PROGETTO GRAFICO N.37 (2021)The writing and design of this issue took place during an unprecedented period. Against this backdrop, the theme of “saving”, which we had already decided on before the recent turn of events, seemed more appropriate than ever. At the same time, it took on new meanings in ecological and eschatological terms. Ecological in the proper sense of the term – in the sense of new design and production methods for environmental sustainability – but also as an invitation to reuse signs, to critically re-evaluate and re-signify them; eschatological in that it derives from a question of what to save from the uninterrupted flow of visual materials produced daily, from historical models and examples, and from technologies that are now obsolete.
In this issue: Archivio STOP Aldo Novarese; Gabriele Colombo; Elisabetta Rattalino; Silvio Lorusso; Hicham Khalidi and Rolando Vázquez; Ines Cox Graphic Design: EEE Studio
PROGETTO GRAFICO N.36 (2020)The reasons for this issue are twofold. The first being that of illustrating situations that consciously take place in areas commonly understood as secular – one might even say worldly – to observe how through a skillful design of the image these have successfully established merit-worthy macrocosms and offered standards for secular life. The second, to uncover the possibilities of language, focusing in particular on the possibility of desecrating it, and violating its underlying rules, canceling its sacred nature, infecting it with spurious elements, and misrepresenting it with its opposite. We hope that the issue will be, as it was for us, an invitation to recognize the potential that lies in planned just as in spontaneous desecration of narrative codes. May it offer cause for reflection and some practicable suggestions. We are in no doubt about its urgency, since a new ecology of the body cannot be detached from a new ecology of communication.
In this issue: Allegra Martin; Giovanni Boccia Artieri; Stefano Faoro; Joseph Popper; Valerio Mattioli; Michele Galluzzo; AGI Open 2019: Sarah Snaith Graphic Design: EEE Studio
WITHOUT INTERIORS (2020) Museums have never had only one threshold. There have always been many ways of entering a museum, to visit the artefacts on display inside, to create a relationship with its spaces. To all effects, that of museums is a story of multiplication of points of access. Indeed, from the publication of catalogues and books to the setting up of travelling exhibitions and to the divulgative programs and the nebulisation of online offers, the 21st century museum is an institution constantly on the move, with progressively increasing connections with society.
BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE (2019)What types of knowledge do archives embody and perform? What can’t they perform? Archives format what is knowable, preserve objects that materialise the past, index and systematise things. They are technologies that reproduce strict logics of categorisation and separation.Bodies of Knowledge is an intervention within the The Temporary Slovenian Dance Archives, initiated by Rok Vevar in 2012 in his own apartment, and now hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova in Ljubljana. The installation shifts the archive from a site of knowledge retrieval, to one of knowledge production. By dismantling and mobilising documents, technologies and institutional framings into new compositions, the intervention invites visitors to access, navigate and contribute to the content of the archive, through movements and gestures. In the spirit of contemporary dance, Bodies of Knowledge breaks the internal logic of the archive by releasing the emancipatory power of movement. Historiographic structures dissolve, allowing for the emergence of alternative associations. Digital data are opened up not only as research information but as a physical experience. Three screens feature fractured footage of archived videos from Slovene choreographers. Installed near each screen, video cameras record visitors’ movements. Each station is focused on a particular body part: Legs, Arms, and Head. The installation uses machine learning algorithms similar to those used in surveillance technologies to track and monitor the visitors' movements. The system identifies gestures and compares them to the documentation of the performances used to train it. When movements in the room are registered as similar enough, their recordings are saved and played back, mingled with archive footage. Visitors add their bodies and movements to the archive. The addition happens in real-time, but the fragments persist in the temporary archive until the end of the biennial.
PROGETTO GRAFICO N.35 (2019)In this issue of Progetto Grafico we have tried to look at and beyond the concept of sacred, trying to avoid the lens of irony that is often used at all costs to talk about sacredness. We posed the question as to whether being irreverent was necessarily right or whether this approach may sometimes be simply a sign of the times. We noticed how sacredness and religion, albeit connected, are not exactly the same thing. While the concept of religion may today seem far removed from the disciplines of design, that of sacredness can lead to some interesting questions.Our choice of narrative based on the observation of small fragments and details proved a particularly useful way to deal with this topic. We interpret the sacred as a complex and contradictory concept that needs to be approached from different points of view – sometimes dispassionate, at others up close and, at others still, with irony. While, at least in the world of culture, it seems sign of a common perspective the language of idolization is used regularly in many contexts, not least as a weapon to arouse political consensus. However, it may just be that we ourselves are not entirely extraneous to the veneration of certain cults, perhaps secular ones. Using the eye of the entomologist we attempt in this issue to observe how we worship and how we laugh at worshiping, to try and grasp something about ourselves of which we are often scarcely aware.
In this issue:Archival section on Cardozo Kindersley Workshop with notes by Riccardo De Franceschi; Patrick Lacey–Åbäke & Jonathan Pierini, Saul Marcadent, Invernomuto, Dr. Pira, Silvio Lorusso Graphic Design: EEE Studio
PROGETTO GRAFICO N.34 (2019)Issue 34 of Progetto Grafico provides an interpretation of fun as the antithesis to work (dealt with in the previous issue) in a deliberately provocative way, aware of the problems of giving entertainment a sole definition. Often lying at the heart of economic and political decision, interpretation is of course unlimited.Using images, we have accessed institutional - or institutionalized - worlds of counter-culture and mass communication, taking a look at the myriad ephemeral and homemade communication material used in disco and Gabber culture; the cloud of porn that generates new desire by representing the old; formats perpetuated by Italian TV of supposedly live dramas and comforting reassurances; pixelated milieus of video games capable of becoming instruments of protest, and the Las Vegas-like worlds of legalized gambling in paper form. We hope these will provide a less dogmatic way of understanding a design that does not provide answers but finds and creates opportunities to have fun and to entertain.
In this issue: Mauro Simionato, Filippo Lorenzin, Nico Morabito, Huyb Haye van der Verf, Sarah Snaith, Michele Galluzzo interviews Alberto Guerrini Graphic Design: EEE Studio
PROGETTO GRAFICO N.33 (2018)Progetto Grafico 33 analyses the topic of work which necessarily involves the design professions. In an era in which financial crises, precariousness and post-work are at the center of daily social and political debate, it seems necessary to begin reflecting on the different historical, material, psychological and economic implications of these terms. In particular, it seems useful to investigate the connections between these apparently independent aspects and the dynamics relating to design.In this issue: Stefano Tamburini by Michele Mordente, Roberto Arista, Shannon Mattern, Caterina Di Paolo, Muttnik Graphic Design: EEE Studio