Dropcity Convention 2023
Mostre, installazioni e conferenze ad accesso libero.
Comunicato stampa
The Dropcity spring lecture series 2023 during the Salone del Mobile, is rooted in the discipline of Architecture and voices from practitioners in Architecture.
Viasaterna is delighted to present the Exhibition Project by Ramak Fazel within Dropcity Convention in collaboration with Gaia Cambiaggi, Benedetta Pomini and Delfino Sisto Legnani, called Why Should we care about an archive? Around Milan Unit by Ramak Fazel (1965, Iran - lives and works in the USA): it is a synthesis and reworking of Milan Unit, Fazel's opera-archive which Viasaterna presented in 2018 in a dedicated exhibition.
Milan Unit (1994-2009) is a multiform assemblage of materials in which the artists professional experience conflates in the midst of a series of documents, objects and collections belonging to his private life.
The installation within Dropcity aims at reflecting on how we preserve our memories, using the archive as a metaphor for the memory. Through the preservation of such memories Fazel aims at working on the concept of absence. What are we left with? How do we preserve memories and productions inside an archive? These unknowns take shape through the Artist's archive, containing the work of the Milanese years so beloved by him. A film of cellophane is at the entrance of the installation and it protects the archive as it did in the warehouse where Ramak first conserved the archive.
The exhibition will also include the Dummy view of the Book Milan Unit, which is still an on-going project. The publication is the first monograph realised in collaboration with Gaia Cambiaggi, Benedetta Pomini and Delfino Sisto Legnani.
The volume contains pictures from the 15 years spent in Milan. Years in which, among other things, he photographed the world of design in a completely anomalous way, investigating the places and processes of production. Achille Castiglioni, Michele De Lucchi, Vico Magistretti, Enzo Mari, Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi and other numerous colleagues that Ramak Fazel follows in every development, in front and behind the scenes. He photographs them at work and in their private lives, alone or in groups, in official or informal portraits.
Like Ramak's opera-archive (a collection of medium-format photographs but also a labyrinth of specimens, notes, drawings, micro-collections, letters and gifts), the book is enriched by the contributions of those who, before, during or later, had the opportunity to meet, bond or collaborate with Ramak. This publication is also intended to be the result of a collective contribution and this is why we encourage you to contribute to the fundraising for the book's publication at the following link:
