Irena Knezevic, Small Film About Architecture, 2012.

Join us for a series of talks and a conversation with graphic designer Jörg Becker, artist Irena Knezevic, and architect Jimenez Lai as we mark the last day of the five-week Breaking Glass seminar.

Jörg Becker: if. iffer. the iffest.

Irena Knezevic: World Without Art

Jimenez Lai: Sensibility vs. Convention in Graphics

Jörg Becker is a German Typographer and(!) non-Expert. He is an Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago. Before graduating with a Master of Design at Post St Joost Academy in Breda (Netherlands), Becker communicated for the German Government and its Ministries, several German Artists (e.g Hans-Jürgen Breuste), Cultural operators (e.g. Kestner Gesellschaft). Becker presented his thoughts about the "do's and do's" of creativity and decidability at the "typo Berlin", Germany; North Carolina State University, Raleigh; Washington University, St Louis; TypeCon, Atlanta; Otis College of Art and Design (visiting Artist), Los Angeles. His writing has been published in Blast Counterblast, published by Mercer Union and WhiteWalls; International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities, Universidad de Granada (Spain).

Irena (Ika) Knezevic works in various visual art formats, music, and architecture. Her current research spans exhibition design, second- and third-base superarchitecture, institutional zombification, and paradoxes within post-socialist transitional states. Knezevic's work has been exhibited and performed Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Harvard University, Cambridge; Jan Van Eyck Academie, Mastricht; Control Room, Los Angeles; Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; 4th Athens Biennale, Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Logan Center Exhibitions, University of Chicago; and AKUD, Berlin. She is currently visiting artist in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.

Jimenez Lai is an Assistant Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and Leader of Bureau Spectacular. He graduated with a Master of Architecture from University of Toronto. Previously, Jimenez Lai has lived and worked in a desert shelter at Taliesin and resided in a shipping container at Atelier Van Lieshout on the piers of Rotterdam. Before founding Bureau Spectacular, Lai worked for MOS, AVL, REX, and OMA/Rem Koolhaas in Toronto, Rotterdam, and New York. In the past years, Lai has built numerous installations as well as being widely exhibited and published around the world. His first manifesto, Citizens of No Place, was published by Princeton Architectural Press with a grant from the Graham Foundation. Draft II of this book has been archived at the New Museum as a part of the show Younger Than Jesus. In 2012, Jimenez Lai has been named a winner to the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects.