We live in an historical time where there is the need to re-found a new avangard. We have the cultural responsibility to build a new present: make a tabula rasa and start all over again. The old cultural categories in which we used to operate do not make sense anymore. The only way to proceed is to re-found DADA. The old Europe is again the centre of the economic and cultural game.

It is a mistake to think that there is just an economical crisis going on. This is first of all a cultural crisis that manifest itself thought the economy. Culturally the crisis has started a long time ago, we all saw it coming. Now it is evident to all, since our economic model is also in evident collapsing. We need to think a new world. We need to build new relations between people and things. To do this, we need a new avangard.

This will be the subject of a talk I will give the 3rd of February 2012 within the context of “Coffee Break of a Revolution”, a seminar at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, which is part of the exhibition “Revolution to Smash Global Capitalism” (for which I have designed Readykea). This will be a way to celebrate the DADA birthday. In this seminar will also speak: Adrian Notz, Co-Director Cabaret Voltaire – Mike Bonanno, The Yes Men – Mediagroup Bitnik – Yana Sarna, Voina – Almut Rembges, Emanuel Tschumi, Marcel Schwald, Bblackboxx – Christian Huebler, Knowbotiq Research – Billy Talen, Reverend Billy.

I had to give this thing a name, but I wanted to make a non “choice”, so I have simply mirrored the world DADA into ADAD. Later I have found out that ADAD is the Babylonian and Assyrian God of storms and fertile rains. I thought that this is the perfect meaning for what I want to talk about. I also found that ADAD stands for many acronyms that all make sense within a DADA logic:

ADAD_Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division (Colorado)
ADAD_Association of Dance of the African Diaspora
ADAD_Another Day Another Dollar
ADAD_Automatic Dialing Announcing Devices
ADAD_Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders (journal)
ADAD_Air Defense Alerting Device (US Army)
ADAD_Air Defense Artillery Director
ADAD_Airborne Division Advisory Detachment (US DoD)

It is the right time for the #ADAD manifesto. If you want to contribute just tweet your statement with the hash-tag #ADAD. If you do a project in this spirit include #ADAD within the press release and talk to people about it. Google will be the archive of this movement. It is time for a new present.

Next Thursday, within the context of The Revolution to Smash Global Capitalism at Cabaret Voltaire Zurich I will engage in a discussion with Francesca Recchia around the topic of AZADI. In this workshop we will collects materials, images andwill also invite Twitter users to contribute under the hashtag of  #AZADI. We will collect tweets, images, live interviews via Skype with different people. This material will be organized, collected and distributed in a DIY zine that can be made with a PDF. The map of AZADI shown here below will also be  presented. This displays the amount of people who use AZADI in both languages that are officially recognized by the national authorities and  languages that are not. Hope to see you there.

Thursday Jan, 19th, 2012 2 – 6 am The Revolution to Smash Global Capitalism: Azadi – آزادی – आज़ादी With Francesca Rechia and Antonio Scarponi

Azadi is a Persian word that means freedom, liberty, liberation, independence. The word has a long history and a beautiful geography. Its roots can be traced back to more than three thousand years ago, to the ancient Avestan language. From Persia, Azadi started travelling: it went far and reached Afghanistan, Pakistan and India where it seeped into the local languages and it is now of common use in Farsi, Kurdish, Pashto, Urdu and Hindi. Azadi is about liberation as much as it is about liberty and hence signifies both the struggle for and the achievement of freedom; it does not simply describe a target, but embodies a process. Azadi helps therefore reflecting on the relation between freedom and liberation, on the necessary struggle that is implied in the idea of the achievement of freedom and on the sense of a collective responsibility that such a struggle requires.The word, however, has ever too often been appropriated in the political discourse as a symbol of Islamist ideology, separatist movements and extremist politics.But is it so? How many people do use the word Azadi in a non ideological way? What is the power of this word and what are the contradictions it carries? From the perspectives of design and geopolitics, Antonio Scarponi and Francesca Recchia will engage with these questions addressing the manipulation of innocence and the ways in which ideological interpretations “shape” meaning and reality. In a participatory manner, the conversation will take place on the 19th of January from 2 to 6 pm CET at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich as part of the exhibition The Revolution to Smash Global Capitalism. This will be accompanied by the realisation of a demographic map that shows the amount of people who use the word Azadi on a daily base. The physical event will also take the shape of an Internet happening through Skype and Twitter (hash-tag #Azadi) opening the debate to different people who have been engaged in the struggle for Azadi and for whom Azadi is a daily word with a political – rather that politicised – meaning.

