Corinne Gisel

Swiss designer, writer, and researcher Corinne Gisel (b. 1987) holds a BA in Graphic Design from Gerrit Rietveld Academie (NL) and is currently finishing an MAE in Cultural Publishing at ZHdK (CH). Her writing has been published by Occasional Papers, Diogenes, Spector Books, Walker Art Center, and Lars Müller Publishers, and has covered topics such as design education, dress culture, the digitalization of the museum, LGBTQ+ button badges, and money as a medium for political opposition. Corinne has taught and lectured at POST Design Festival, Ésad Valence, FHNW Basel, and Krabbesholm Højskole. She co-conceived the book Taking a Line for a Walk, published by Spector Books Leipzig in 2016 and supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. She co-edited the book Protest.The Aesthetics of Resistance, published by Lars Müller Publishers in 2018. In 2018, she co-founded the non-profit design research practice “common-interest.” As part of common-interest, she co-curated the exhibition “Department of Non-Binaries” at the inaugural 2018 Fikra Graphic Design Biennial in Sharjah (UAE), which is currently nominated for a Swiss Design Award.

common-interest (Corinne Gisel & Nina Paim) is a non-profit design research practice, operating at the intersection of knowledge production, exchange, and mediation. We conceive, organize, and produce texts, publications, exhibitions, workshops, events, and more. We use design as both a lens to critically look at the world, a tool to bring people together, and as a means to make socially relevant insights public. To us, design research is an activist tool for issue advocacy, collectivity building, and commoning knowledge. Our projects focus on social justice, untold and marginalized stories, and environmental issues. In all that we do, we strive to nurture and empower cross-cultural exchange and cross-disciplinary collaboration and are committed to a fair, transparent, and inclusive ethos of working.

Stripping Down and Dressing Up – Dress Cultures at Black Mountain College and HfG Ulm

Track 1: Learning Practices
Date: Day 1 – 14:30
Location: Neufert-Mansion, Gelmeroda
Language: English

How does pedagogy influence the way we dress? And how does the way we dress affect our learning processes? In this lecture, we will juxtapose two different schools that have today come to be regarded as landmarks in the history of art and design education: Black Mountain College in North Carolina, US (1933–1957), and Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, DE (1953–1968). By analyzing the two school’s different dress cultures and how they were embodied and became embedded, we hope to shed a light not only onto the many ways in which ideologies of art and design education manifest in the world, but also onto how such ideologies can be disrobed and dismantled.