WHEN DO YOU WRITE, IN YOUR DAILY LIFE? DO YOU CUT OUT A FIXED PERIOD OR DOES WRITING END UP MERGING WITH YOUR DAILY ACTIVITIES?

Davide Longo – I’m a teacher and during the school year I write very little, a couple of novels at the most, something for the radio, I help out if a friend comes with a screenplay that is interesting. I like being a teacher and that’s my job, after all. I keep longer projects for the summer. July and August are for writing.

Rajeev Balasubramanyam – When I have nothing else to do, I start between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m., and continue until 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. Most of my novel-writing is done like this. Short-stories or nonfiction I can work on at any time.

Rachel Trezise – To be disciplined I try to treat writing as a normal job and work 9-5 daily, with Wednesday afternoon and all Friday off for other activities, but it doesn’t really work because there isn’t anything normal about writing. I’m an insomniac so I try and think up my ideas when I can’t sleep and get them down on paper whenever I have the time and stamina. So much of writing is staring into space and drinking loads of coffee and it’s hard to fit that into time constraints.

Marco Mancassola – No, I can’t dedicate a fixed time to writing; maybe because I lack the discipline… I can’t even define precisely what writing is or is not. To me, “writing” means dealing with a story or a novel (here comes the first complication: when do you start dealing with a story? When you write down the first line or when you wake up at night to jot down a sudden idea? Or is it when you spend days upon days reading reference texts?) Having said so, I can still pinpoint the time when my writing flows more freely, in line with my thoughts: it is at night, between 2 and 4 a.m., if I’m not already tired from the day before.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT A STORY HAS COME TO ITS END?

DL – When a new story starts running around in my mind and finds room to grow. Normally a lot of time passes between one story and the next.

RB – I suppose nothing is ever completed, it just depends on whether I like it or not. If there are things I don’t like, or if it feels sloppy, then I’ll go on working. If I’m working with an editor then their comments come into play. Sometimes deadlines preclude further work. If I had the time and desire, I’m sure I could write another draft of my first novel now.

RT – I never do. I try to write by length, so first I decide whether the idea fits into two pages or ten and the rest is planning, like it was at school with essays, you have to make a decision to stop when one element is complete and then move onto the next.

MM – Normally, when I start writing, I already know everything about the story. First, there’s an idea. It could remain scribbled on the back of a notebook or in some forgotten file for years, and sometimes that’s where it ends up staying. Other times, like a seed finally beginning to sprout, the idea springs to life. It keeps on coming back to my mind. It occupies my thoughts, chasing away all other ideas. It grows. It starts setting off a great number of sensations which fit into each other and start to outline the story. During this time, every conversation, every movie I watch, every atmosphere I experience seems to speak to me about that story which grows, slowly, like in a womb. I open a file which is a medley of notes and suggestions. I start filling it up. The amount of material piles up. When I have the feeling that there’s enough of it, that’s the time to start with the real writing.

AND WHAT ABOUT THE LIVES OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE STORY? DO THEY SIMPLY DISAPPEAR AT THE END OF THE STORY OR ARE THEY STILL THERE, MAYBE REAPPEARING AFTER SOME YEARS OR CHANGING INTO THE NEXT CHARACTER?

DL – My characters are almost always the same. Young, old, at war, in a factory: all the people I enjoy writing about are made of the same matter.

RB – Parts of characters seem to recur in other work, though rarely the entire character. This isn’t really possible because the location and context is different, and because the writer is different, in a different place mentally. Characters reappear when you perform the work, or when you read it to yourself, so they never really disappear (unless you stop believing in them).

RT – Most of them die. I wrote a short story recently for a UK magazine and for the first time ever my main character was a male. He was so funny. His voice really makes me laugh so maybe I’ll keep him around for a future novel. But that’s the first time that has happened. Usually they’re quite easily forgotten.

MM – Every character lives in its own story. When the story ends, the character has completed its cycle and there’s no reason for it to continue living; it remains frozen in a still image and I’m happy to leave it as such. If it happens that there is more to say about a theme that has already been explored, well, in that case it is not difficult to defrost the “still image” where I had left the character concerned and instill new life into it.

NOW, LET’S TALK ABOUT THE THEME OF THE ANTOLOGY SCRITTURE GIOVANI: “THINGS CHANGE”. IN SOME NOVELS, THE FLOW OF THE TIME CORRESPONDS TO A PHYSICAL OR MENTAL EVOLUTION OF THE CHARACTERS, TO A CHANGE OF THE STORY. IN OTHER NOVELS, EVOLUTION SEEMS TO BE BLOCKED BY AN INEXORABLE FATE. DO THINGS CHANGE?

DL – There are some things that is best never to change. Things which must pass from one generation to the next, resisting. My type of writing doesn’t invent that much, I think it is more useful for conveying. Other writers are very good at finding that which is new. In a way, they are different jobs.

RB – On one level, everything changes continually, but on another, there’s no such thing as time. I’ve seen this in novels, like The English Patient where past and present are all dealt with in the present tense.

RT – I think writing anything would be difficult unless things changed. Surely half of all writing is about documenting how people change and then how that changes their society. In my story, “Jigsaws”, the main character thinks that nothing is changing, but if that was true she would never have divorced her abusive husband and pursued her childhood friend.