One of our clients, the start-up UrbanFarmers, was invited to speak at TEDx Zurich to present their urban agricultural concept: good food from the roof. UrbanFarmers is indeed working on the mission to install aquaponic agricultural system on the top of otherwise unused building roofs. Aquaponics is a farming technique that allows to grow fish and plants simultaneously: the fish nourish the plants with their urine, plants clean the water for the fish. You eat both.

They have asked us to build a functioning concept model that can explain this system in an educational way to be brought on stage during the second TEDx Zurich Event.
So we have designed and built a mini aquaponic greenhouse. Yes you can crop and eat the salad when is ready if you wish. Which probably makes it the world smallest aquaponic greenhouse farm ever built.

I will participate to a seminar in Milano during design week about sustainability and communication. My talk will be titled “Objects, Systems, Behaviours, of a Sustainable Design“. But I will have only forty minutes (instead of the three days the talk title would require) so I will basically present some projects we have done at Conceptual Devices that deal with paper (quite few indeed). The seminar is hosted and organized by Paper & People, the most beautiful showroom for paper in Italy.

Here is the program:
Economia sostenibile e “Greenwashing” – Paolo Ricotti, PLEF
Carta che crea o carta che distrugge: cosa è vero e cosa è falso – Massimo Ramunni, Assocarta
Sostenibilità: oltre le certificazioni – Davide Biancorosso, consulente e formatore
Oggetti, sistemi, comportamenti di un design sostenibile (I am the media,
You are the message) – Antonio Scarponi, Conceptual Devices (me).

If you are interested, just let me know there are some place still available and I am allowed to let someone in.

Images of this post are a courtesy of Design Royale, the Most important event at Fuori Salone 2011, that will take place the 15th of April, in via della Moscova 28, Milan (from 11.00 pm through the night).

Between the 10-12.12.2010 in SOHO FACTORY complex, Mińska Street 25, Warsaw, Just Undo It and Wired Unplugged will be presented within the Przetwory (recycle) festival. For this occasion a new project will be unveiled. More information soon. On Sunday the 12 at 13.00 I will talk about Triangular Design Manifesto.

Eco-friendly design bound with recycling methods is nowadays strong tendency in global product making. It is hard to avoid questions of shrinking natural resources, raising consumerism and programmed insolidity of contemporary products when being in a position of a designer or product manager today. We live in a circle of buying, using, collecting, disposing and sharing of consumer products. The XXI – century man is virtually sinking in the amount of produced, collected and used objects. We are rarely aware of a process that every product has to go through before getting into our hands. Terms „recycling“ and „sustainability“ made their way through global consciousness becoming a trend and a real motivation for reaching viable solutions in many fields of life. This process can be summed up with a question: how to survive? After four-year struggle related to organizing RECYLES event we can easily position ourselves on the radical other end of the rainbow towards mass production. We are promoting totally different approach to the product by supporting D.I.Y. idea and by endorsing unique design solutions.

Among the invited guests: Refunc (Netherlands), Basurama (Spain), El Ultimo GRITO/EUG Studio (UK), Mantas Lesauskas (Latvia), Tom Price (UK).

A workshop will be created by students of Royal College of Art in cooperation with students of Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts Faculty of Design.

