This event is part of the 2024/2025 MVS Proseminar Series and is free and open to the public. No registration is required.

Amid a deepening crisis of isolation and loneliness, how might art and design function as ways of reconnecting at both individual and communal scales? In this participatory lecture-performance, Prem Krishnamurthy frames how art and design can prototype new formats for togetherness, learning, and collective healing. Sharing a selection of references, strategies, and methods, the talk provides tools for others to adapt and use. The talk’s experimental format itself plays with ways of bringing people together in unexpected ways. Audience participation encouraged 😉.

Krishnamurthy’s multidisciplinary work manifests itself in books, exhibitions, images, performances, publications, systems, talks, texts, and workshops (+ karaoke!). He received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Communications Design in 2015 and KW Institute for Contemporary Art’s “A Year With…” residency fellowship in 2018. He has curated several large-scale exhibitions including FRONT International 2022: Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows. His book-length epistolary essay, On Letters, was published in 2022. In 2024, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Kunsthal Gent, and König Books will publish Past Words, an anthology of his writing and experimental exhibition-making projects from 2009–2024. Having previously founded Project Projects and P!, he is currently a partner in the design consultancy Wkshps. 

Fri, Oct 4 2024, 6:30pm
Zeidler Reading Room

Prem Krishnamurthy: Past Words
Book Launch and Discussion with Brian Sholis

As both creator and curator, Krishnamurthy aims to discover “how art & design can be agents of transformation for individuals, communities and institutions.” His collected writings from 2009 to 2024 are framed by two exhibition-like experiments: A Year with Prem Krishnamurthy at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Endless Exhibition at the Kunsthal Gent. Each section of the book is arranged by a different designer—Ann Richter, David Knowles, Mark Foss or Valentijn Goethals—giving the entire volume a sense of multiplicity. 

Taken together, Past Words looks at how design, curating, exhibition-making and language itself can create new realities. Join us in the Eberhard Zeidler Reading Room in the Daniels Building for a book launch and discussion with Brian Sholis on Friday, October 4, at 6:30 p.m.