Fondazione ICA, Milano
The works embrace the material’s inherent irregularity, paired with an overall language of repeating, iterative configurations. Along with the use of natural materials such as bamboo or the linen thread, other details that do not try to hide the workings of the pieces are present, such as the exposed holders for the bulbs or the exposed connections and cables, elements that emphasize the dialogue between the components eliminating any possible hierarchy.
Cheerfully Optimistic about the Future was first presented at the Fondazione ICA Milan in September 2021.
A PRE-SOCRATIC GREEK
Andrea Branzi
Who were the pre-Socratic philosophers? They were erratic and unpredictable thinkers, magicians or charlatans who during the 6th century BCE began to teach people to reflect, outside the boxes of religions and myths, on the origins of humanity and on the energy that moves the universe and life.
Their names are familiar (and their ideas obscure): Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Zeno and many others.
Dilettantes, brilliant craftsmen, dreamers; when poets ruled the world...
One thought that at the origin of the world lay water, another air, one infinite matter, another becoming, yet another mathematics and so on.
Their generation, active prior to the birth of Socrates, was driven by a sort of radical force, typical of those who start from nowhere because they don’t have a tradition at their back, but a void, a black hole.
The idea of putting the world in order starting from the dimension of pebbles of the sea, contorted fragments of lava, little bits of plastic, is no different from that of the menhirs of Carnac, so heavy and arranged in order of height, and the pe-riodic table of Mendeleev, who arranged all the materials of the world in order of their weight...
After all the pre-Socratics were not very different from us; though they were certainly more likeable and curious.
Michael Anastassiades is right to start again from scratch...