I’ve got a strange call the other Saturday morning. A remote voice from Korea at the other side of my phone was saying: “We saw your hoodie item (Just Undo It) on your site. We think it’ s really great and  we would like to make an interview with you. This will be broad casted on “Sponge Zero” a Korean TV Program on KBS!”.

I was not completely awake yet so it took me a while to figure out what was going on. But after sometime I’ve manage to negotiate a date and to get a script of the questions they were about to ask.

I’ve made short, but elaborate reply. You know, television…. and they said: “OK, but your answers are too long. Here is an other script you could read”. Here it is:

Hello (an nyung ha se yo) Sponge Zero

I am Antonio Scarponi and I live in (where you live)

I would like to present you a new way to utilize your hoodie.

I practice many ways to transform design.

So I found my own way to transform a normal hoodie into a special thing.

A lot of fasion designer friends were very inspired by it and new collaborations started afterwards.

Just Undo it is a good example of the attitude we should have upon objects. I often use it in normal social activities.

People loved it. We had an instant success over our YouTube channel.

You should try it!

So everything went flat. And I had to learn my answers by heart on the spot, via skype (It is a long while since I do not practice my Mastroianni skills). I had bad Internet connection in the office so the line kept falling and so did the interview. In the end we’ve made it (somehow) and I must say that I had lots of fun.

Thank you Jaho Yoon! It was a great pleasure to work with you.

Conferenza Antonio Scarponi, giovedi 10_12_09 H 15:00, Politecnico di Milano_Sede Piacenza_Aula 6.

Friday 16 th October at 11.00 am talk “Manuali Metropolitani / istruzioni per l’uso” @ festival della creatività, sala dell’arco, fortezza da basso, Firenze.

Last November I was invited to discuss about “urban narrative” in Göteborg, Sweden, an event organized by Squid. I have then wrote some notes in form of manifesto in order to clear what I had to say about it in relation to my practice. My “manifesto” was basically conceived as a platform to start a debate. We went through one or two statement, then the conversation took off in a more spontaneous and fun way. The Squid friends (Katja Aglert, Martijn van Berkum, Janna Holmstedt) decided to publish on their site the transcription of our talk as well as my preliminary manifesto which you find in this post and that you can download here as pdf. Enjoy!

URBAN NARRATIVE: A MANIFESTO

00_ FIAT LUX. Narrative in-forms realities. It gives them a form. So that these can be recognised, narrated, historicized, represented. Narrative stands for any form of representation. The urban condition is a tangible reality that takes form with narrative, here understood as any kind of representation, visual or not.

01_ HOW TO: URBANITY. Narrative is a form of symbolic order. It could take any form in which information is organised: Atlas (as collections of maps, diagrams, cartograms), a guide (manuals, recipes, a game, instructions), archives (database, indexes), but also many other forms of narratives, any form that organize information.

02_ EXFORMATION. Narrative is a form-giving process that discards information: the process of transforming “the world into a map”.

03_ 2BR02B. This is the question. Narrative has an ontological power. It has the power to define what “exists” and what does not. Therefore narrative is a weapon for the affirmation of reality: the urban realm.

04_ CONCRETE. So narrative is not a naïve practice. Narrative is not the “copy”, the transcription, of the urban as a form of reality. On the contrary, the urban is the transcription of a narrative. The physical reality, the urban condition, is the fragmented construction of narratives.

05_ REFLECTIVE DESIGN. Narrative is not just a representation of the urban, but rather an idea of it. An idea about what urban is and how it functions/operates.

06_ SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE. Narrative is a subversive practice. It has the power to imagine and to actually represent, therefore construct, the urban reality according to different kinds of symbolic orders. It is a tool of signification of reality. It could be progressive or reactionary. The urban condition is a storytelling battlefield.

07_ PALIMPSEST. The never ending editing. The only rule in narrative is the inner, self-referential, coherency. There is no truth, but only ideas about “truth”. Narrative is about what we believe is truth, or what we want others to believe as such. The urban condition as narrative battlefield could be therefore contradictory, or tell different “stories” at the same time.