MM – Actually, “Le cose cambiano” (Things change), the thematic title of the anthology, could very well be viewed as a statement, but also the other way around, as a question. In my novel, “Io e Devil” (Me and Devil), I tried to hint at the notion that the onset of an obsession, amorous for example, does not change the general view of one’s life but produces a kind of zoom, an “inward fall” into the mechanisms of the very everyday life. The forward zoom turns the image into dots, until it reveals unexpected black holes. And it is on a black hole, a gateway to darkness, that the story ends.

The spirit of creative battles are lost to the side of the safe and the dull we shouldn’t forget the power of creative ideas to drive the world forward.

Artists and designers in partnership with visionary clients improve and enrich our lives.
Can you teach people to have great ideas? You can create a situation of possibility, opportunity and challenge.

Experimentation and innovation come from these environments where daring dreaming is encouraged and wild ideas can be expressed with confidence. It is the job of Art School to create this environment, coupled with teaching about great innovators of the past.
Buckminster Fuller, a design hero to both art students and military wrote: “You have about ten minutes to act an idea before it receeds back into dreamland”.

Act before those ten minutes elapse – just think it up, then do it!

Triennale di Milano, presentazione libro CAMPARISODA.

L’aperitivo dell’arte veloce Futurista, Corraini Edizioni.

Steven Guarnaccia (illywords#14, Parsons school  N.Y ) tra il designer Matteo Ragni e Alessandro Mendini stimola la battuta di Beppe Finessi :” Matteo, come diciamo a Milano, e’ uno che non se la tira”!
Ma e’ proprio vero che esiste una nuova generazione di architetti e designer che “non se la tirano”?

* in italian means people at hand, not snobby, not arrogant.
The question is:  are this charachteristics present in categories such as designer&architects?

By listening to her dual nature, she achieved a rare ability to invent mental “micro-climates”, opportunities to avoid the here and now and enter the “forever”. However, a listening, thinking mind should not aspire to the noisy confusion of large events but should introduce small ideas. These ideas then generate transformations, tiny but active, nourished by that special form of attention: “making yourself available, like paper”.

There is nothing heroic about it: “see small, hear small and think small”, she writes on those pages typed between 1952 and 1964. Even today, in her book The other rooms (2009), she invites us to listen to shadows: “People need shadows in order to rest. I’d like you to send a bunch of shadows to a friend”. Silent shadows which could be the faces of people loved and lost, but also the shadows created by the sun in a room, which become three-dimensional before our eyes and therefore a welcoming space filled with emptiness created especially for us, a space we can fill with our bodies or thoughts.

Listening to birdsong means understanding what the emptiness of the sky contains: life. Ono’s short film Outro consists of a single image coming in and out of focus. It shows Ono, Sean as a young boy, and John Lennon in a garden, a family appearing and disappearing. It is already in a void, or no longer exists, but the game of disappearing images is guided by the constant presence of the birds.

John Cage, her lifelong friend, also dedicated one of his most famous pieces to birds. The same birds who represent the sound of the skies and also of emptiness, and which represent the soundtrack of silence. We all know what idea Cage had of silence, as he even tried looking for it inside an anechoic chamber and was forced to accept that in the absence of any sound, we hear at the very least the blood flowing through our veins and the beating of the heart. Silence, the music consisting of a rest sign written on a fiveline stave, is nothing more than another anthem to listening, to the noise of the heart, the noise of emptiness, the fullness of meaning we can achieve even when there are no more words. We should mention at this point that Japan, a significant influence on both Yoko Ono and Cage, is a universe in which the kind of silence aimed at listening to the rustling of a falling leaf is much more highly regarded than it is in the West. In this fluctuating world every moment comes and goes, and it is worth remembering this even by just concentrating on the noise that consumes it.

We should remember that ancient practice brought back in vogue by Yoko Ono: the wish tree. It can be an olive tree, a maple or even a simple wooden panel bedecked with handwritten notes declaring our wishes. The artist arrives and gathers them all up, as with the Wish Tree at the 2003 Biennale, makes a small bonfire and delivers them up to the dustbowl of the world. Burning them is not intended to be an offence, but a way of perpetrating our wishes. We, who expressed these desires, have another powerful ritual at our disposal to help us achieve them: not magic, but listening. By writing down what we want, by hanging up that note, we have had to focus on an emotion, a future prospect. Nothing, other than understanding, re-reading and listening to our desire, can help us realise it. Yoko is not a witch, she is an elderly fairy, who now has the wisdom to help us listen to what we feel.

In support of my belief, this is exactly what happens in our company. illycaffè is based on three things: quality, distant markets and the technology to serve the first two. The constant drive towards improvement and our strong inclination towards research and science mean that we have invented no fewer than three of the eight radical inventions that have marked the coffee industry over the past century: the modern version of the espresso, pressurised packs, and the first industrially-produced coffee pods. All “home made”. These have been accompanied (again in-house) by important process innovations, in particular the electronic sorting of defective coffee beans, and also new developments as regards the value chain. Here I am referring to our way of procuring raw materials. Our supply chain integrated upstream means that we are now the only coffee roaster who buys 100% of its green coffee directly from the growers themselves. In this way we can provide the growers with the know-how they need to achieve high quality, which means we can pay them higher-than-market prices, in consideration of the excellent work they do. Even when it comes to communications, our best-known campaigns are a direct result of the creativity of people who work for us. In particular, I am referring to the designer espresso cups in the illy art collection, or the more recent Galleria illy project, presented in New York and Milan.

