vienna

more money than fashionable boutiques do. They form the base of the retail
pyramid. A design exhibition in Linz 324 in 1980 was also not the focus of interest.
Entitled Design ist unsichtbar, 325 the exhibition presented several international
design positions that usually stood in context to the radical design movement.
However, the title does not refer to this expressive design attitude but to the
everyday, and to the “design” of relations between the designed objects and their
dependence on influences outside the traditional design process oriented thinking.
“Invisible” design is the design of the meaningful act. Alessandro Mendini,
the leader of the radical group Alchemia conceived the part of the exhibition that
showed thematic aspects of design. He created the categories “space design”,
“fashion design”, “banal design”, “illusionary design” and “ritual design”. Ritual
design corresponds to the main title of the show. How can rituals be exhibited?
The Japanese designer and theorist Kasuko Sato was commissioned with the
section on ritual design:
“Within the framework of the topic “Ritual Design” assigned to me, I wanted to
portray a world that was a spatial and temporal void. I wanted to achieve this
by using objects with ritual meaning which were imported from China with Zen
Buddhism since the twelfth century, and which underwent a deep transformation
thereafter according to the spirit of Japanese culture.” 326
Sato built a white pyramid to show the Zen Buddhist objects. The pyramid
was dark inside, and in its centre stood a pedestal with a low table with sacrificed
food on it. On the wall facing the entrance were masks from No theatre. She
presented objects for the Japanese tea ceremony on the other side. The cup used
in the tea ceremony became the paradigm of ritual experience at the beginning
of the 1980s after the writer Cees Nooteboom published his popular novel called
Rituelen in which a Japanese teacup plays an important role. 327 The teacup
evokes images of complex foreign rituals around it. Kakuzo Okakura, ambassador
of Japanese culture, wrote:
“Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt
to overlook the greatness of little things in others. The average Westerner,
in his sleek complacency, will see in the tea-ceremony but another
instance of the thousand and one oddities which constitute the quaintness
and childishness of the East to him.” 328
In the meantime, more and more Europeans have acquired a sense for
324 Linz is the provincial capital of Upper Austria.
325 “Design is invisible”.
326 Sato (1981:634)*.
327 Nooteboom (1995).
328 Okakura (1989:31).
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