The Italian Cultural Institute, the Sursock Palace Association and ALBA-Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts present the Design Exhibition “Tools For After“.
Tool For After is a major exhibition that focuses on innovation within the culture of design in Italy, with a display of real objects, images and videos. What will the design and architecture of tomorrow look like? What does design need to do in the Anthropocene age? Tools for After Design offers concrete solutions to prevent―or to confront―the scenarios that the Anthropocene has in store for us. The designer is a visionary who has the task of imagining the future. Imagining is planning, and planning is what architects and designers do.
To this end, the exhibition presents a selection of carefully chosen latest-generation proposals – consisting of a range of projects and products of new Italian design – that represent an answer to the urgent questions posed by the topic. Not only are there products, but also the most cutting-edge prototypes, projects, scenarios and proposals to take account of sustainability challenges. It also presents selected projects by students from schools of design and architecture, representing the proposals of the new generation of future designers.
The exhibition is divided in four thematic sections: LYFE, PALEO, TOOLS and MAPS.
LYFE, which takes inspiration from objects such as animals, plants, organic and living forms, wants to introduce OBJECTS WITH A SOUL in our daily life. Scientific research is opening up horizons that question the very idea of life as we have always considered it. The astrobiologists Stuart Barlett and Michael Wong have proposed a different definition of the concept of life, calling it “lyfe”, and showing how life, or rather lyfe, can take many different forms, endowed with different characteristics. The new focus on living forms brings with it new proposals that see animals, anthropomorphic forms, the presence of plant elements―essentially “living” objects―as protagonists.
PALEO depicts the charm of the prehistoric period that is permeating the contemporary world, a vision for which WE ARE WHO WE WERE, MADE TO MOVE AND BE IN THE OPEN. The “paleo-imaginary” is influencing the contemporary. Whether we are conscious of it or not, it is the echo of dynamics that have always existed. Historians call it “Prehistory,” environmentalists “Wilderness”, philosophers “Utopia”; whatever the name we give it, it is a system of visions and ideas that helps us think about the contemporary. This “Pleistocene paradigm” cuts across scientific, philosophical and religious thought, it emerges in design, art and food habits, and it is summed up in an idea: we are who we were, made to move and to be in the open. Mobility, agility, manual skills, the search for the essential, primary materials, community, storytelling: the traces of this visionary presence are everywhere, and they are necessary to survive at the edge of every map, to imagine something beyond the wall.
TOOLS presents inventions, strategies, the research for other materials, as a confirmation that IMAGINING CHANGES REALITY. Among the most prevalent evocations in the contemporary imagination, we find the ideas of collapse, ending, the extinction of our species, the destruction of our living environment, which many confuse with the destruction of the planet. TFA works on the idea of saving everyone. There is an ability in we Sapiens that has got us through collapses and crises throughout our existence. All that can save us this time too is the imagination, and it has to do with the possibility of inventing other solutions, tools, strategies. Imagining changes reality. Imagining implies designing. The question is simple: what will be the tools for after?
Finaly, MAPS attempts to promote a new modus operandi, that is to chart in itinere possible paths for new projects, making the title of Luigi Nono’s symphony “NO HAY CAMINO, HAY QUE CAMINAR” its own. Walking is a practice of knowledge, of exploration of the earth; our evolution began with our feet and continues in the new scenarios of the Anthropocene. Walking is a metaphor for the different paths that every quest takes. Maps are geographies of the imaginary where experiments, visions, life practices, and proposals intersect; they are a kaleidoscope of different paths that form networks of possible routes until useful maps emerge for orientation in the now.
Duration
March 14th – April 7th, 2024
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Friday: from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Saturday: from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
Sunday: from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Closed on Mondays and on Easter (Sunday 31/03)
The exhibition is organized on the occasion of the Italian Design Day – IDD 2024
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