Quali cose siamo

The Quali cose siamo exhibition was the major event of the last Milano Design Week. Conceived by Alessandro Mendini with Pierre Charpin scenography, the exhibition redefines the codes and reinvents the essence of Italian design...

In the title of your version of Triennale Design Musem, you choosed the word "things" instead of "objects". Why?

Alessandro Mendini : "The word design became limited. It often indicates a status released from life. With the use of word "things » we are forced to open our minds to a vast quantity of objects seen as sub-anthropological species.

In the selection you made, there IS (riferito a lack no?) a lack of technological objects. Why?

A.M. : I made a tendentious choice : the human objects against the technological objects, as two differents conceptions (views?) of the world.

How do you relate, as a person and as a professional, with those 800 things that we are?

A.M. : "The 800 things i show could be considered as protagonists of a novel. They constitute an archaic (but contemporary) Italian scene. The selection is also autobiographical and instinctive, there are several objects that i really like, objects of affection."

<sld(triennale)|right>Why did you choosed Pierre Charpin for the scenography?

A.M. : "I follow the works of Pierre Charpin since longtime. I find it poetical, present, synthetic, intelligent, perhaps a bit neoclassical.

"Quali cose siamo" (which things we are) suggest us that, in design as in art, the point of view and the reception are fundamental."

A.M. : "There's no doubt that the force of the reciprocal exchange between art and design. It's like a pendulum : there is art on one side and design in the other side. "Quali cose siamo" tells us that, as people, we are objects among other objects."

Alessandra Fanari ©modemonline