Plastic Design, Soft Diplomacy: The Role of Plastics in the ‘Normalization’ of Czechoslovakia, 1971–1975

Time: 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.

Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Event Type: Open to the Public

Fee: Free

RSVP Online: No Registration Required

In 1972 the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague launched “Plastic Design,” a study devoted to surveying the accomplishments of the plastics industry in Czechoslovakia. Rather than culminating in an exhibition of national designs, the museum’s study resulted in Design A Plastické Hmoty, a book displaying its subject through its neon plastic cover, white plastic two-ring binding, and numerous clear plastic overlays. Identifying the book’s purpose and intended audience poses a challenge: contemporary publishers describe it as “decidedly iron curtain” owing to editor Milena Lamarova’s discussion of plastics within the context of Czechoslovakia’s economy, yet there are numerous aspects of the museum’s project that elude the category of state propaganda. Published at a time when the museum building was censored and closed for renovation, the book features photographs of Czechoslovak examples alongside designs from such countries as Italy, Denmark, France, and Great Britain. It presents Prague and Bratislava as two dynamic nodes within an international network of designers utilizing new synthetics to revolutionize to the built environment.

Using Design A Plastické Hmoty as a starting point, Filipowska explores the importance of plastic materials and their design within Czechoslovakia’s Fifth Five-Year Plan. Her study surveys the resolution of the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Lamarova’s research for the book, and contemporary trade journals. Focusing on furniture and home accessory design, she considers how plastics shaped the socialist consumer’s interaction with her changing environment and examines the role of publishing as an act of soft diplomacy.

Roksana Filipowska is Doan Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and a PhD candidate in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is writing a dissertation on artists’ experiments with thermoplastics between 1965 and 1975. Roksana runs Listening (to) Cyborgs, a media archaeology workshop on sound technology at UPenn, and has co-curated “Vulnerable Systems,” a screening of video art for the 2015 Biocode: Performing Transgression after New Media conference. She has worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Brown Bag Lectures (BBLs) are a series of weekly informal talks on the history of chemistry or related subjects, including the history and social studies of science, technology, and medicine. Based on original research (sometimes still in progress), these talks are given by local scholars for an audience of CHF staff and fellows and interested members of the public.

For more information, please call 215.873.8289 or e-mail bbl@chemheritage.org.