The culture of “doing things in-house” keeps the business going. Knowing how to express its skills in its own industry allows a company to base its corporate strategy on knowledge. Sharing knowledge encourages the creation of virtuous networks of partners, which nowadays is essential to speed up growth. People working within a company who have this approach find themselves in a stimulating environment with a multi-faceted culture and a business mentality which reaches all levels. An environment that creates trends and also sets them, instead of merely following other people’s ideas.

The concept of production does not seem to describe your work very well. Can you think of a word to replace it?
I think the concept of “humanising production” is the principle of our work. Over time, Humberto and myself have given the Italian firms we work with a concept of “hand made” that rises above the banal level, that gives the product a more human feel, more personality. We try to create a dialogue with our means of production, to try and reconcile our ideas with what industry demands.

Is the fact of being Brazilian, children of a country built on a mosaic of cultures and experiences, and living in a society with huge inequalities something that has influenced your work?
We are both lucky and unlucky at the same time. Having grown up and continuing to live in Brazil has given us an insight into many social and economic issues, but we have also encountered a vast wealth of natural resources, which provide real inspiration for our creativity. It is precisely this flexibility in communicating which has allowed us to transport our designs to Italy while keeping our own identity intact.

How do your designs develop? What sources of inspiration have allowed you to reinterpret everyday objects under a new guise?
Most of our inspiration comes from the streets – our products are like portraits of the city of São Paulo which we have a constant dialogue with. A city with twenty million inhabitants, with its traffic and chaotic architecture, which we have managed to portray on the most traditional level, despite everything. We have described the city effectively by using humble materials in our designs. What look to be ordinary, unremarkable materials are presented in a new light, through
technological intervention, but they still maintain their identity, their tradition and their history.

How does the concept of imperfection, which is a key element of “hand made” products, interact with your work?
Imperfections in our work are certainly a value, because they make each piece unique. They give the object a personality during the assembly stage, which avoids the standardised feel of serial production.

Does the recovery of this manual dimension give you a professional and personal satisfaction that cannot be found in standardised production?
Mechanisation damages people. Nowadays we see assembly lines which are increasingly being automated, but we think of an assembly line as a team effort, almost a social process that can create a community and cultivate new ideas.

Interview by Marco Minuz

It’s really not all that surprising that so many new words are being thrown up every day. “The times they are a-changin’”, as the song goes, and in a really big way, be it in environmental, social, economic, or cultural terms. Perhaps all this name-spinning simply reflects the need we have to put new words to new realities so as to better come to grips with a changing world. Such is our urge to understand what’s going on about us that we sometimes rush ahead, coining a new word even before what it is meant to designate exists at all. Is this also the case for “innovage”? Does it refer to something that actually exists, or is it simply a fancy catchword? Does the word refer to a new economic reality, or merely to a vision of how things might be? Does it really help us to grasp the way the world is going?

It’s no mean question: naming an innovation profiles and focuses it, helping to bring it into the cultural mainstream. In what, for lack of a better definition of the postindustrial age we live in, is called “knowledge economy”, wealth is generated by ideas. A product’s value is determined by the life-style, information and meaning potential it incorporates. All that, plus memory. And of course, equally important for the product’s success is that all these contents be appreciated by consumers so that they may in turn be incorporated by them. The dynamics of any idea in fact depend on the relationship the individual or individuals who express it have with other individuals and how it links up with the ideas of these other individuals, who decree its success when they feel the idea akin or comparable to their own.
That’s why we may speak of an aesthetic and highly valuable relationship between objects that appear to reach out for the future and those that are loaded with a sense of the past, with the accumulated experiences of groups of individuals who identify with them.
But there’s more to it than that.

At least there is for anyone seriously committed to innovation. Vintage can undoubtedly be trendy. That is, it can be a sprinkling of something quaint and fashionable that makes for shortterm and short-lived added-value. If vintage were simply a comingback-into-fashion of a fossilised piece of history in the form, shape and style of objects of yesteryear, whatever may be deemed innovative about them upon their reappearance would last the short time span of a flimsy and fleeting fad and then fade away.
No, ideas cannot live and thrive on fashion alone. For something novel to be truly innovative it has to have far-reaching and durable cultural significance. Born as it is of the marriage of “vintage” and “innovation”, “innovage” may seem a bit of a faddish catchword. But it also conveys a deeper meaning in line with the times we are living in, namely the age of innovation. When thus considered, it suggests the sweeping structural changes we are undergoing in all fields, and at the same time how the past can help us cope with them. After all, the past and the future must at some point meet, and this could be a good reason for this neologism’s success.

Why? Because when a number of individuals are sold on a novelty and make it their own, thus decreeing its success, there are many interrelated factors at work; it’s not only a question of the message the object conveys as such, but also the source of the message; its credibility; its history; the sense of the future it embodies. If a firm puts out something new and original on the market, it must be careful to do so in an intelligible, credible and easily recognisable manner.

That’s essentially what a brand’s goodwill and hence value boils down to.

