INTERVIEW by Claudia Donà

Alessandro Guerriero, from Milan, has crossed all possible territories of design: from provocative and revolutionary experimentation with the protagonists of Italian Radical Design to the creation of performances, objects, exhibitions, manifestos, magazines, collections, concerts, schools (Domus Academy, Futurarium, Naba, up to Tam Tam, the denial of the school, or better an extreme school, that has no structure, is free, has no timetables, everyone “is” the school).

In the last ten years, he has concentrated his commitment in teaching and in “social” voluntary initiatives, such as the experiences with the inmates of the San Vittore prison, with the non-profit associations, Pane Quotidiano or Sacra Famiglia, which all have to do with the relationship with those people that society mostly defines marginal or even “excluded”: prisoners, the poor, disabled, elderly and the sick.

Guerriero is an all-out professional of Utopia. His mantra: “It is always the time of utopia.”

In 1976 he founded Studio Alchimia (Alchemy Studio), a group, or rather a “movement,” which brings together Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi, Franco Raggi, Daniela Puppa, Michele De Lucchi, Riccardo Dalisi, and many others (all interpreters of the Radical Design of previous years), together with internationally renowned artists (Mimmo Paladino to give an example), critics, and journalists. Alchimia redesigns objects by contrasting the industrial system with a different poetics based on the recovery of craftsmanship, drawing, manual skills, the intimate relationship with the object, decoration. And it should be remembered that speaking of “decoration” in those years was really a “heresy.”

In a few years, Alchimia breaks into the Milanese Design panorama (a bit asleep in the so-called Bel Design after the effervescence of the 50s and 60s and the great 1972 exhibition at MoMA in New York, “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” curated by Emilio Ambasz). And… boom, it makes it explode!

Compasso d’Oro Award for Research in 1981, Alchimia becomes synonymous with Avant-garde (or Post Avant-garde as Guerriero prefers), together with the Memphis group (created by Sottsass and Barbara Radice in 1981: even then there were disputes and divisions!). At the opening of Studio Alchimia, in Foro Bonaparte in Milan, people stood in line for hours to catch a fragment, a spark, a moment of what was being presented during the days of the Salone del Mobile. Of course, it also happens today, but it is much rarer that the event is truly astounding.

Having closed the experience of Studio Alchimia and sent in recent years “Alchimia to hell,” Guerriero has done a variety of other things and continues to do them, but the 1978 “bau-haus” Manifesto remains a milestone, very current, perhaps today more than yesterday. I transcribe only a quote, the final one: “Alchimia believes that a project is a delicate thing that does not impose its presence, but approaches and gently accompanies those who love it on their journey through life and death.”

Claudia Donà: You said you want to talk about the present and not the past. And I do agree. But Alessandro Guerriero is not separable from Studio Alchimia. The last statement of the “bau-haus” Manifesto, for example, seems it has to do with eternity. So the first thing I ask you is: how and why did you create Studio Alchimia with this magical and beautiful name?

Alessandro Guerriero:  At that time, after university, I frequented some rather particular people who dealt with numerology, magic squares, exotherapy. We hung out together at night and told bizarre stories, including a criticism of the concept of Alchemy. We liked chemistry but with a pinch of magic. So this name came out, which has marked my whole life and continues to mark it despite the fact that the studio has closed. Alchimia was my first real studio.

C.D: Was it born with this name because you wanted to do some surprising projects?

A.G: Surprising no, the studio was born from the desire to do things. I didn’t know at the time if they were going to be amazing or not; you never know when you make them. I will perhaps know in ten years if what I’m doing now is going to be good or not. If those projects turned out to be surprising, it was not premeditated. I thought they were normal and banal. Studio Alchimia was born after the Radical experiences of the early 1970s: sensory design experiences, when we tied our legs, arms, then wore helmets with our eyes and ears out.

C.D: What was the design methodology of Studio Alchimia?

A.G: Each object we created or designed reflects a specific iconography that contains the spirit of Studio Alchimia: the stylistic unity of soft shapes mixed with aggressive elements, modified and defunctionalized everyday objects, smooth surfaces interrupted by the insertion of antennas and flags, collages and montages of elements in different styles highlighted by bright colors, recovery of artisanal techniques such as inlay and work with plastic laminates with the combination of precious metals. 

The combination of advanced technology and natural and archaic elements was also used; the artificialization of wood worked as a fabric that sways in the wind, production of unique pieces, or in very limited series. From this practice, intense poetry was born, of which each object is a singular testimony. This new method was stylistic but also very political. 

C.D: Your commitment has always remained constant; even today, you are firm on two keywords: freedom and creativity. I ask you: do you feel like a sort of “design missionary,” not in a religious sense but in that of dissemination or, better still, of the insemination of the right to creativity to express oneself? A right that everyone should have but that often, for many people, is canceled by society or from one’s own self-repression? 

