06.02.25, 18:00, Laurent Benner

Laurent Benner is a Swiss graphic designer, record label and music library founder, ‘recovering’ climate activist, Sadhaka and part-time teacher living in London. He studied Communication at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and wrote his thesis at the Royal College of Art about the correlations of image and sound, working with 16mm film as well as video and animation.

Since then, he has specialised in the conception of identities and book designs for galleries, museums, the cultural sector and individual artists. Laurent designed the catalogues for the ‘Most Beautiful Swiss Books’ competition of the years 2004—06 together with his then studio partner Jonathan Hares. He won the Inform prize for Conceptual Design in Leipzig in 2008, the Most Beautiful Swiss Books competition and the Swiss Design Awards multiple times. He co-founded the electronic record label Dreck Records in 2000 and the production music platform ‘Alors’ in 2024 with Radovan Scasascia and Laurence Oliver.

From 2019-22, he was responsible for various outputs of the Hackney branch of the UK climate activist outfit Extinction Rebellion: posters, flyers, banners, the on-boarding process, as well as the co-running of the strategic drumming band ‘Top Shop Samba’.

In this wide-lense talk, sometimes titled ’Is it Better than a Tree?’, sometimes ‘No More Tears’, sometimes ‘“You and Me on a Journey”’, Laurent will focus on his ever-evolving body of reflections about the hyper-object that is the poly-crisis — touching in various degrees on visual, verbal and non-verbal communication, ecological accountability, psychology, technology, physics and chemistry, biodiversity, food systems, land use and the empowerment of the individual vis à vis the role of governance. A possibly intense, but hopefully cathartic and rewarding time spent together thinking out loud about our broader design contexts. Comments and questions throughout the talk are welcome.