What’s expected of a firm when it launches a new idea is that it be convincing. A firm that proves to be thus reliable and trustworthy, improves its worth. Such credibility is born of a legacy of innovative ideas that have proven their worth because genuinely original, dependable, and steeped in authentic tradition. Whatever monetary value may be attached to such qualities and written up in the books, it’s but a pale reflection of their full and real value. There are indeed commodities whose value largely depends on these factors. Economists
in fact refer to them as “experiential commodities”, in so far as they’re esteemed for what they’re really worth only after consumption. If they’re consumed at all, it’s not because of any assigned value, but on the basis of past experience of the brand that has proven capable of fully delivering what it promises.

At the same time, a brand and the firm it represents to a large extent draw their credibility from the historical, geographical and cultural context out of which they have grown. The ecosystem of ideas that go to make up this context is a rich milieu and the firm’s historical background. Like any ecosystem, though, it is liable to pollution by stale and staid ideas and thoughts.
That’s why in an age where knowledge is a source of wealth, a firm should have as much concern for the quality of the cultural milieu in which it operates as for that of its products.

Any innovation is therefore as complex as its context makes it, which depends on a number of inseparably interwoven factors, including in what terms it is presented by its proponents; the relevance it has for others; the capacity its users have to make the most of it. Far from being a mere technological phenomenon, an innovation is more than ever a matter of culture, so that the narrative which surrounds it can be said to be no less important than its material contents, if indeed not more. A commodity that in addition to being new has a story to tell, the story of those who promote it and of where it comes from, and tells it in a sincere and comprehensible manner, stands a good chance of making the quantum leap to becoming a significant innovation and leaving its mark on society. Otherwise, it’s little more than noise piled up on more noise, of novelties whose scope stretches little beyond that of being passing fads.

Innovage then is a vision that makes for a synthesis. It expresses the desire to hold together the urgent need for renewal and the sense of such renewal. It’s the same process at work whenever there’s an innovative step forward, such as when the Bialetti Moka or Vespa were invented, two objects which have today risen to vintage status, acquiring a cultish appeal. As such, it’s a word that fits anything substantially durable yet formally changeable. It refers to that special moment in history when something fated to becoming an evergreen classic is born anew.

Do you believe that the message conveyed by contemporary art influences the conscience of a multitude of people or is it intended for a small cultural elite instead?
Art in all historical periods had its public that was often reduced to a cultural elite. Only after passing through a historical approval it becomes closer to the wide public, like today impressionism is. At the time of its creation it also was seen and appreciated only by a small circle. It is a normal process that contemporary art is going through as well. I do not think that art should flatter or adapt to the tastes of the large public. For that we have entertainment, TV, design etc. I do not see art as something that should entertain and be largely accepted straight away like a pop star.

Your research underlines the need for a new ethical and political awareness. Could you please elaborate on this statement?
I position myself more as a witness then as a preacher. There are fields of human activity for everything so if one wants to be politically or socially active, one can do that without misusing art for it. I find that a social engagement as such cannot be enough to be considered as art.

Belonging to a community bound to a specific territory and, at same time, living in a globalized and “homogenized” society. How can these two contradictions coexist?
I do not think that I, or any of us, lives in a globalized or homogenized society. If you are talking about the Coca-Cola, McDonalds etc. society that is only a part of the society, the part of  economic goods. And that of only a part of the world. Otherwise I see many differences in between France and Italy for example. Even more so in between Europe and the States. I do not know what would be this homogenized society? The world is at a point of being the least homogenised than it has probably ever been.

Some of your artworks highlight the role played by women. To what extent did your “woman’s point of view” influence your artworks?
It influenced my work to the extent that I am, as a person a woman and therefore have a female point of view. The male point of view is what we are used to, what we see in majority. The female point of view was so long in the shadow that we almost forgot that it exists and that it is somewhat different from the male.

What future is there for literature in the digital age?
Fated to a few. But it will always retain the capacity to provide a sense of certainty. Everything finds a place and meaning between the covers of a book. Narrative helps to confer meaning to a world often seemingly devoid of it. When a new system hits the scene  there’s often a lot of talk of how it will completely take over and push out everything before it. It’s not true; literature will continue to exert its remedial function.

Does modern-day literature propose models of living?
It’s important to distinguish between block-busters that are meant to entertain in a care-free manner, such as romances and thrillers, for instance, from narratives in which the writer has worked in the realm of the unspeakable. They’re often terrible yet appealing stories that delve deep into their subject matter. Like “La cognizione del dolore” (”Knowledge of Pain”) by Carlo Emilio Gadda, or “Mémoires intimes” (”Personal Memories”) by George Simenon. As tragic as they may be they nevertheless show us that anguish may be mastered. Such writers have the courage to say what others are afraid to even mumble.

How would you describe “the writer as an artist”?
There’s a paradigm by an American critic, E. Wilson, that says it the way I like it. In his book “The Wound and the Weapon”, he quotes the story of “Philottete” by Sophocles as a metaphor. Philottete had been given a bow that would never miss a target by his father. He was unfortunately, though, afflicted by a wound in his foot. It was a foul and festering wound that just couldn’t be healed. It gave off such a nauseating stench that his companions had to abandon him on the Island of Lemno. A prophecy, though, reveals to the Achei that there’s no chance of them winning the war against Troy without Philottete’s infallible bow. Of course, they all beg him to return, and he gives in. Likewise, the artist, the writer has a wound that cannot be healed, but equally a bow that shoots arrows always on target. The wound is what the neglected writer suffers in childhood and youth and then strives to soothe through writing.

