“The history of design residencies in Argentina is not particularly a lengthy one. The minuscule support from both the local authorities and the private sector have often resulted in a state of isolation that has prevented the design industries from establishing a meaningful dialogue with our foreign peers. PAVILION NORDICOs PN1 is then, a priori, a groundbreaking initiative that addresses a fundamental problem for the Argentinian creative sector by committing to nurture and develop a close relationship between our Nation and the Nordic countries. The program not only supports emerging talent from the Nordic region but also a community of traditional as well as experimental practitioners on this side of the Atlantic. This new partnership between Quick Tiny Shows and PAVILION NORDICO occurred right before the most far­reaching event of our gener­ation: the burst of COVID­19 and the quick spread of the global pandemic. All five of the select­ ed designers were fortunate to travel to South America to work on their individual projects before travel restrictions and sanitary measures kicked in, and prior to the emergence of a new normality that is still very much part of our daily existence. Beyond the formal and material implications of each of the objects presented here, it quickly became clear that their most signifi­ cant qualities came from a relational stand­ point; from a multi­directional collaborative approach entangling thoughts, ideas, and material flows emanating from a team of makers, designers, curators, photographers, wood, metal, glass and wicker, all brushing against each other in continuous motion. A renewed interest in a seminal text like Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘Relational Aesthetics’ could not be more timely in a historical moment where a virus has disallowed us to create dynamic social environments. Even though prioritising the whole of human relations and their social context, fusing physical and social space, bringing art, design and life closer, not in its use and con­ sumption but at the moment of conception, has been the running engine of Quick Tiny Shows, during this partnership, we made it the core value. If for Bourriaud the locus of relational aesthetics is situated at the outcome of the artwork, for us the social event comes prior to the unfolding of the exhibition; the communal meals, the collective field trips, research visits, the informal discussions at bars and restaurants, in other words, the ephemera that rarely gets documented. Therefore, to look at Sigve, Nick, Olivia, Frederik and Oliver’s quasi­ functional designed objects strictly from a technical and formal point of view, would be to partially miss the point. These should be viewed as ‘relational objects’ that exceed the physicality of the works and their visual qualities and instead bring about the “what takes place between people'', in this case not the visitors, but the social circumstances lived by the contri­ butors and those that participated directly and indirectly in the materialisation of the objects. It is beyond the rough surfaces of these chairs, tables, lamps and vases, by looking at the fluid, dewey, plastic, and viscous experiences and events that came before the true objects emerge".

Juan García Mosqueda
Buenos Aires, Argentina
FREDERIK NYSTRUP–LARSEN
@ok.international

NICK ROSS
@nckrss

OLIVER SUNDQVIST
@o.sundqvist

OLIVIA TOGNELLI BRONTÉN
@olivialtb

SIGVE KNUTSON
@sigveknutson

PAVILION NORDICO
@pavilionnordico

Fotos: Javier Agustín Rojas
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