REPAIR – CREATIVITY FACING THE BROKEN

We see the world falling apart on many levels: ecologically, economically, socially, and even culturally. The resulting conflicts always pose the question: What proved wrong or obsolete and what shall we replace and what shall we repair?

This exhibition looks at the idea of repair as a concept against wasting consumption that for thousands of years proved healthy for people and their environment. Despite its small size, the show sees design in a context that is larger than the world of products only. Since quite a few years already, design serves as a strategy for problem solving in many different fields, ranging from consumer products, to business planning, self-fulfillment, political strategies or scientific procedures. And repair as well is a concept beyond the world of functional objects. It is a principle we also find in nature as well as in politics, medicine or ethics.

In Boisbuchet’s workshops we are used to recycling scrap materials and our historical buildings and as well as our experimental constructions need permanent maintenance. Repair is thus an economic and ethical consideration for us. We hate printers or telephones that we can barely use a year after we bought them! Hence this exhibition, with its installations, the selection of exhibits and the scenography, has been made by our staff of volunteers and at the same time tells a typical story of this place.