LIFE CONFIGURATIONS

THE RISE AND FALL OF OBJECTS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH MAN
MAN AND OBJECTS
Today, pondering all the possible lives one might leadall the options of "becoming"has become a challenge that is much too large and too complex. What I propose instead, therefore, is to take a deliberately roundabout approach. One that, since I am a designer, starts from an evolutionary forecast based on the relationship between people and objects. This exhibition will not, and cannot, attempt to be an historical or anthropological survey. Rather, typical of a designer's point of view, at best it is an exhibition that can offer a few uncertain reflections within a few partially outlined scenarios. Provocations, doubts, questions. Certainly not solutions.

BEAUTY
A chipped stone. A chipped stone attached to a wooden handle. In this object, three decisions based on experience have been taken, three design choices: 1. The selection of the right stone 2. The process of working it until it becomes pointed and deadly 3. The invention of its handle which makes it possible to inflict violent and precise blows. It is not just a weapon, not just a tool, not just a prosthesis. If I add a few small, identifiable markings to it, I will have invented a way to possess it this club is mine and mine alone. I will have invented mysterymaybe someone or something guides my hand toward the targetand I might even have invented art,

because those markings are meant as decoration, serving no other purpose than to make it more beautiful. The concept of beauty is central to the history of objects, in as much as it follows a continuous and extraordinary evolution. In principle, Beauty is functionality. Only later did it take on the connotations of its magical and conciliatory qualities, eventually becoming, over the course of centuries, a political divide between different social classes. Then, all of a sudden, democratic Beauty came into being that, thanks to production on an industrial scale, promised aesthetic progress affordable for everyone. And, the final stage, it became status, distinction, striving for a higher standard, which, probably, might lead us to a new kind of war. Yes, the war for beauty, one that could indistinctly ensure everyone equal and welldeserved access to a higher standard of quality than had ever been seen in the last 65,000 years. No longer will it be land, gold, power, oil, but Beauty: the last ultimate good to fight for and achieving happiness. From that moment on, we might finally be able to write the story of Man's evolution on Earth by studying how we behave when surrounded by objects that, from functional tools (a screwdriver) become comfort-driven (a soft chair) and then distinction (an expensive car), and finally shamanic tools, to access parallel realities that enhance our relational needs (an iPad) .

QUANTITY
Nomads have a few, essential items; they have to take them wherever they move, so they must be light and indispensable. Each object has a function closely correlated with survival. When an object is broken, it is either fixed or made again in the shortest time possible. All the nomads from the same tribe have the same kinds of objects. Those who begin settling down, for example to farm the land, invent new objects that improve on the previous ones, and they start to ask themselves if something might exist beyond functionality. They are the ones responsible, perhaps unconsciously at first, for the invention of superfluousness. And superfluousness has played a dirty trick on humanity. At first, it is interpreted as the flag of social difference, then, of course, it turns into a mad chase of quantity. Then, regarding the possession of objects, bulimia sets in. This can be recounted in all its various, tragic variations:

1. The invention of the Spoils of War (I have to take possession of many slaves, many girls, many objects) 2. The invention of Fashion (I must have lots of clothes, for all the right social occasions) 3. The invention of Collecting (I have to have many rare objects of a certain typology, more than anyone else who has my same obsession) 4. The widespread theme of Being Well-to-Do (I must have many objects simply because I am able to afford them) As always when a society seems to be heading in a shared direction, aesthetic antibodies develop: cultural elites, or opinion-makers, or simply those who got bored of conforming, over recent decades, have created a system of value around the theme of anorexia with regards to objects, either from the point of view of environmental sustainability, or exquisite snobbery. Paraphrasing the title of Musil's famous book, "The man without qualities", is possibly being gradually replaced by "The Man without quantities". There are showrooms with only a single car on display, clothing stores where you can admire only one dress at a time (the others are hidden); in the world's most opulent cities the homes of the ultra-rich are becoming ever-larger and ever-more luxuriously empty. Objects, when there are any, are simply hidden, in entire rooms or large closets. It is the first time in history that the rich possess, and display, fewer objects than the poor.

