Interview Alessandro Guerriero @ Studio Alchimia

Interview
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Frans Vogelaar:

Visiting the Alchimia exhibition in Berlin, I was thinking about how you revolutionized design in Italy and that Alchimia’s work is an excellent example to better understand and to demonstrate that there is another way of looking at design as an experimental transdisciplinary practice. What are the very specific conditions that created Alchimia?

Alessandro Guerriero:

What is interesting is that there were real artisans here. All the value lay in the artisans. We wanted to produce objects, but instead of working for the famous Italian design companies like Cassina and Zanotta, we found enthusiastic artisans who were capable of making them.

Artisans are usually conservative; they always do the same things. But there were some who, when you presented them with a really strange object, got excited. This enthusiasm of the artisans is what revolutionized Italian design. It was the Eureka moment. The enthusiasm of the artisans is what made the whole design world say, “Yes, let’s do it!” It was a kind of magic word that triggered everything.

Elizabeth Sikiaridi:

How did Alchimia start? How did you start?

Alessandro Guerriero:

Quite simply. I had a studio where I made very simple design objects. Then I looked in the mirror and thought that I would like to do different things that I couldn’t do here in this studio. So, I told my sister (Adriana Guerriero) let’s get a space and take a risk.

With 200,000 lire (100 euros today), we opened the studio and had no clients, none. But we were very determined and honest, we wanted to do things. So, I and my sister started. And after two weeks, someone else came, then you came (Frans), and then another. We had a beautiful space and the space was designed around us. Obviously, it was designed by us in some way because every time it rained, it flooded, so half of my drawings were lost due to the flooding.

Elizabeth Sikiaridi:

What was the context of Alchimia? What was happening around you?

Alessandro Guerriero:

A lot was happening. We were like in a glass bell jar. Things were happening outside, but we only heard the echoes. With the exception of a few situations, such as when we took over the Triennale di Milano.

I was part of the movements of ’68, so I did my part. I was also a member of the Communist Party and thought that Soviet prefabricated houses were a solution… well, they weren’t.

Radical Design was more 1970s. In Florence in the 1970s a group of people said “Stop, let’s see what’s happening around us”. So, “Global Tools” was born, this is extremely important. Alchimia would not have happened without this. And then everyone who worked in Florence moved to Milan, and that was like an atomic bomb, our Italian cultural bomb.

That’s what started it all. In “Global Tools” there are some insights that I’m still working on today and that are still the basis of what I do today.

Essentially, the mechanism behind our work was very simple. We didn’t say, “Oh, let’s make a chair and let’s make it this way or that way.” We didn’t start by saying, “Oh, let’s build a table.” Rather, we thought of a theoretical title, a possible title around which to build objects, many or few, simple or complex objects. This title immediately produced the text, and then the whole group referred to the text when designing the objects.

Some titles were very successful and productive, and we created many objects from them, while others were not so successful. For example, the “Oggetto Banale” (Banal Object) produced an exhibition at the Venice Biennale with some small objects presented there. It seemed like it was going become a huge thing, but instead it ended with the Venice Biennale and didn’t go any further. It didn’t evolve into anything else, so it was just a small production, it went to Venice and stopped there.

The “Mobile Infinito” (Infinite Furniture) had different characteristics, with designers creating anti-rhetorical objects, against rhetoric. It was a project carried out by about 40 designers, and everyone involved could say, “I did this,” but no one could say, “It’s my project.” Fighting the selfishness of design is fundamental.

Frans Vogelaar:

Alchimia’s innovative strength also has to do with its transdisciplinarity.

Alessandro Guerriero:

We worked hard on this when we realized that the disciplines were close to each other. And that they needed oxygen from each other. So, we mixed, we intertwined. Architecture borrowed from fashion; design borrowed from art. And they all intertwined in an orgasm of disciplines never seen before.

At a certain point, towards the end, in the last years of Alchimia, we discovered that when you mix these disciplines, you leave gaps, spaces left free. And these gaps have no theories, no books, no past. We, therefore, decided to build theories to fill these gaps, to develop the design books ourselves. Since then, we have been working in these transdisciplinary fields.

Frans Vogelaar:

Like with “Mobile Infinito”?

Alessandro Guerriero:

What do you think “Mobili Infinito” is? Is it design? Is it painting? Is it art?

It’s a kind of game invented by the Surrealists called “exquisite corpse.” They took a sheet of paper, drew a small picture, folded it, and each person continued the drawing by folding the paper. And in the end, when the paper was opened, there was a kind of extraordinary monster.

We invented something fantastic, but without having any success. We won the lottery and lost the ticket. That was our distinctive feature.

Frans Vogelaar:

What is also interesting is not only the combining of different fields but also the introduction of the public as a co-creator.

Alessandro Guerriero:

In the 1980s, we created an outdoor area at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, something that has now caught on. We wanted to criticize the event, the Salone del Mobile.

When the Proust Chair was presented at the Salone del Mobile, it was displayed in a closed, inaccessible box with a small hole to allow people to see through it. We didn’t write who had made it, or even who had designed it. You could only see the chair through the hole, that’s all. The aim was to criticize the now obsolete Salone and break away from it.

Anyway, all the objects have been created. There are billions of objects. We can’t take any more objects. Now they make knives specially designed for spreading Nutella. Where will it end? There is no need for anything. Not accepting production and consumerism is already a political and moral stance, because it means making other choices and focusing on social issues. In the 1990s, I worked in prison for ten years; I set up a carpentry workshop, a leather goods workshop, and a magazine, and some extraordinary items were produced. Meanwhile, people learned the trade, so my hope was that once they were released, they could do something they had learned.

Either we create spiritual objects, or it is better not to create anything at all.

Elizabeth Sikiaridi:

What I find very interesting about your approach is that it still has a metaphysical, emotional dimension.

What we lack today is this optimism, this playfulness – and I think: how can we bring this back? Because it’s not a simplistic optimism. You talked about objects that contain tears, so there’s a strong reflective and emotional aspect to it. How can we reintroduce this joy, this desire to play?

Frans Vogelaar:

….in a context that is self-destructing.

Alessandro Guerriero:

If negative things happen in the world, the designer must respond as a designer. With the war going on, I don’t pick up a rifle and go to war, I can’t do that. Since I do a little teaching in an Academy, I proposed making a tears-tray that combines a positive aspect with a negative one.

If there is still something that could resolve it all, this is the psychology of design: “Why did you make this chair like this?”, “Because it reminds me of my grandmother.”, “Bravo!”

Frans Vogelaar:

Earlier you mentioned Artificial Intelligence.

Alessandro Guerriero:

For many tasks, such as when you have to do a design drawing, you have to have a prompt, right? A text, just like the texts Alchimia developed when we had a project. And the more conceptually precise the text was, the better the objects were.

Elizabeth Sikiaridi:

Have you ever taken a text you developed for Alchimia and entered it as a prompt in AI?

Alessandro Guerriero:

You’re too late. I thought about it and already did it.

Frans Vogelaar:

Trying to understand what you are doing now, I saw images of plexiglass chairs on the Internet, but I couldn’t find them again. Is it a deliberate strategy to make them appear only once?

Alessandro Guerriero:

I wish it was true, I wish everything was like that, so we wouldn’t have to talk about all of Alchimia’s failures. Everyone thinks, “Oh, look at that wonderful thing! These guys were amazing!” But every piece, every work has had a big failure and a small failure. I’ll explain it next time because otherwise we’ll have nothing left to talk about.