Participating in the category of mediation, Nina Paim will present a curatorial project she made for the exhibition ‘Taking a Line for a Walk’, conceived for the 26th International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno on the subject of assignments in design education. Here, Brazilian-born Paim who lives in St. Gall tells us about her chicken and egg scenario, Pessoa, Plutarch and Pompey.

Which priorities and / or concerns do you currently face in your practice and how do you face them?  In other words – which critical questions keep bouncing back within your work / projects?

I keep bouncing back to the fundamental circular question of the chicken and the egg, or more elegantly put, whether it is language that shapes our reality or vice versa. Or more directly put: how is design practice influenced by the very language used to talk about design? I’m interested in the nuances, accents, and dialects of such a language and the mechanisms through which it gets replicated, adapted, and evolved through time.

Photo: Mie Brinkmann

Making of the exhibition "Point and Line to Gallery": students of Krabbesholm Højskole create wall paintings after a series of historical assignments given by Kandinsky at the Bauhaus. Four Boxes Gallery, Skive, Denmark, February-March 2015.

Photo: Mie Brinkmann

“Doubt, Delight and Change!” – was a claim by Cedric Price (an unconventional and visionary architect best-known for buildings which never saw the light of day – but who was one of the most influential and visionary architects of the late-twentieth century). What is your claim and why?

“To sail is necessary; to live is not necessary” — to quote Fernando Pessoa quoting Plutarch quoting Pompey the Great. I believe that movement and change are fundamental in life. We learn when we move, we move forward when we learn. Cedric Price himself envisioned a mobile school housed in train carriages, which would run on disused tracks linking the English pottery towns of Staffordshire. Not a single “building”, but a network of mobile classrooms and laboratories, a traveling academy. Staying in flux and cruising, from here to there and beyond. Or to quote Woody Allen: ” A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to move forward or it dies.”

Photo: Radim Peško

Impressions of the Escola Aberta, a temporary design school conceived and organized by Nina, which took place in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2012 and sought to ignite a discussion on ways of practicing and teaching design.

Photo: Radim Peško

Photo: Radim Peško

And what we really want to know from you is: What is your most treasured possession?

I treasure my ideas and those who challenge them.