Rosie Strickland

The Future Doesn't Start Here

Graphic Design - Art Direction

Client: Greenpeace

Four women dismantled a VW Golf TDI diesel car outside London's Victoria and Albert Museum as part of an unsanctioned fringe exhibition to target VW.

The car manufacturer, who famously cheated emissions tests to hide the true environmental impact of diesel cars, was sponsoring the V&As new futuristic exhibition, 'The Future Starts Here'. We took this as an opportunity to highlight the future of VW's diesel cars by taking a vehicle to pieces, drawing attention to the most polluting components. This was inspired by the ‘car deconstruction’ works of the artist Dina Rončević. The four female mechanics were in stark contrast to the male-dominated car industry.

I led on the design and concepting for this direct action against VW at the V&A. I designed the concept, posters and other print media for distribution on site.

I also performed as a mechanic on the day, and provided technical and design consultation for the action logistics.

Stolen Histories

the

c.a.l.f.

manifesto

we investigate artefacts held by museums that have been stolen or acquired through dubious means

we demonstrate complexity of culture and the ‘aurameaning’ of artefacts by giving these artefact objects a voice of their own through intervention and documentation

we challenge the ownership of these artefacts

we aim to liberate stolen objects and return them to the people from who they were taken

we expose the predominant limited cultural perspective of contemporary museological practice and begin to dismantle the authority of traditional museological collection and presentation

we presuppose that the museum is a colonial institution yet is deemed responsible for the preservation of multiple cultures aesthetic histories

by telling the truth we interrogate how traditional museological practice might connect to contemporary sociocultural oppression and culturalaesthetic domination

through our activity we seek to question how museums collect artefacts and make records

we invite alternative perspectives into the right to ownership and the nature of property within a contemporary context of complex and diverse cultural realities through intervention investigation and documentation we ask that stolen artefacts be returned to the people from who they were stolen who are in turn allowed the freedom to do what they choose with the object even if that means destroying it.

Tristan Baliuag, Shuping Lee, Eliana Vargas, Rosie Strickland.