MOVIMENTO II

Collective Exhibition
Curated by Salvatore Peluso, STANDARD404
Camp Design Gallery, 12 December 2020, Milan

MOVIMENTO In the Italian dictionary, among the meanings of Movimento we read: “any phenomenon of aggregation and mobilization of individuals who, as a result of socio-economic changes that have occurred, develop the awareness of their identity as a social group and actively undertake to bring about a change in their condition or of the political system itself. “ The curatorial project of La Cube and Salvatore Peluso is the design of a network, which creates a dialogue among free and autonomous practices, disconnected from industrial logics and of immediate functionality. Those presented at Camp Design Gallery are projects capable of telling stories, exploring the possibilities of the material and its cultural meanings; they are projects that undermine the Western concept of comfort and that generate ambiguity rather than having a specific use. Movimento is a support platform for independent designers, a “third place” dedicated to meeting, listening and dialogue, which materializes with an exhibition in the gallery spaces.

SECOND EDITION With the second episode of the exhibition series, Movimento moves its gaze towards Rotterdam and Barcelona, two of the most active European centers in recent years in the field of design and architecture. The curatorial choice to work by cities is not causal. We want to reveal the connections between hubs and generate new ones among designers. We intend to bring to Milan – the world capital of industrial design – a variety of different, independent, apparent-ly irreconcilable visions. We are not interested in a coherent and uniform perspective of how objects are designed, but open to new ways of thinking. From Barcelona we selected Max Enrich, Julen Ussia and Takk Architecture studio; the duo Rem Atelier, Diego Faivre and Studio Ossidiana come from Rotterdam; Giada Montomoli, Stefania Ruggiero and From Outer Space are the Milanese representatives on show. Working with selected cities has a practical reason: to involve international institutions to support the project. We see the gallery space as the node of an enlarged network of companies, museums, and universities. In this case, Movimento has received the support of Acción Cultu-ral Española (AC/E), a program for the internationalization of Spanish culture.

DESIGN DURING PANDEMIC TIMES The second lockdown slowed down the opening of the exhibition, initially scheduled for 11 November 2020. Following the current regulations in force in Milan, from the beginning of Decem-ber 2020, the gallery is once again a place accessible to the public, as it is considered a kind of boutique. This normative ambiguity – which, on the other hand, does not permit the opening of museums, theatres and other cultural centres – allows the exhibition to be inaugurated fol-lowing all health requirements (limited admissions, temperature measurement, hand washing). However, the health emergency will not let us to do what we consider the central activity of the whole process: the (physical) meeting and dialogue between all the people involved, all those moments of conviviality before and after the inaugural day, the final dinner at the Riviera (the restaurant next to the gallery).

In response to the situation, we have created a series of videos called “Unboxing Movimento”, to recount an important part of our curatorial process: the packaging of the works, their shipping and unboxing. These are moments that precede that of the exhibition, which is then shown to the public and disseminated to all press media. The documentation of these intimate moments was developed in collaboration with Monomio, a research platform for contemporary and independent design.