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Futuro Antico. Interview with Formafantasma
12 dic 2023
Marco Bassan
"Rethinking the capitalist system as culture." Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, founders of the renowned international design studio Formafantasma, discuss their work and their vision for the future.
What are your inspirational references in art?
One of our first great loves was Pierre Huyghe, an artist we respect a lot, then Joanna Piotrowska, with whom we developed two works, and Magali Reus, a Dutch artist who works in England, whom we particularly love.
What project best represents you? Can you tell us about its origins?
Our practice expands in very different directions, although the ethics and attitude remain the same whether we work for an industry or develop independent projects. Two significant examples of our way of thinking are the Cambio project at the Serpentine in London and Oltre Terra at the National Museum of Oslo. In these institutions, we presented a system of thought rather than a product. These exhibitions critique, dissect, and propose transformative attitudes for the wood and wool processing industries. Both are manifestos of our way of thinking and what is necessary for ecological development.The origin of both works was a commission where we were asked to represent our thinking in a fairly freeway. In the case of the National Museum of Oslo, we were asked to work on the idea of wool. We responded not with the material, but with the animal. We first sought to develop a critical analysis of the wool industry, which largely stems from the relationship humans have established with sheep in terms of cohabitation, up to contemporary industrial practices, passing through British colonialism, which brought Merino sheep to Australia. This started the modern wool industry in Australia, which is now a global leader and has completely destroyed the productive systems in Europe, while also causing ecological and social problems for indigenous communities in Australia. The exhibition is a proposition on how to create contemporary museography by breaking down disciplinary categories that divide scientific experience and the interpretation of what is natural and what is artificial. We believe Oltre Terra is a way of doing contemporary museography from an ecological perspective.
How important is the Genius Loci in your work?
It certainly has value, but it doesn’t necessarily play a role in our practice. We are not producers, so we work in different contexts. We recognize the productive capacity and quality in Italy, which comes from seeing production processes as flexible and revisitable, and this is why we have always loved working in Italy. The Genius Loci has value because, after years of globalization, we’ve understood the importance of the relationship with the here and now, based on the connection between people, different species, and materials. In this sense, we need to recover a stronger relationship with places, not only with human savoir-faire, by investigating why certain productions make sense in some places rather than others. This ties into the idea of ecology, and for this reason, it is certainly of value.
How important is the past for imagining and building the future?
The relationship between past and future is not linear, and things never return to exactly what they were. However, the past is important in our work as a tool for understanding the present and future, finding ways to make sense of what is happening in the present.
What advice would you give to young people who want to follow in your footsteps?
If you’re a student, never compare yourself to your peers but rather to your heroes and to people working outside the educational environment. You don’t become a designer once you graduate, but by constantly striving to be the best and most skilled. That’s the only way. The second piece of advice is not to settle for accepting work offers just because you’re at the start of your career. It’s easier to say no in the beginning when you don’t have high costs to cover and are willing to live more precariously. If you have clear ideas, it’s worth saying no. But you must be intellectually honest and understand if you have what it takes to be a designer, which doesn’t just mean having talent but also being organized, professional, and very patient, in addition to deeply loving this work, because sometimes that passion can fade.
In an era defined by post-truth, does the concept of the sacred still have importance and power?
We don’t like the concept of the sacred. We don’t think the sacred is necessary to bring truth back to the center. We prefer ideas like professional deontology and ethics, which are topics discussed far too little even in design.
How do you imagine the future? Can you give us three ideas that you think will guide the coming years?
It would be easy to be pessimistic, but what we can do is describe how we imagine it will be important to shape the future: as a species inhabiting the planet, we need to mature and emancipate ourselves from our central position. Since the Enlightenment, by placing humans at the center of the universe, we’ve developed a form of egocentrism in which human intelligence is the only one considered. We know we live alongside other species, and their survival is fundamental to our own health. From a design perspective, it’s important to try to be slightly less anthropocentric, considering the needs of others as well. It may seem paradoxical, but when working with a material, you have to consider both human and non-human communities involved and understand the consequences."
"The great revolution we should all aim for, though it is unfortunately still far away, is rethinking the capitalist system as a culture, which has shown deep flaws, especially in relation to the free market. We definitely need to reinvent how to create a globalization 2.0. We are strong supporters of local development, but we can’t imagine a world that isn’t also globalized.