08_ MAPPING AROUND. Narrative shifts symbolic values and shapes information. It gives information a form that could follow poetic or symbolic principles and therefore create a new form of objectivity, new forms of “urbanities”.

09_ PROGRAM. If the urban is the “copy” of a narrative then, if we change the narrative, we are willing to change the latter, exploring and representing new forms of urbanities.

Intervention at Lusso Essenziale: convention/exhibition/concert at MACRO Future, Rome, may 21-22-23, around Low Cost culture. An event organized by Lowcoster.

Starting May 21st, in the spaces of Macro Future in Rome, luxury cultures will meet low cost concepts and mutate towards new, more ethical, sustainable and essential ways of living.

“The Essential Luxury” will showcase a three-day event organized around panel discussions and workshops with world renown designers, sociologists, artists and architects, but most importantly with the human beings behind those titles.

Three days to reflect on the development of everyday life-styles that can be at the same time luxurious and sustainable, affordable as well as socially responsible. A moment of confrontation and dialogue to communicate a new way of luxury: different, yet identical in quality, technology, research, creativity, curiosity and expertise. A chance to understand and experience a new culture of luxury which makes us aware of our conscious side, and puts it in charge.

Participants:
Paola Antonelli, Nello Barile, Davide Bocelli, Mario Cucinella, Brando Crespi, Umberto Croppi, Fabio D’Angelantonio, Orsola De Castro, Dickson Despommier, Maurizio Di Puolo, Paolo Ferrarini, Adriano Franchi, Silvia Gavina, Stephane Hugon, Daniele Kihlgren, Filippo La Mantia, Leonardo Lotti, Michel Maffesoli, Antonio Martino, Mara Memo, Matthew Morozzo, Cristina Morozzi, Sergio Pappalettera, Filippo Ricci, Domenico Sturabotti, Antonio Scarponi, Vincent Susca, Ilaria Venturini Fendi and artists: Aquilanti Andrea, Maurizio Cannavacciuolo Mario Council, Eliseo Mattiacci, Sergio Pappalettera, Julie Polidoro, Andrea Salvino Moderate: Antonio Mancinelli – Piero Negri

PhD presentation and defense. IUAV, Palazzo Badoer, Venezia, Italy @ 15.30.

Artistic production is always situated in a localized setting and informed by cultural, social and economical backgrounds. Therefore, one can argue that being site-specific is unavoidable in artistic practices. Site-specificity becomes increasingly explicit when cultural practitioners situate their work in the city, where such backgrounds are highly politicized and outline public debates – dealing with issues such as class struggle, gentrification, crime, commercialization and immigration – but also inspire our individual endeavors – ambition, desire, hopes and failures.

How to read such places? How to comprehend their complexity? How to approach a place and deal with different interests and stakeholders? Can narrative function as a framework to structure layers and backgrounds? Moreover, does it have the potential to transform? Can it create new dynamics, interpretations and histories?

While the SQUID archive is temporarily on display at the project space Hit in Göteborg, Nov 29-Dec 7, we want to take the opportunity to explore the potential of ‘urban narrative’ as starting point for a discussion on investigative, site-specific practices. The round-table discussion will bring together a group of professionals that have each developed, through different fields and practices, strategies and knowledge for engaging into the city.

The recipient of the Curry Stone Design Prize will be announced on September 25, 2008 at the IdeaFestival in Louisville, Kentucky. Since 2000, the IdeaFestival has attracted leading and highly diverse thinkers from around the world to showcase and discuss important ideas in science, the arts, design, business, film, technology, education, and other disciplines, to promote breakthrough thinking.

In addition to the presentation of the prize, Venice Biennale curator Emiliano Gandolfi will moderate a discussion about design’s steadily increasing reach into contemporary life. We will be there for the discussion together with the other four finalists of the Curry Stone Design Prize.