Off Center

Two fascinating local events for designers, artists, and thinkers:

Fresh off its Year of Design (2005), Sweden is sending one of its top design cheerleaders to Minnesota. Ewa Kumlin, director of the Svensk Form (the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design), will speak at Minneapolis’ American Swedish Institute at a lunch talk on May 1. Entitled “Year of Design in Sweden: Trends and Leaders,” her illustrated discussion will address the YOD campaign and Scandinavian design.

The annual PUSH conference, highlighting “people who are working at the center of discovery and guiding the way to what comes next,” comes to the Walker June 11–13. The midwest’s answer to TED, the conference aims to address “reality, its virtual variations, genetics, politics, biological miracles, ethics, emerging forms of social organization, and the questions such change raises for us all.” Speakers include: Julian Dibbel, WIRED contributing editor and author on digital culture; Ze Frank, performance artist and creator of the viral email “How to Dance Properly“; Chinese new-media artist, Feng Mengbo; SmartMobs author Howard Rheingold; keynote speaker Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity; and many others. I’ll be live-blogging the event here at Off-Center.