in design, the freedom to be able to express and visualise outspoken political messages, and thus also the freedom to choose certain clients and ignore others. Lies recalled her father playing Schubert’s Winterreise, in which, in the last stanza, the ‘Leiermann’ (the organ man) is lonely, alone and ice cold forgotten by his surroundings. For Lies, that forgotten organ man is the symbol of indifference, of injustice, of not wanting to notice. For Lies Ros, it was abundantly clear in the 1970s and 1980s that graphic design cannot be ‘neutral’ and must address injustices. And that the world didn't get any better after that, so that graphic design is still an urgent means of denouncing indifference and injustice. Lies ended on an optimistic note: with John Lennon's lyric ‘Imagine’, in which the positive dreamer calls for imagination.

Dreaming also returned with the next speaker, Amal Alhaag. She warned her audience beforehand: it was going to be an uncomfortable sit, in which her anger would be addressed first, and then the dreaming. Amal Alhaag (b 1983) is an engaged researcher, curator and lecturer, with a strong focus on Black culture and hidden (or obvious) forms of colonisation and oppression. Among other things, Alhaag is a co-founder of Metro54.

Alhaag's ‘angry’ speech ‘the end of design, as we know it ;-)’ was a mosaic of examples of ‘white suprematism’, in which it became painfully clear how naturally we (e.g. the mostly highly educated, white majority of the Stedelijk Museum audience, and in any case the bulk of the Dutch electorate) comfortably ‘go along’ with the narrative that the Netherlands has an ‘integration problem’; that it is resignedly accepted that the ‘Toeslagenaffaire’ has a deeply racist basis; that our Modernist history, mostly Eurocentric, has largely homogenised our visual language and offers little or no room for emotion or for other forms of representation.

Amal's clear —and dark, in terms of content— examples strung together, with evocative quotes from Édouard Glissant, Gloria Wekker, Kanak Attak, and others. The question and/or thesis of all this: where do you stand, what can you do, design is not a neutral activity. Among other things, Alhaag mentioned designing for the police or other disciplining institutions: what does that mean? What narrative or ideology is thereby supported and propagated?

That became too much for two visitors, who left the room grumbling. Alhaag regarded this resignedly and muttered ‘Some of our dreams are nightmares to others’... When the gentlemen had left the hall, she added: ‘I said, it's getting uncomfortable, then the score of two people dropping out is not bad at all’, to which the audience responded with thunderous applause.

Next came the ‘dreams’. How and with whom can you change the world? Alhaag is particularly interested in collective power, in communities that help each other, in which individual members can be very different but must relate to each other with a common purpose. Again, imagination is a big driving factor. As well as empathy, love and solidarity, and really delving into the other person and wanting to understand each other.

Questions from the audience focused on the ‘how’ and ‘why’. Briefly, some themes.

A Black visitor asked: why should I care about the Palestine war when my own people (in Africa) are being exploited and abused? Alhaag: The problem is that the underlying oppressive systems and enablers are often the same. Even if everyone's struggle is different, there is a need to look deeper into the roots of oppression, exclusion and racism, then there is a lot of recognition and similarity.

Another visitor asked: why are you doing this? Alhaag: I cannot not do it, it's oxygen for me and for a healthy society.

How can you form such a community? Response Alhaag: start at a neighbourhood level, there is plenty to address or change there, and already look there at how to relate to people who have different values and different ways of communicating. That's difficult and exciting enough!

Photo credits: Simon Pillaud