A.G: I’ll answer you with some considerations taken from the Fragilism Manifesto that I wrote ten years ago. There are no missionaries or religions or anything else, only a design approach that goes in the direction of the “fragility of things, thoughts, bodies, and the world. ‘Fragility’ is a way of conceiving life. It is the awareness of the fragile, of the provisional, the space of fragments, the value of small, even minimal, actions. It is the duty to know that you exist, to be aware of the fragility of destiny. It is knowing how to approach objects that appear and disappear evanescently, almost stars of the Milky Way… 

‘Fragilism’ is a vision of the world. We have always thought that life is all made up of uncertainties: this is its curious characteristic. On this journey, we have learned that reason not conjugated with emotions is nothing. On this journey, we have learned that even small things become big.

For this reason, what are called ‘Projects’ appear to us only statements of pure power that want to dominate the future. This is why it is good to live in a fragile way. 

Because in this way, ‘fragility’ becomes the theory for a life willing to slide up and down like on quicksand. It becomes a method, a great strength that makes you accept weakness as a value.” 

This manifesto marks the last ten years of my work with people who are not “abnormal,” they are “normal” in a different way. The objects I make with them can take longer to be made, or they have to be done by several people instead of just one, but in the end, they are the same as the others; the mechanism is identical. 

C.D: In 2015-2016, you designed a collection called “O” for Officine Tamborrino, all set on the circle. Tell me about it.

A.G:  It is made up of 6 pieces, each object comes from the same shape and the same material – steel – but develops its own identity linked to its function and the rethinking of both forms and architectural spaces. 

The name “O” comes from the desire to have a continuity without pauses between the form, the content, and its language; everything refers to the circle, to its radical essentiality. 

The circular shape, which has always been a symbol of perfection, represents cyclical time and, consequently, a time that does not run out but continues indefinitely. The circle softens the living space and suggests movement, induces to inhabit of that particular territory between pure art and functional design. One of these pieces is the Caos storage unit: the project today aims at facing the chaos of images or, better, to give images to chaos. 

C.D: Tell me about your fascination with animism. And what is “sacred” to you? 

A.G: Animism was born because I have always preferred to make an object dedicated to one person rather than aimed at the whole world and multiplied into millions of pieces. A single object, therefore, needs a particular relationship with the person. When I create an object dedicated to you, I have to know you; I have to enter your psychology, your way of seeing and understanding things. It is about talking to you and being able to transfer the same conversations to objects. This approach determines the fundamental variant of things, the systems of sale, of buying and selling, of communication, of marketing. Everything changes.

Yes, perhaps it can be said that the sacred for me is this: entering that particular place of the person to whom you dedicate all your design effort and nothing else. The world does not exist; there are people, many people, with whom, before designing, you need to have a relationship, to understand how they are made, what they give you because the designer is not only one who gives, but also one who receives. It is not an abstract situation. Large series and exclusively industrial objects are often violent objects, also from the point of view of their physical materiality, so technologies that tend to a ‘progress’ criterion are negative technologies. The ideal is that we move to a tenuous, soft concept of technology, which becomes a more spiritual, more abstract, systemic fact. 

And then there is eclecticism. I believe that everything is related to the word “eclecticism.” The world is eclectic in itself. As well as nature, for which we speak of “biological diversity.” There are natural materials already composited individually and others that combine “eclectically” to obtain better results in terms of resistance, performance, and quality. Even the designed objects should respond to this material eclecticism, using natural and synthetic materials together and looking for different combinations and assemblies each time. The world is also eclectic from a temporal, chronological point of view. There are old and new materials; in the production systems, archaic and advanced techniques coexist, very ancient and very new ways of working and transforming materials. Wood, pieces of trees, stones, earth: archaic natural elements. Steels, plastics, resins: synthetic elements, young materials.

Both the concept of working for one person and eclecticism are terms that give the sense of a place, a place that is also political. I think my work is very political in a general and anthropological sense. If you accept being eclectic, you take another step towards fragility, but also towards a way of being a designer who works in a kind of sacred place. Fragility and eclecticism are sacred places; put together, they truly procure strong project intensities. 

C.D: You sent me the shortest design history imaginable, with your own sketch and a few brief definitions. Can you explain it better to me? 

A.G: When you work, you often make a synthesis. You become a river that spreads everywhere; you get lost in detail, multiplication, repetition. In those moments, I feel the need to make a synthesis, as hard as possible, as in this case: where do you find a history of design in ten lines? This is it; I don’t think we can do less. It is a formal exercise necessary for me. 

It’s like taking the time and compressing it, fifty years of design in one minute! 

C.D: About a year ago, it was April 2020, you declared in an interview that you considered this moment of lockdown and isolation due to the pandemic an extraordinary opportunity for concentration and rapprochement. Do you still think so? 

A.G: Yes, but it’s a little different. During the first lockdown, we waited with great enthusiasm for it to end soon; now, everything has turned into an anxious situation, which, however, has the same values as before. We have become the new Robinson Crusoe, that’s the problem, we have to build a puppet to have a friend, we have to understand how we will be saved with a plane or a ship, we hope to find someone named Friday. But the pandemic is also a suggestion to say, let’s start from scratch; it’s a good opportunity. 

