I am talking about the intermediate forms of communication.
The interstages of thought.
I am talking about the intercultures of emotion.
Why shouldn't that be the only world.

INGER CHRISTENSEN: DET, 1969

xan has been working as a designer, creative and art director, researcher, concept developer, curator, visual artist, author, publisher and artist in Milan, Vienna and Berlin since 1998—at first within the structures of design studios, later as a freelancer. Central themes of his work are the negotiation of rules between order and chaos and the fluidification of restrictions.

◕  VITA
xan studied visual communication at the Politecnico in Milan. They are a political activist and founding member of the queer-feminist platform ( ) S-P-A-C-E and the charity program A.C.A.N. (Artist Charity Aid Network). Growing up in a Catholic-conservative, rural and historically conflict-ridden border area in South Tyrol, Italy, xan is interested in processes and politics of transversality, the visualization of power structures and institutionalized control, their evaluation and reference systems, categories and hierarchies, tactics of individual and social representation with a focus on marginalised groups, intersectionality, alternative narratives and (cultural)(social) framing, othering and alienation. Frayed seams and sharp-edged intersections are just as exciting as shifts, glitch, noise, transgressions, infiltrations, recodings, (taboo) breaches, obfuscations, discrepancies and radical new definitions.
xan lives in Berlin and sometimes also elsewhere.

◍  TEACHING
Together with Neo Seefried xan is giving lectures and workshops at universities and (academic)(non academic) institutions on queer feminism and design. They are publishing essays and speculative poetry and writing on a book.

⊙  EXHIBITIONS
xan has shown his work at various exhibitions on every continent except Antarctica.

◔  PUBLICATIONS
Rupa Publishing and Rojo Editions have published thematic monographs (Satellites Mistaken for Stars, We Have No Scar To Show For Happiness, Tomorrow The Future Will Be Different Than Today). Works and articles have been published in various books and magazines: Gestalten, daab Publishers, Laurence King, Index Book, Artpower, Hightone, Sandu Cultural Media, Ginkgo Press, Crescent Hill, Rockport, Rotovision, Monsa Publishing. Articles and interviews have been published in magazines and blogs such as Slanted, Page, Novum, IdN Magazine, Grafik, Territory, XFuns, Zupi, Computer Arts, Typo Magazine, Graphic, Shift, dienacht, +rosebud Magazine, d[x]i Magazine , Dazed Digital.

⊗  AWARDS
xan has received numerous national and international design awards and nominations alone, as a collective and for various studios. Since a couple of years they don’t enter award competitions anymore.

 

My Whole Life Long
—Herbert Zand

My whole life long
I’ve tried
to understand a few things;
calm confidence,
the power of love,
the power of free choice,
and the power of the word
when used.

I know that there is happiness,
and that there is sadness,
and I fold up papers,
and I close boss,
they don't tell me enough.

They call things by name.
I'm now on the track of other things,
that have no name,
between happiness and sadness,
between joy and pain,
all the nameless things
which are as mute as at time’s beginning.