Does modern-day fiction satisfy our everyday need to find meaning in our surroundings, to give meaning to our actions?
Just think of the success of the detective story. In Italy alone there are over two-hundred writers of the genre. A crime upsets the order of things. But then the culprit is discovered and just punishment is meted which sets everything alright again. Of course, that’s not always how it turns out in the real world. Knowing there’s a parallel universe in which everything is orderly and has an explanation is appeasing.

What gets about more: ideas or people?
Things no longer get made in our society, but are merely assembled or represented. Think, for instance, of mining. Mining as an activity for extracting metal or other resources is obsolete. And yet some mines are still open open to visitors, that is, to educational tours by schools, and the like. What digging there may be is a show, and whatever may be taken out is sold to the visitor to take home as a souvenir. Old disused factories are heading in the same direction. I’m thinking of the Fiat works at Mirafiori in Turin. It was the largest factory ever built in the world. One day former Fiat workers will probably be acting the part of Fiat workers to show, for instance, how a Panda car was once manufactured. It’s all chiefly show biz nowadays. Things are no longer done in and for themselves but as a spectacle.

Legions of books get published every year. How many are really worth reading?
Every book has its reader; it’s only that they’ve got to meet each other. There are some books one reads when one is twenty and reckons they’re phenomenal, and then again when one is older and they’re not so great after all. And vice versa. There are some books, in fact, one reads in youth that are unappealing, but read again after many years they seem absolute masterpieces. It’s all very much a game of chance.

Have you any reading suggestions for a book which has a model to offer, something against which to measure ourselves?
Reading is a highly idiosyncratic affair. Books that to me represent a model of life may be quite meaningless to others. My own penchant is for authors with a strong social commitment. I’m a real fan of Beppe Fenoglio; Leonardo Sciascia, Primo Levi, Italo Calvino are also among my favourites. Carlo Lucarelli is one of the younger writers I find very interesting with a vigorous style who attempts to come to grips with modern-day Italian society.

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.

For me, the expression of emotion is never calculated.
I’ll wager that emotion is always there if the work is motivated by pleasure and desire. Since I often have too many ideas or desires, I usually start each project with endless lists, which I then cut into little strips and arrange in order of preference to make choosing easier. I usually adopt a process of elimination, automatically rejecting the less appealing ideas, and also the ones that seem to be less well-suited to the material requirements: timeframe, budget and so on. Sometimes, I have a strong desire for a certain idea that stands out from all the others and this means the elimination process is unnecessary.
My lists include several categories: ideas, but also material details about the project, and finally “models”, the names of artists I admire. Thinking of them encourages me to start work.
That’s why I also do a lot of documenting. From my library, I choose books that inspire me, I look at them (many at a time), without dwelling on them, but “thinking in parallel”, in a state of passive alertness similar to what you might feel when listening to music. I might even spend long hours in bookshops doing the same thing.
When it comes to work, I can’t stand doing the same thing twice.
My lists, which I keep, contain lots of ideas that haven’t yet seen the light of day. I hope I live a long time, so I can make many of them reality.
Sometimes this disheartens me, because each new project generates new lists, which means new ideas. Maybe I’ll sell them to a young artist one day, like a businessman might sell his shop, or a notary his mandate.
There is a virtue to sifting through the little strips I form from my lists which is similar to the experience described by Matisse when he said you need to “exhaust the painting”.
In practice, after noting, cutting, sticking together, I often find that I’m starting out on a long journey, where intuition is strong from the outset, towards ideas that gradually become more complex, only to return to my initial vision, but this time it has been enhanced by all the side-tracking (I think of this wonderful quote from Picasso: “It takes a long time to become young”).  Also, it’s not uncommon for ideas that might seem incompatible at first glance, to merge together. The ostensibly very simple finished work has been enhanced by all the meanings gathered along the way.
This preparatory stage, when note-making is more important than drawing, has the same effect on me as a map has on a traveller. I define, delineate, mark boundaries, start getting to know my terrain, and this reassures me and tells me that it would be easier for me to get lost with rather than without a map. Indeed, even though this research phase might last a long time, I never know where I’m going when I start out. I never have the sense of the precise direction of what I am undertaking, the direction always unfolds unexpectedly, depending on how I manipulate the shapes, the materials. I never illustrate predetermined concepts. The concept and the direction always emerge from the action. When I put my notes aside and move on to the materials, they themselves dictate their own logic and a direction I hadn’t thought of before. In this way, my notes are similar to Le Corbusier’s Modulor, an effective tool for designing façades. But if intuition invites you to depart from the rules, you need to follow your intuition and not the Modulor.
In another context Churchill said (I love quotations, I think you might have gathered that. They give me the same comfort as the models on my lists). “A plan is nothing, the planning is everything”. The use of chance, which I often resort to, helps to distance me even further. However precise the project may be on paper, even when I draft detailed projects and plastic models (I always construct plastic models on a scale of 1:20 when preparing my exhibitions), the final result is always a surprise. This surprise is even greater and further removed from the project when I create “participatory” works to which the public’s contribution adds an unpredictable dimension.
In short, when it comes to art, it is not the initial intention that matters.
It’s the same thing in life, wouldn’t you say? You can’t understand your own life before you’ve lived it. I called a recent exhibition “Deinde
philosophari” (you need to live first and philosophise later): it was a large game of construction made up of small quadrangular shapes which the visitors could use to build houses, cities, streets, bridges or anything else.
My favourite quote is from Paul Klee: “what I do teaches me what I am looking for”.

