Stephan Sagmeister and David Byrne want to talk to you about happiness
Coincidence? The designer and the artist, who once collaborated to create one of the most beautiful portrayals of plastic hypermodernity, now reappear to present, separately, their respective considerations on the subject Happiness.
1.
The Austrian designer Stephan Sagmeister is presenting his exhibition “The Happy Show” in Zürich (until March the 11th at Toni Areal). The exhibit is “the result of his personal and radical worldwide research on happiness”. The “show” consists of a series of installations (more or less interactive, mostly experiential and typographic) that pretend to investigate, document and argue, from his personal point of view, the State of the World’s Happiness, so to say.
2.
Back in 1997, Sagmeister & Walsh, Mr. Sagmeister’s eminent design studio, signed the cover art and packaging of David Byrne’s album “Feelings”. According to our humble opinion, both a musical and design masterpiece where designer and artist convey a consistent message through their respective disciplines, creating a seamless critical observation on the shiny-plastic absurdity of hypermodernity.
David Byrne is also presenting his own exhibit (it is actually a lecture) on the subject of happiness under the title “Reasons to be Cheerful”. He, as Sagmeister, also travelled the world to consider what’s good in our present society and why should we be happy about it. But Byrne, unlike the designer, does it as a sort of PowerPoint presentation based on a series of “hard facts” upon which he tries to demonstrate his point.
Although there is an undeniable coincidence in the fact that two of the most relevant representatives of the 90s White & European modernity are simultaneously interested in the same (ambitious) subject matter, the main difference between the musician’s lecture and the designer’s installations, goes beyond the chosen format.
All in Sagmeister’s consideration is a sort of hedonistic electric and typographic show that sometimes makes you rise your eyebrows. Particularly when he tries to “get deep” on the subject money, and all what he can conclude is that “Money does not bring happiness”. That alone wouldn’t be more than a questionable cliché coming from one of the best paid art directors in the world. Yet, the problem comes when he get into the details, adding in a nice handwritten typo how much a year he gets and why he doesn’t give a s***
I guess he wasn’t “happy” with that, because later he also explains us how much sex does he has and why he also doesn’t give one.
The rest of the pieces in the exhibition varies from curious facts to superficial affirmations, with lots of visual data, percentages and slogans. Now and there, the designer goes back to his typographic exercises, obtaining better results.
On his side, David Byrne’s talk can be seen as an optimistic approach to the social documentary genre. He basically lists and documents what he considers interesting solutions to some of the most unfortunate and common social, urban and economic issues of the world.
As the talking head he is, David Byrne does not pack his lecture as an aesthetic celebration of nothingness, but as an academic and practical master class on how to begin changing particular things, illustrating each case with clear examples and personal experiences. Boring? Maybe. But credible and instructive, indeed.
On the other hand, the lack of useful conclusions and good ideas, took Sagmeister to present his research as a mere exercise of data visualization and design-mediated cynicism, where very disputable opinions on “what really matters in life” are randomly mixed up with de-contextualized hard facts that proof nothing but the relativity of its statistical condition.
