Counter Currents
Hippie Modernism, the brilliant 2015 Walker Art Center exhibition curated by Andrew Blauvelt, presented an opportunity: how to use digital publishing to create a through-line from the show’s makers in the 1960s and ‘70s to those thinkers inspired by and expanding on their thinking today. In short, how to emphasize the contemporary relevance of ideas and figures in this historical exhibition. Highlighting a “variety of radical experiments that challenged societal and professional expectations, overturned traditional hierarchies, explored new media and materials, and formed alternative communities and new ways of living and working together,” the show included a wide range of projects from artists and collectives including Haus-Rucker-Co, the Cockettes, Superstudio, the Diggers, Emory Douglas, and Buckminster Fuller.
The Walker Reader series Counter Currents, created in collaboration with the Walker Design Studio, invited select designers and artists—including artists Dread Scott and Tomás Saraceno and musician Luke Fishbeck (Lucky Dragons) directly address this question, looking at the ways these figures shape the way we think about gender, information design, the media, race, and collective action.
The full series:
