Aleksander Macasev Lecture

By Mark Kaufman
AIGA Seattle hosted the Serbian artist/designer Aleksander Macasev for a lecture on his Joseph Goebbels tm project last night. I am not sure about the rest of the audience, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mr. Macasev was an engaging speaker, he actually apologized for the fact that english is not his first language, but he had a better vocabulary than me and was more than up to the task tof articulating a controversial and difficult art/design campaign on contemporary culture. On the face of it the controversy stems from the use of the Nazi propagandist. However the project dealt with the use of the media as propaganda and not with Goebbels or Nazism or anti-semitism. Like I a said a most difficult line to be treading, but an interesting one. The most interesting aspect to me was the  posters that featured the face of Goebbels juxtaposed amongst posters of current political campaigns, Ministry of Sound promotions and David Beckham for Police sunglasses. Definately take the time to research the project and the web site. After many years of sitting through bullshit lectures of designers stroking their own egos, showing off flashy offices, travelogues of their trips to Milan and name dropping it was a refreshing take on design as something other than a vehicle to sell, sell, sell.