Do you think design, that is the ideation, planning and development of objects aimed at satisfying our everyday requirements, is an activity that helps to better comprehend the relationship between rationality and creativity?

Not really, because both terms, be it “industry” or “creativity”, are somewhat fuzzy; I’ve never really managed to grasp their meaning because they keep on slipping one into the other. Clearly a rationalist can be creative and someone creative can be rational. A surgeon, for instance, can be highly creative and at the same time a rational, because healing and caring go very much hand in hand.

So, do you think no clear-cut distinction can be made between mind and emotions to try and better understand in what way they may be related?

Mind simply can’t exist without there being any emotion, be it love or hate. I honestly believe that emotions play an essential role in determining overall mental make-up. Einstein, for instance, used to get excited by his own ideas; I reckon that’s why he wasn’t able to sleep at night.

I think it would be better to speak of “curiosity”; it’s really thanks to our sense of curiosity that certain things occur that wouldn’t otherwise happen. Not that the concept is all that clear to me though. After all, being curious is so much tied in with life itself. They’re questions that can’t really lead to much of an answer.

What gave you the courage to make certain decisions, such as that of collaborating free-lance with olivetti? Was it because of your curiosity?

Roberto Olivetti was a dear friend and when he asked me to work for his company I was well aware that this would have meant a very good salary and hence long-term security. But I told him straight out that I wasn’t interested in having a high executive appointment in the company. The fact is I wanted to be free to move around, to let myself be guided by my curiosity. In a way I suppose I didn’t want to get caught up in the workings of industry as such. He sympathized with me and we agreed that I would continue working from my studio, choosing my collaborators and having Olivetti foot the bill. Yes, I wanted to steer clear of any constrictive system that wouldn’t have allowed me to cultivate my curiosity.

Do you think the relationship between reason and emotions changes over the years and as one gains experience? has it changed, for instance, in the course of your own lifetime?

I really don’t know what to say; twenty years ago I would have tried to answer such questions, but now I know that clear-cut answers on such matters are not tenable and even less viable. Such issues simply eschew definition. Everyone seeks to understand what creativity is exactly, to come to terms with feelings and emotions. After all, they constitute the most secretive part of life.. Indeed they are life itself. You are not creative simply because you choose to be. Even a child who wakes up one morning and deliberately breaks a glass might be considered as having performed a creative act. Defining creativity, saying where it begins and ends, is quite impossible.

So, what you’re saying is that we’re dealing with something that’s essentially indivisible and undecipherable and that we simply break it up conventionally into so many parts for the sake of making it more intelligible, is that it?

Life’s fleeting and slippery in all its parts and that is indeed what defines life. There’s really no way of getting to the bottom of why things happen, they just happen.

During another interview five years ago I remember you telling me that today’s youth have an especially strong and unflagging curiosity, but in the form of an almost carnal craving, an irrational urge to always seek out new experiences. Would you still endorse such a statement or have there been changes in the latest generation on this score?

To be honest I’m not all that familiar with younger generations. What I can say though is that my young assistants who help me in my work don’t exhibit any cultural or intellectual curiosity. I’ve never really managed to talk with them to understand what they want.

In your experience, do you think the senses have a role to play in enhancing sensibility?

From the start I’ve always believed that senses come before cognition in coming to terms with reality. Just think of children: they’re always touching, licking, smelling at an age when we know nothing but we strive to understand something about the world by coming into direct contact with it.

Even if you understand that trying to describe the sense-sensibility relationship is a futile effort, is there anything else the combination of the two concepts in the adverb “senti/mentally” suggests to you?

I think the role ambition plays needs to be considered. Being ambitious means having a fairly clear idea of oneself, of one’s future, of one’s past, of what one wants and is striving for. Americans refer to this aspect in fairly strong and aggressive terms. To them it’s very much an all-or-nothing affair, a question of success or failure. In the American view, the individual either makes it to the top or is considered a drop out. I never heard my father, who was an excellent architect, talk of success.

Whenever he had a commission he would come home and happily tell us about his new job.. To be over-concerned with self-achievement means triggering psychological needs clamouring for satisfaction that in turn prompt a ferociously competitive behaviour towards other individuals, and indeed a good deal of aggressiveness towards the world at large, so that one ends up tending to use others and natural resources for self-gratification.

Life to me is full of surprises. For instance, there’s an exhibition currently running in London dedicated to my work where everyone’s praising me.

I’m of course very happy about all this, but at the same time this event conveys an image of me that I never even remotely suspected existed, because I’ve never sought any form of personal success. Quite honestly I’m practically unaware of what I’ve achieved and presumably continue to achieve. I’ve always been very curious, travelled and read a lot, and I’ve been extremely lucky in meeting and talking with very intense people such as Hemingway and Ginsberg.

I think what’s important to bear in mind, in this dialogue between sense and sensibility, is the need for mutual respect,  the need to know how to listen…

I think so, too. For instance, I went to India because I’d vaguely heard talk of these Indian temples and because I’d read a book written by an Indian dealing with abandoned temples and gods amidst forests. I wanted to learn and understand more about them, precisely because I’m essentially curious and I want to go out there and bring back home with me the fruits of my curiosity. That’s why I take pictures, to bring back home with me what I go out to see.

