Gift as Surface
Paskamer x Ned Kaar
About
Developed in residence at Paskamer, Gift as Surface builds upon Ned Kaar’s research into the socio-economics of independent design practice. The essay invites readers to consider the potential of relationships created through gifting: with objects, with materials, with labour, and with others. It asks to rethink what a gift does and what it asks in return. This essay addresses imperfection, the impossibility of pure generosity, and the value in leaving things wrapped through examples taken from a series of Kaar’s experiences with gifting.
Through its chapters, Gift as Surface appeals to the act of gifting as a catalyst within alternative economies inspired by experiences of family, community and informality. Central to this is the idea of a gift that manages to remain a gift, in a state of suspension that asks the receiver to resist the quantification and pricing of objects and labour.
Exploring aesthetic and practical approaches to the text, five prototypes for lamps are presented as part of Rotterdam Design Biennale. Laminated together from layers of aluminium foil, these lights blur the line between surface and structure, stratified mineral constructions that remain flexible and fragile. Foil is formed to create both structure and reflector, stratifying to disperse their light sources.
Ned Kaar is an Irish designer based in Rotterdam. He is a designer who writes, a writer who designs: dedicated to practices of stacking and categorising, disassembly and revealing, in the process of developing a design methodology based upon the functionalities of materials within technological progress, presently inspired by processes of standardisation, blue, footprints, and holidays.
nedkaar.com