Vera Sacchetti
For the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial – A School of Schools, conceptual designer and director Alexandre Humbert has directed a series of films that build upon the idea of lifelong learning. Humbert uses the medium of the smartphone – a learning instrument carried at all times by many of us in our pocket – as a conveyor of information that is updated regularly, and which we can follow throughout various weeks, updating our knowledge. Humbert, who was trained as a product designer and transitioned to filmmaking, operates in the realm of storytelling, using his understanding of the design process to explore the close relationship between humans and objects. His work spans the genres of documentary, fiction and experimental films. For A School of Schools, he has developed a whole new format. We talked to Humbert about Lifelong Learning and the process behind the project.
Vera Sacchetti (VS): What is Lifelong Learning?
Alexandre Humbert (AH): Lifelong Learning is a parallel project commissioned for the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial. It doesn't belong to any specific space or time, and explores the processes of learning that are not specifically linked to traditional educational settings, such as schools. Learning is not happening in school environments, but it’s more of a continuous process that you explore through research for a particular project, the moment you deliver it, and the moment you analyse it in retrospect. It was important for me like to play with this notion that learning doesn’t happen physically in a traditional school space, and to talk about education without linking it to a specific time. The medium is quite important for this, and that’s why here I used the smartphone, which is the tool that in 2018 walks around with you all day.
VS: How is the phone an educational tool?
AH: Just learning to use your phone is an educational process, but also everything you do with it, from reading a text message to your emails. But it’s also a tool that allows for discovery: you learn from Instagram and its stories, or by reading the news on your phone. In this framework, I decided to follow the work of three designers participating in A School of Schools – Judith Seng, Mae-ling Lokko and FABB – who all have projects that are evolving during the exhibition. The Lifelong Learning videos follow the projects and how the designers learn from them and with them. They also document the evolution of the outcomes and of the designers themselves. The videos are updated every ten days, and everyone can accompany their growth and evolution. It is very much the process that you also go through in school: once you enter it you have no idea how you will finish it and come out at the other end.
VS: This also allows for an audience outside of Istanbul and who cannot visit the biennial to be able to follow these different learning processes.
AH: Yes. What I am really interested in are the designer’s various learning processes, not so much about what they studied but their fundamental learning experiences, their personal education processes, and how they impact each designer’s process. For example, Judith Seng talks about the first things she remembers – walking into a room as a small child – and now her work revolves around the idea of the performative body. With Mae-ling Lokko, it is similar, as she describes the cooking experience in Ghana, and how her project in the biennial still revolves around theses spaces of commonality. It's quite interesting how, basically, the first thing you've learned maybe will influence the thing that you work on in the future.
VS: However, the Lifelong Learning series is not complete if we don’t discuss the first episode with Rianne Makkink. It works as an introduction to the series and to this methodology. Could you tell us more about it?
AH: When I first approached Rianne Makkink she wanted to do a performance about her learning process, which then in conversation with her I understood was completely intertwined with one of her first and fundamental learning experiences in childhood. In this context I also asked if she had any related footage from her childhood and Rianne sent me a 25-minute-long film made by her father. In the final result, it was really interesting to play with the balance between the contrast of something filmed with a phone today and something filmed in the 1970s with the old-fashioned camera. The texture of the image is completely different and it’s very powerful when you watch it on the phone. Nevertheless, the main difference with this one and the following ones, is that the first one is a complete episode and will only get an update in, maybe, ten years from now.
VS: Your process also allows the participating designers to learn something about themselves. Are you a mix of a journalist, designer, storyteller?
AH: This project is also very much a learning process for me, and it’s the first time I am filming to make a film for your phone. I also don’t know the designers or their projects, and I try to ask questions that, maybe, they are not asking themselves. Really simple questions, like, "What's the first thing you've learned?" "Could you talk about this or that step?” "What do you expect your installation to be?" It is also about the recording. I record because this it is a way to remember: for me, for the designers and for all those who watch the movies. But it’s also a way to learn new things, and consider things in a new light. Again, it’s a process that started and there is no definite or predefined outcome. I have no idea of where we will end.
VS: What have you learned with this process so far?
AH: I actually learn the most from this project during the edit. While you are recording you cannot tell all of the elements, but once you edit you redigest, relisten to all of it, and then you start making connections. It’s quite interesting how much you can learn from someone else that is not physically present at the time; and through editing you can learn something completely different than what you had when you were directly in contact with the same person. The balance between these two dimensions is fascinating to me.