One of my assistants at the Olivetti studio once asked my permission to take a break as she wanted to go and visit Turkey, and I naturally said yes. When she returned a fortnight later I asked her what she thought of the place. She said she’d really enjoyed Turkey because she’d been to hotels with fabulous swimming pools. When she’d finished talking I showed her the door and asked her to leave. Someone who goes to Turkey and comes back having noticed nothing other than how fabulous the hotels were is not the kind of person who can work with me. Actually, I subsequently found out that this young collaborator was truly fired by curiosity, so you see how hard it is to judge.

You see, power-mongers are generally ignorant individuals because they’ve been too busy doing other things than simply stopping to look, listen and think.

Our society seems to shun any overt expression of grief, such as weeping. And yet the urge to let ourselves go and display our sorrow and suffering may at times be emblematic of our inner conflicts involving the reason-feelings dichotomy…

I often find myself weeping, gripped by a sense of compassion; when I hear the first notes of some musical score by Mozart or Bach this feeling wells up inside me, a sort of sense of pity for the wretched lot of these men. It’s as if their works and music had survived to remind us of their inspired inquisitiveness and loneliness and despair.

Why haven’t you ever considered teaching, in the sense of “officially” conveying, so to speak, this personal point of view of yours?

Because I don’t have anything to teach. Anyone who’s genuinely curious doesn’t have anything to teach but only a lot to learn. No, I’ve never felt the urge to teach. The fact is I don’t believe anyone can learn much unless driven by a personal urge to find out more about something or in the sort of way that was common in Renaissance workshops. The young apprentice, usually a child, wasn’t told how to make the colour blue but was simply given several pieces of lapis-lazuli to pound and grind down to a fine powder for a couple of years or so. Time, friendship or personal animosity were then the main ingredients that went into teaching and learning. The process was somewhat arcane in that sort of context.

What’s more, I find it difficult to believe that ideas are word-transmissible, given the ambiguity of the medium. Defining creativity, that is the sensibility-side of human nature, is no easy task and teaching it is even harder, because there’s no explanation that can truly hold.

]]> http://www.illywords.com/archive-magazine/21-senti-mentally/a-lot-to-learn/feed/ 0 http://www.illywords.com/archive-magazine/21-senti-mentally/chief-scout/ http://www.illywords.com/archive-magazine/21-senti-mentally/chief-scout/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:04:26 +0000 admin http://illywords.h-art.it/?page_id=745 illy will be present at the international art exhibition of the Venice Biennale for the fourth time.

illy will be present at the international art exhibition of the Venice Biennale for the fourth time.

THINK WITH YOUR SENSES, FEEL WITH YOUR MIND. ART IN THE PRESENT.

Is the title of the 52nd International Art Exhibition curated by Robert Storr and organised by the Venice Biennale chaired by Davide Croff. Installed at the Arsenale and Giardini, it features the work of about a hundred international artists. “This exhibition looks to the future, not the past”, is how Storr defines the broad scope that places all the guest artists and their works on the same level. Each work is there to speak for itself and for the whole display, the similarities are designed to highlight the diversity of emotions, materials and subject matter featured in works of different styles, related to the present day.

77 countries and a large number of spinoff events will be presenting their works in the city centre, the Giardini and the Arsenale, where the new Italian Pavilion curated by Ida Gianelli will be inaugurated. At the Arsenale there will be a Turkish Pavilion and Check List of the Sindika Dokolo African Collection of Contemporary Art curated by Fernando Alvim and Simon Njami. At the Giardini, the Venetian Pavilion presents a tribute to Emilio Vedova. The Venice Biennale is offering an invitation to the general public, together with Art 38 Basel, documenta 12 and skulptur projekte münster 07, with the home page www.grandtour2007.com, and the catalogue for the 52nd exhibition is published by Marsilio.

We had a coffee and an interesting chat with chairman Davide Croff, on the subject of sentimental-mente…

You are a manager: a graduate in Business Studies and Economics, Director of financial Affairs at the fiat Group, CEo of the Banca Nazionale del lavoro and now Chairman of the Biennale since 2004: these all seem to be roles in which emotion plays no part. Is that true?

I’m afraid I have to disagree: every job, even in the business world, contains a high emotional charge if it is done with passion, and out of passion.  I’ll give you a personal example: my 10 years at FIAT, apart from the rich and varied professional experience, were characterised by an incredible passion for the “car product”. Unconsciously, the car was the real reason why I started at the company, and it bolstered my enthusiasm and enjoyment in the years that followed… Another piece of my life: BNL, 20,000 employees, a professional bank which is deeply rooted in the history of Italy, open to the world, and all the staff have a very strong sense of belonging. 14 years after I stopped working there, I think that all my colleagues will remember the misty eyes of their managing director during the last meeting.

But let’s move on to what I’m doing now: at the Venice Biennale, emotion is the real core business.

We offer pure emotion: with a modern art installation in the gardens, a large architectural project that might soon go down in history, a world film première at the Lido, a theatrical performance in a local field, modern dance, a concert, and why not, the photographs of our past and the great names of our history.

As you can see, emotion is a common theme that runs throughout the whole of a manager’s career, even though it might take different forms.

The result of an institution such as the Biennale comes from the work of a strong, enthusiastic team. how, and with what means, can you motivate the team?