I hope that later will be different because now if you look at people on the street, you see that they want to make up for the lost time, that they go faster, are angrier, more hysterical. It is worse than before. Instead, it could be a great opportunity for everyone, for the climate, for relationships between people, for greater reflection. The violence of the time we live in must be stopped. Look at how many wars there are around; if only one of these wars could end, the pandemic would have done something positive. 

We live in a very violent world in every sense, and the project participates in this situation; it is immersed in this state of affairs which is often very negative. The ideal for a utopian project is to detach from violence, to move towards situations of calm, of radical transformation of the ways of understanding life today. So, paradoxically, dear virus, get busy, multiply!

C.D: That same 2020 interview was titled “My wonderful failures”; was there one more striking, painful, or enlightening than others? 

A.G: Of course there have been, but I should mention first and last names! Real failure is the failure of everything I’ve done because, with all my gigantic reasoning against so-called Bel Design, the Bel Design still survives quietly without me. I was just a terrorist who lost his battle. 

C.D: Do you have any regrets?

A.G: A ton. If I didn’t have any, I’d be perfect, but I’m imperfect. 

C.D: If we could leave the earth and go to another planet, how would you like and imagine it?

A.G: I don’t want to go to another planet; Mars is here. When the chance to go to Mars will be real, I hope that the earth will be emptied and we will finally be left alone. 

C.D: I feel alive only in the work you said. Do you consider yourself an Ethical or a Calvinist?

A.G: Ethical I think so, Calvinist no, I would not say, quite the opposite. Having made some projects of Post avant-garde, we were all well aware that our critical system had an end. All cutting-edge operations are self-destructive. In short, I’m a kind of last Don Quixote… 

C.D: Then a heroic knight, even a little romantic. Don Quixote is precisely the apotheosis of the knight on a journey to defend the weak and the oppressed, even if he fights against the windmills. 

A.G: But it is also the apotheosis of conscious failure, every time you move to make a long-range utopian operation, you know that what’s important is the path, not the end. It is not just a design path; it is a life project: you fall in love, you get angry, people die, it is not a path to produce an object, it is a journey in which you can lose, indeed almost always lose in the name of an ideal, but you do it because you believe it, and that’s what matters. I once called an exhibition “Whoever rebels self-produces.” It is a political discourse. 

C.D: Choose three of your projects or initiatives that you consider exemplary. 

A.G: I don’t get to three, but I have one, Il Mobile Infinito. The most interesting thing was doing this project through the involvement of many people: in the end, each of us can say that he was the designer, but none of us can say that he was. It is a true anti-heroic project; that’s what I like. Another reason is that it was a kind of reinvention of the “exquisite corpse” in the surrealist style.

C.D: An Architecture, not yours, that you love the most. 

A.G: I don’t know, maybe those of Paolo Soleri in the American desert, or the Solimene ceramic factory in Vietri, also by Soleri, made of ceramic fragments. I like anthropomorphic architectures, then those of Hundertwasser, all that somewhat forgotten world. I’m not interested in the architecture we have here in Milan, apart from the new  Bocconi University Campus: it’s beautiful, one of the few feminine buildings in the world, it’s a big skirt, a dress.  With the rays of the sun or the light on at night, you can see through.

C.D: Three design objects that you consider brilliant? 

A.G: There is one called Tear-Collector, by Cinzia Ruggeri, I have an image, but you don’t understand much; sometimes the images are reductive compared to a title. I’m not joking; I think it’s really an interesting thing: a person reads a title, there is no image, and maybe he imagines even more beautiful things than the object really made. If this were not the case, the stories would not exist, Borges would not exist. I mention another thing made by a student of mine; it is a machine to caress you with feathers, you put yourself in front of it, and the feathers caress your face. 

Both of these objects are hypotheses of objects that perhaps sooner or later will be there, a little more evanescent than those we use now; perhaps they will float in the air or use absolutely unusual materials. They are objects that foresee a future cleverness, very intimate, close to the psychology of people. Objects survive us. This is why we love them very much. They give us back a fragment of eternity and of truth.

C.D: Your favorite city or place? 

A.G: I can’t answer, a table, pencils, a computer, some drawings are enough for me. I feel good in any city΄ I could live in Beijing, Moscow, Milan: I don’t know foreign languages, so I manage with gestures. Maybe I could say Naples, because of the people who live there, I feel at home in Naples.

C.D: Last question: under what circumstances did you choose to be Guerriero, in the Italian and Warrior in the English double meaning of your lastname? 

A.G: This is difficult; I don’t know, maybe just when I opened Alchimia. I was really unaware of where I was going to crash. I didn’t have a penny; I remember I told my sister Adriana: we have to take that space there in Foro Bonaparte! It cost a lot, and we had two hundred thousand Italian lire, nothing. She replied: but you are crazy! And I: come on, let’s do it, let’s jump!

We must be responsible in life, take the step that’s longer than your leg.