'Are We Human' Opens to the Public

According to a press release, ARE WE HUMAN "explore[s] the intimate relationship between 'design' and 'human' over a time period that spans from the last 2 seconds to the last 200,000 years." The Biennial features more than 70 projects by over 250 participants (designers and architects, but also artists, theorists, choreographers, filmmakers, historians and archaeologists) from more than 50 countries. The projects are organized in four "clouds": Designing the Body, Designing the Planet, Designing Life, and Designing Time. The curators describe these not as strict divisions, but "like different gates to the same dense forest of interconnected thoughts."

The curatorial manifesto of the biennial:

Humans have always been radically reshaped by the designs they produce and the world of design keeps expanding. We live in a time when everything is designed, from our carefully crafted individual looks and online identities, to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes. The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design that reach to outer space but also reach deep into our bodies and brains.

Design has become the world and it is what makes the human. It is the basis of social life, from the very first artefacts to the exponential expansion of human capability. But design also engineers inequalities and new forms of neglect. More people than ever in history are forcibly displaced by war, lawlessness, poverty, and climate at the same time that the human genome and the weather are being actively redesigned. We can no longer reassure ourselves with the idea of "good design." Design needs to be redesigned.

The exhibition is a kind of reunion of designs that transform the species. A combination of art, science, reflection and speculation leads to a new kind of conversation about design.

This biennial thinks about the fact that the human is unique in its capacity to design but is also continuously redesigning itself in a never ending loop that flings it into the world in unexpected ways. The human is a question mark and design is simply the way of engaging with that question.

The free event is exhibted in five venues in Istanbul: Galata Greek Primary School, Studio-X Istanbul, DEPO-Istanbul, Alt Art Space, and Istanbul Archaeological Museums. ARE WE HUMAN? : The Design of the Species: 2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 years, 200,000 years is on display until 20 November 2016.