We often think that the main motivational tools available to a manager are salaries, bonuses and stock options. They are certainly important. But the things that allow you to build a team are credibility, your powers of persuasion, enthusiasm and most of all, having clear ideas about how to direct the team’s work.  The salary at the Biennale isn’t that high, there are no real bonuses to speak of, and there are no stock options, so people with responsibility have an even more important role to play in terms of providing motivation.

A team is not just the sum total of individual and professional abilities. It becomes a team when it manages to express something that goes beyond individual contributions. Everyone has his own qualities and his own story, which is why relations should always be calibrated to suit individual personalities. The “chief scout” has to be able to lead the team as a whole, to communicate with and handle each man and woman on an individual level.

I’ll give you an example of the human machine that is the real strength of the Venice Biennale: the 24 hours leading up to the great event, when a world made up of a thousand people unites and pulls together in an incredible way.

If you walk past the gardens or the Lido a day before opening, you’d probably think those doors were never going to open…

But this is where everyone’s generosity, ingenuity and enthusiasm come in. People on all levels give of their best, in the firm belief that the success of the exhibition, event or festival represents the success of all those involved. Everyone’s needed, even those who make only the smallest contribution.

The strength of the team at the Biennale (I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them), is precisely that: they have a solid vision, they know how to accept and handle a challenge, and they keep their nerve. We will keep going as we always have done, on a never-ending quest for new ideas. During an architecture exhibition, we work on the next art show, while putting together ideas and links to the dmt festival or the film festival. To get the motor running and engage the gears, you need intellectual ability, certainly, but also emotion. Always.

“When I saw myself, I wasn’t there”, hissed the poets (funambulists) of the art, our art, when age-old conventional forms were suddenly torn asunder by concepts. That was indeed the time when art practices were centred on the conceptual (by way of example see a square metre of felt under the entry “Vincenzo Agnetti” in the “Enciclopedia del Progetto del Novecento” [“Encyclopaedia of Twentieth Century Design”] and then go to the first three “superstar” entries in alphabetical order under the letter “M”, straight after “Libertà” [“Freedom”] ).

Alessandro Mendini, ever erudite, sensitive and sensible, has been churning out ideas forforty years now, ideas that seem to be always vying for elbowroom in an otherwise narrowminded environment; whatever he tries his hand at, he always manages to come up with something that’s simultaneously something else as well. Here he is, the inventive candy-man, with a box of Peyrano chocolate sweets. Note the handle on the lid: it’s ever so reminiscent of a nose protruding from an uplifted face – a perfect synthesis of charm and function. Here he is again, breezily unconventional, declaring that all he needs is a few, clearly identifiable signs of the kind that may be drawn by means of a Mendini template, a drafting tool of his invention with which he can make up an entire, highly personal universe with lively recurrent motifs and embellishments. An acceleration compared to the usual compasses and templates for tracing curved lines, old drafting tools belonging to the last century, left standing at the blocks and swiftly outrun.

Then comes the admission that “finding answers to functional requirements is simple enough, finding decorative solutions far less so”, a realisation out of which the Alessandro M. corkscrew is born. A veritable item of table jewellery, this corkscrew’s distinctive silhouette, countenance, without doubt its very soul even, imbued as it is with idiosyncratic, understated humour, are nothing short than those of its namesake and creator. No coyness here, nor the slightest embarrassment at the thought of self-exposure, but rather a confident smile as behoves nimble spirits, symptomatic of attained maturity.

Several lustrums before all of this was taking place – say ten – Carlo Mollino in Turin was outrageously shaking down the built up dust shrouding local culture and architecture in a way that only an outsider is at liberty to do: flippant, bold, broad-minded, devilish and daring, on the border of many lines way before its was ever commonplace. Architecture and literature; motorcar racing and mountain skiing; acrobatic flying and photography were just some of the odd couples he masterfully managed to keep astride of. What to others may have been leisure time activities were for him full-time commitments for life, as excellently summed up by Giovanni Brino’s title of Carlo Mollino’s biography, “Architecture as Autobiography”. His love of women cut across all his multifarious activities and always came first. Here we see him at his unabashed best in a composition showing an almost nude woman shot from behind, sitting between a typewriter and a bottle of “Cordon Rouge” and flaunting, at the bottom of the picture and on the models bare flesh, the seemingly type-written initials “C.M.” by way of the photographer’s signature.

Here we may recognise him again in an admirable, almost Escher-like drawing sketched in 1943. His face is reflected in a rear-view mirror mounted on the head of the bed behind the shoulders of the reclining figure with outstretched legs in the foreground. The picture is a doorway into a dream, the dream of “a rice-field farmhouse bedroom”; it’s equally an iconic representation of Carlo himself, son of a famed engineer, Eugenio, and hence worthy heir to a family profession. Rewording the opening statement, but thirty years ahead of the original in a sort of daring quantum time leap, “When I saw myself, I was there” could be the befitting title written beneath this picture.

Again, several lustrums before – say six – a man by the name of Bruno Munari portrayed himself in what’s most likely his first drawing. It’s a remarkably imaginative picture of the kind children are capable, and adults too, when they’re gifted enough, that is. There’s a bright, sunlit rural scene replete with bell-tower, quaint houses and burgeoning nature, and a figure standing in the foreground holding a sheet of paper with a drawing on it depicting the landscape in the background of the first picture! Yes, a self-portrait of the artist as a precociously talented artist, to be found always under the letter “M”. A promising, very promising artist who was to fully live up to the promise.