On January 29th, the Triennale inaugurated an exhibition on Joe Velluto's work, entitled "funcooldesign", a deliberately provocative title that aims to demolish the idea that the designer's work is "fun" and "cool" and want to play with the pronunciation ("fancul" in Italian) as a final comdemnation for the contemporary design, especially the Italian and Milanese one.
The intention of JVLT's exhibit is to celebrate the concept of "Adesign", i.e. a design that "si ribella all'idea di essere sempre più inutile ornamento modaiolo" (in the words of Oliviero Toscani, curator of the exhibition), used as a marketing tool or cosmetics, but socially empty.
But the overall feeling I felt - along with the purity and beauty (the useless one, as in JVLT's Manifesto) of certain products on display - is the futile incoherence of the exhibition in terms of cultural initiative.
I start mentioning the comments by Toscani (check video interview in Ultrafragola), totally resumed in his sterile provocation and super-banal when comparing Helsinki to Milan (how "pure" is the design in the first city and how "dirt" is in the second, apart during the design week - sic!)
The show underlines the poorness of a design which is all about the form, the aesthetics and the color, completely driven by marketing, but then... it doesn't offer any possible way out.
The authors are "disgusted" by the situation, but ultimately drawn from it all advantages. Irresponsibly: they do "design alla moda", protesting against "design alla moda", but being "designers alla moda".
By the way, not a mention to all those who work every day considering design as a rare opportunity for social innovation, a possibility of reflection on sustainability (not only the environmental one) and - last but not least - an instrument for investigating human behaviors.
That kind of reflections - for example - which are gathered into a small blog (DesignDoc) just started by three former students of PSSD Master Course, Daniel Metcalfe, Nissan Graisel and Hussain Indorewala; three young professionals who share a vision on design that could seems similar to the funcooldesign exhibition, but trying to go deeper in the analisys and coming to different conclusion. . They developed this vision by working and studying on opposite sides of the Mediterranean Sea and rescuing Victor Papanek's works (among other) and actualizing them through some cutting-edge ecological and social experiences.
In the end the comment on the reality of nowadays design (not only in Italy) is quite easy: if "create lipstick for an honest whore is one thing, but to create deodorant for her pimp is another", Nissan says "now, all we need to do is to decide, if we want to work for the pimp or the whore..."
Simple, straightforward, unequivocal ... (I'm proud of you guys!)
Unfortunately the exhibition lost the opportunity of going beyond an easy and fruitless criticism.
Perhaps the best description of the "funcooldesign" lays in the words of Silvana Annichiarico, director of the Triennale Design Museum, which says: "This exhibition is palindrome. Whether you take it from one side or the opposite, it always leads to the same point: in the heart of the contradictions and problems that characterize today's world of design."
Now, though, I think it's time for proposing values and solutions.
