• TM2: Yesterday Tate Modern unveiled plans for its Herzog & de Meuron-designed addition, a ziggurat that Jacques Herzog says can “be interpreted in two ways: as the erosion of a pyramid and, in contrast, as a pyramid in the process of emerging.” The structure will include 10 galleries, six cafes and bars, two shops, and educational spaces–and a whole lot more.
• HIJACK “bombs” in Philly: When Twin Cities dance favorites HIJACK went to the aptly named DanceBoom festival in Philadelphia last month, airport officials dubbed one part of their work incendiary enough to temporarily shut down the airport–a fake bomb used as a prop in their performance, broken down and stashed throughout their luggage. When they explained themselves, over four hours, it probably didn’t help that when asked the name of their company they had to answer, “Hijack.”
• How do you wheatpaste posters on a traditional Rwandan hut? The Design Altruism Project on the challenges of mounting a get-out-the-vote campaign for Rwanda’s first democratic elections in 2001.
• Designing Protest: Five winners of this year’s National Design Awards for communication design declined an invitation to the White House for the awards ceremony because Laura Bush is gala chair. While that might’ve been the end of it, a fascinating comment thread at Design Observer is keeping the debate about politics and design going, with designers like Chip Kidd, Michael Beirut, and Andrew Blauvelt weighing in.
• High, low: ECP guest blogger Maggie Perez interviews Takashi Murakami on art, commerce, and how many Japanese “are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of ‘high art.’”
• Artists in times of war: While Howard Zinn’s book Artists in Times of War definitely seems worth a re-read these days, the Lebanese Association of Plastic Arts puts out a plea for aid. “[G]iven the aggressively interpretive role the news media play in representing and managing the positions and perspectives of dominant agents [in the current conflict], it is imperative for us to provide the realities of alternative personal, intimate, and more nuanced narratives of those living and looking in the midst of a this devastation of a nation’s accomplishments and dreams.”