TIME
The relationship between objects and durability has always been linear: history tells us that an object has value if it is long-lasting. If I wear a single suit of clothes throughout my entire life, if I always eat the same meal in the same dish,, if I use the same tools to work the land, it is best that these objects be robust and durable. Often, if possible, I will also be able to pass them along my children. The duration of an object is therefore normally longer than, or at least comparable to, that of a human lifetime. At some point, this balance is called into question. In fact, when welfare begins to spread out in a society, the theme of replacing objects comes up; an object, even if it is still usable from a functional standpoint, is replaced by another, newer one, whether it be for technological reasons, or aesthetic ones, or simply for fashion. Objects that could very well have had a long lifetime (means of transport, consumer electronics, but also furnishings for the office and home) are exchanged for new ones without any reasonable grounds for doing so. If it doesn't work anymore, we no longer repair it. It gets replaced. The adjective "new" has, for the first time, come to be used as a parameter for defining the value of objects; the acceleration of life and the myth of progress has lead us to no longer measure time in centuries, but in decades.

If we speak of the 20s or 70s of last century, we all understand what we're talking about in terms of culture, music, fashion, and clearly in the "style" of objects as well. Thus, for the first time, placing objects in a well-defined time frame (and an extremely narrow one, such as decades) has extended our sensitivity for judging the ephemeral. New words have been coined that contextualize objects in ways that are bizzarly, but universally, recognized: antiques, modern, contemporary, old-fashioned, revival, vintage style.

DEATH
The frantic replacement of objects creates cemeteries of objects: big places full of dead objects, no longer usable. Places that are parallel to man's cemeteries, where there are more men at rest than those who are alive around them. And, perhaps, maybe the sum of all the objects in the landfills outnumbers those found in every house in every city. But we are now developing the idea of looking to the objects like heroes. We dont want to forget them. This is the reason why we start to build up monuments to some objects yet under extinction process: the Concorde airplane, and then typewriters, pencils, telefax, telephones, radios, answering machine, For every type of object, and all types of uses, there are cross-cultural objects that suit Indians and Africans and Americans. Objects of globalization, conceived somewhere in the world, produced somewhere else, objects that travel in planes or in containers and cover thousands of miles before arriving in stores. Objects full of hopes and dreams, and even of the greed for business. Objects full of water pollution and exploitation of people. Objects to be afraid of? If we want to have afternoon tea, all we have to do is set our table with a cup in German porcelain, a spoon made in Taiwan, a slice of Brazilian lemon, sugar cane from Mauritius, and we immerge in hot water the small leaves of a plant grown in India, enclosed in its filter pouch probably made of Japanese paper in Gifu Prefecture. The world has simply become so complex or so simple that it's possible for all these objects to come together in right place at the right time. But what is our relationship with these objects? If we look at objects laid out on the tablecloth, we discover that a dialogue exists between them. They push each other, they get closer, then farther away, they turn toward the light, as if, from a certain point on, their life no longer depends on our presence, but they would be able to continue on with evolutionary success even after our likely extinction. So, at that moment, we would like to ask them to tell us why we worked so hard and so saved so diligently, with the precise goal of producing them far away, of transporting them on long ships for thousands of kilometers, of distributing them in expensive shops that always have their lights on, to sell them to people who perhaps had to work on Saturdays and Sundays to afford them and then take them home, place them elegantly on the table or in a dark closet, often providing them a long, boring and pointless life.

FROM BEAUTY TO DEATH

So, at this point it seems important to go back to the start of our chat, and summarize all the points we have covered as if they were a non-linear connection between the desire for beauty and the arrival at death (or, if you want, the desire of death and the arrival at beauty). Between Beauty and Death, therefore, there is this relationshipa dangerous one entailing a beginning and an end. So the final question could be this: what if everything were cyclical, that after arriving at death (of objects or people or the planet) it were possible to begin anew, naked, inexperienced, curious, with Beauty?

Mario Trimarchi