Italian Radicals and Dutch Conceptuals: the Sensation of Affect in Two Movements

Italian Radicals and Dutch conceptuals: the sensation of affect in two movements KEULEMANS, Guy / The College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales / Australia. Experimental / Conceptual / Radical / Design / Affect and part of the Modernist movement against which the Radicals were reacting. However, his Modernist work was not orthodox. The Italian Radical movement of the 60s and 70s and Dutch His Valentine typewriter is clearly influenced from the Bauhaus, conceptual design from the 90s and 2000s share in common yet biographer Barbara Radice says that he never full accepted the concern for experimental practices. However, their differ- Bauhaus ideals just as they were. Instead he sought to produce ences in organization and ethics are notable and inform the a “transplant operation” which re-arranged the ratios, distances conceptualisation of their aesthetic experiments. This paper and weights that he saw in the Bauhaus style into an “irony of uses Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of affect to investigate this dis-proportion” (Radice 1993: 142). Sottsass remarked upon his process. early career: “When I began designing machines I also began to think that these objects…. …can touch the nerves, the blood, the muscles, the 1. Introduction eyes and the moods of people. Since then I have never designed Concern for various forms of experimental and conceptual think- a product in the same way as I would design a sculpture, and I have been utterly obsessed with the idea that… …I was setting off ing has long been important to product designers (Antonelli, a chain reaction of which I understood very little.” (Radice 1993: 2011). In the second half of the 20th century, two of the more 109) important movements engaged with such methodologies are the Italian Radicals from the 1960s and 70s, and Dutch conceptual designers from the 90s and 2000s. Despite being sometimes marginal in regards to actual penetration of the product land- scape, both continue to have sustained influence on the field and in the design discourse. The vast majority of the critical writing on these movements is, perhaps quite rightly, concerned with topics such as social agenda and historical influence. Aesthet- ics are of course considered, however conventionally aesthetics are critiqued as resulting from stated or perceived conceptual, ethical or idealogical positions. It is proposed that the relation- ship between concepts and aesthetics is actually inversted, and instead designers (and critics and market forces) develop a conceptualisation of the work subsequent to aesthetic experimentation. This paper explores how an understanding of Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the affect and concept can interrogate this proposition. In turn, these can notions can be used by designers wishing to work affectively to build stronger, robust or more flexible concepts. Figure 1. Valentine Typewriter by Ettore Sottsass (1969) 2. Ratio and Mood His work as a Radical did not replace this playful form of Modern- Italian Radicalism can be introduced through the work and ex- ism, but instead sough to create social and conceptual mean- perience of one its most notable practitioners Ettore Sottsass. ings through aesthetic experimentation. His quote above calls to Educated prior to WW2, Sottsass took advantage of the post- mind the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s notion war boom and built up his practice with a number of important of affect; a non-reducible mediator that uses force and energy to commissions from companies such as Olivetti, from whom transmit intensities of sensation. For Deleuze and Guattari, art is he designed the famous Valentine typewriter (1969) (Fig. 1). the composition of materials into tools for the experience of sen- However as early as the late 50s he became suspicious of the sation. Affect is transmitted in waves, producing “compounds of consumer society and began to work in a counter-propositional sensation” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 187). It is through af- style that sought to invest meaning back into objects, whilst fect that Sottsass is able to “touch the nerves” and “moods” of simultaneously working as a serious Modernist industrial de- people. By re-arranging the visual qualities established by the signer. So Sottsass is both one of the earliest Radical designers Bauhaus, Sottsass alters the transmission of affect and creates KEULEMANS, Guy 2012. Italian Radicals and Dutch conceptuals: the sensation of affect in two movements. In Farias, Priscila Lena; Calvera, Anna; Braga, Marcos da Costa & Schincariol, Zuleica (Eds.). Design frontiers: territories, concepts, technologies [=ICDHS 2012 - 8th Conference of the International Committee for Design History & Design Studies]. São Paulo: Blucher, 2012. ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7 DOI 10.5151/design-icdhs-108 KEULEMANS, Guy the unexpected. The quote suggests Sottsass is recalling a rev- Casabella magazine. It is variably interpreted that Mendini was elation or meta-awareness of his role as a designer, which may being iconoclastic as a point of defeatism, a recognition of the have influenced the creation of his subsequent Superboxes (fig. pointlessness of the Radical struggle, or at least as a sign that 2). the movement needed to progress to the next level, à la the ris- ing phoenix metaphor (Kristal). Given that Mendini subsequently described work from that period as not “crystalized” (Cowell), 3. The Superboxes can it be asked: did Mendini just burn the chair because it was a visually exciting thing to do? Figure 2. various Superboxes by Ettore Sottsass (circa 1965 - 1968) The Superarchitettura exhibition of 1966, introducing the work of Superstudio and Archizoom, has been marked as the beginning of the Italian Radical movement (Pettena: 2004) I propose that construction of the first Superboxes in 1965, as novel objects which broke the form the established design discourse, serve just as well. The Superboxes were large, colourful wardrobes cov- ered in custom laminates in various blocky and striped patterns. Sottsass’ use of laminates is more closely associated with his later Memphis work, but its interesting to note that the Superbox- es predate Memphis by about 15 years. The objects are a conflu- ence of many of Sottsass experiences, such as his exposure to American pop art, travel in India and as a kind of pumped up, super-saturated derivation of his early work on super-computer Figure 3. Lassú chair burnt by Alessandro Mendini in 1975 chassis design for Olivetti. Radice writes that their ultimate effect was to consume and dominate the room in which they were placed as if “dropped into the cosmos.” This was an effect Sott- sass learnt from his experiences in India, where he found a very different engagement with objects, compared to that produced by capitalist society in Europe. Sottsass said many years later, “they were such crazy things they were hard to imagine,” though he did not shy away from conceptual explanation (Radice 1993: 148). For Sottsass, his Superboxes was an attempt to invest intensity and spirituality into domestic objects as a reaction to the status driven consumption of objects in post WW2 Western society. Sottsass saw the Superboxes as “tools to slow down the consumption of existence” (Radice 1993: 36). 4. A Chair on Fire If I can argue that creation of the Superboxes began the Italian Radical movement, I would like to propose that it was likewise ended by the destruction of Alessandro Mendini’s Lassú chair in 1975 (fig. 3). This chair was built a year earlier as a similar pro- Figure 4. Monumentino da casa (Small Monument for the Home) (1975) posal to the Superboxes from a decade prior. Strong, archetypal and elevated upon a pyramid, the chair eschews functionalism In Deleuze and Guattari’s theory, affect activates the construc- for the elevation of the product as a human centred, spiritual tion of concepts as it passes through the liminal threshold i.e conduit; a means to restore significance to life in the domestic thoughts are produced by sensation. Fire is especially capable society; a theme is reflected in the title of Mendini’s drawings of producing a potent compound of sensations that activates of the chair (Fig. 4) (Mendini: 48). A year later he set it alight deep memories and feeling. Concepts such as fear and warmth and placed the photo of its burning sacrifice on the front cover of are felt; these are common, persistent and also conflicting con- Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies 558 Italian Radicals and Dutch Conceptuals: the Sensation of Affect in Two Movements. cepts, so fire can be said to be both potent and alluringly non- mentations of the can be compared to that of the Italian Radicals, specific. According to Deleuzian theorist Brian Massumi, affects but in absence of theory do not conceptualise into a common can create deep and prolonged sensations from the vibration of ethical ideology. As such, their work is adaptable to various in- feedback mechanisms within the senses, which are otherwise terests. Droog, an organisation engaged in marketing Dutch de- broken or interrupted by the construction of language, and hence sign, is one such interest. And a particular criticism of Droog is concepts (Massumi, 2002: 23-25). Deleuze’s own explanation that the organisation is engaged in the production of concepts of the vibratory nature of sensation, consisting of amplitudes reducible to a sales pitch, as noted by Catherine Geel. Geel also and thresholds defining that point in which a sense is felt or no proclaims this is a hijacking of the concept by marketing forces, longer felt correlates well to this feedback mechanism (Deleuze, pre-emptively identified and lamented by the Deleuze and Guat- 2003: 45). So in the image of Mendini’s burning chair there is an tari (Deleuze & Guattari 1994: 10) at about the same time Droog intensity, but signification is constructed subsequently.

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