Taking the right turn

Serendipity isn’t yet a very familiar concept in the cultural sphere, is it?

It mightn’t be, but what it refers to is very relevant to design and innovation in any sphere of activity, not only that of culture.

How do you go about trying to be innovative? And can serendipity help?

The best way to go about it is to look elsewhere. The beaten track is hardly the place to find something new and original. You can be sure that any innovative discovery takes the explorer through uncharted territory. Take farming, for instance; the biggest breakthroughs came not from developments within the sector itself but when farming met chemistry.

Jullian makes a claim for “deviance”, in the sense of overturning the established order of things, of throwing them off centre, of wiping the slate clean, even, of standard design concepts. What’s needed are less schematically consequential thought patterns, greater mental flexibility capable of breaking out of the familiar theory-practice borders and move about freely.

Whatever the scenario, even the one that seems remotest from our own practices, there’s potential in it for our specific area of activity and we just need to let ourselves be drawn on by it. I’ve always found chance meetings and odd matches to be a source of inspiration for new ideas and approaches.

Has what you’re currently engaged in and in charge of taken much careful fore-planning?

To believe that any action can be planned step by step, I honestly feel is illusory. Perhaps it’s a remainder of our Greek cultural tradition, which is so theory-practice centred. The idea is that you first draw up a plan, then you set yourself a goal (télos), and then you try and change the world to achieve that goal, bend reality so as to have it fit the scheme originally thought up and out in theory (eidos). The Chinese approach is far more suitable to our times and far more interesting. That’s because the Chinese attitude is not to set out to seek and achieve a given result, to get things to turn out in a given way, but to gather in results, indeed to allow things to turn out.

What does allowing things to turn out mean?

It means grasping the potential intrinsic to any situation. There’s even a different approach to waging war in this culture. As far as von Clausewitz was concerned, planning calls for a lot of preliminary drawing-board work. The soldiers are then set out and moved accordingly in the field, a bit like actors with their on-stage cues. Not so a Chinese general, who seeks victory through the opportunities afforded by a belligerent situation without having it strictly depend on his troops performance. It’s important to pay attention to context, to carefully consider the prevailing circumstances and make the best of those most favourable to us. It’s the potential of any situation that needs to be sought and understood.

Doesn’t what you say risk turning into a chaos-theory approach to action?

No, I’m not endorsing an unruly, haphazard, potluck approach. I see it essentially as a question of a never-ending flux. Opportunities and favourable circumstances are constantly being thrown up; any situation is loaded with potential and it’s realisation or limitation is up to individual choice. There’s an old saying in Prague that goes: “When you’re at a crossroads take the plunge and move forward”. So, you see, there’s no endorsement of indecision, here. One has to take stock of the intrinsic potential in things and be led on by them.

Well, it certainly sounds a lot easier than having clear cut goals to achieve.

Not necessarily; the process isn’t always that much easier than trying to bend reality to fit a theory. And it’s not to say that one shouldn’t have goals to strive for. Quite the reverse, actually. Innovative, borderline work is never a solitary effort. Whatever truth there may be in the saying that any discovery is ten percent inspiration and thirty percent perspiration, in the sense of individual effort and tenacity, anything truly original and inventive is today more than ever the outcome of teamwork. There’s no such thing as a solitary inventor; one picks up from where one’s predecessors left off and does the ground work for one’s successors. Any breakthrough is not a point of arrival nor an isolated incident, but the building up on the experience of forerunners.

So, you reckon there’s never any clear-cut parenthood to an innovation, do you?

Innovations are rarely in-house born, so to speak, but are usually the result of experience imported from more or less related sectors and improved on and exploited to one’s own ends. Anthropologists have come across this pattern again and again in their field work: where barriers and borders are broken down or overcome and the pace of exchange quickens and intensifies, so does that of inventions and of the evolutionary process in general, regardless of the society concerned. Vice-versa, where exchange and encounter are hampered, change is very slow and staggered. Until a few decades ago, the native Tasmanians, despite being only one hundred and fifty kilometres off mainland Australia, the remotest continent, had not undergone a change for centuries, because they had no boats and were totally isolated. Medieval Islam, on the hard hand, was strategically placed at the crossroads of the Eurasian continent, and hence in an ideal condition to exploit the inventions of the Chinese and Indian sub-continents and the heritage of Classical Greece, acting as a bridge for all these traditions to cross over to the West.

Are you saying that innovations stem from the possibility of dialogue? But does successfully moving about in the information quagmire require greater listening skills or powers of critical appraisal, do you think?

Open-mindedness towards new ideas is a great catalyst for change. I always bear Richard Normann’s contention in mind, myself, and namely that change occurs thanks to the questioning of dominant ideas.

In any organisation, institutional set-up or rule-governed system, dominant ideas are at once the first obstacle (even if not overtly) to innovation and the subject matter of innovation. Dominant ideas often hamper innovative thinking. In the mid-sixteenth century Japan was in the forefront as far as firearm technology was concerned, and this shortly after such weapons had been introduced to Japan for the first time. But in the following centuries, the powerful samurai class managed to curtail further developments in the name of safeguarding traditional weapons, chiefly the sword. It was only in the mid-nineteenth century, after Perry’s fleet had entered the Bay of Tokyo and fired a few shots, that Japan was aroused out of its centuries-old slumber and came to realise and appreciate the importance of firearms. I’d say that in addition to attentively listening, evaluating and critically appraising potentially innovative stimuli, it’s essential that the context as a whole, or at least the dominant social group within any society, be receptive and open to change.

You’re renowned for having set up one of Italy’s leading cultural research centres in Friuli. You’ve also managed many international projects and you’re currently the director of one of the most important international art exhibitions. Do you think permanent innovation, as you’ve explained it to us here, may be applied to any context and situation?

Well, there’s not only one way to go about being a catalyst for innovation, but many. To paraphrase Pierre Boulez, there are many ways to cross a city from one end to another; what’s important is that a few basic traffic rules be complied with.

It’s important to always look for change, for ways to improve, despite the risks involved and the unavoidable shakiness and lack of certainty this may entail, be it for the individual and the community at large. As Sheep points out, a ship may be safe in port, but ships are not made to be holed up in a safe haven.