Experimental Media in Italy The New Domestic Landscape, MoMA 1972

Experimental Media in Italy The New Domestic Landscape, MoMA 1972

11/18/2009

MoMA. Gruppo 9999, performance, 1972. Environments and Counter Environments: Experimental Media in Italy The New Domestic Landscape, MoMA 1972 brings together for the first time since 1972 the original documents and multi-media projections featured in the historic MoMA show curated by Emilio Ambasz. The current exhibition focuses on the 1972 Environments section, which has been installed in the MoMA galleries. Each of the Environments, created by a different Italian architecture studio or design group, was accompanied by media projections, audio-visual displays, or interactive events. Gruppo 9999, Image for New Domestic Landscape exhibition display, 1972. Ettore Sottsass jr., drawing for a mobile and flexible environment module, 1972. The historic importance and contemporary relevance of INDL is in part due to how the exhibition encountered and attempted to reconceive the visionary possibilities of design and architecture: domestic in scale, urban in context, and potentially revolutionary in social and political practice. Ambasz intended the environments to interrogate the “rituals and ceremonies of the 24 hour day,” and to “design spaces and artifacts that give it structure.” Ugo La Pietra, MoMA display project, 1972. Ugo La Pietra inside his display for the MoMA exhibit, 1972. Under the curator’s program objects in space became the agents of spatial and social transformation. In physical dilation, conceived as environmental and mediatory, objects could become their antithesis, or could become subsumed into the life forces of urban society. The films and media projects produced for the 1972 show, at the core of the GSAPP exhibition, were intended to demonstrate such alterability and a score of transformative effects. In this light, the current exhibition encounters again mediatic and environmental strategies and their potential for rethinking the boundaries of architecture, domestic spaces, their conditions and territories. Original Superstudio film spool. photo © Peter Lang, 2008 Gae Aulenti commenting upon original exhibit materials. photo © Peter Lang, 2008 Piero Frassinelli from Superstudio showing original 1972 materials. photo © Peter Lang, 2008 Ettore Sottsass jr., display design project for domestic-mobile environment, 1972. Mario Bellini, Kar-a-Sutra, 1972. Gruppo 9999, Image for New Domestic Landscape exhibition display. Curators: Peter Lang, Luca Molinari, Mark Wasiuta An exhibition developed at the GSAPP, Columbia University with the participation of the Museum of Modern Art, New York The exhibition will be open to the public 4/13 - 5/8 at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Buell Hall (GalleryHours: Mon-Fri, 12pm-6pm) as part of the GSAPP Living Archive program. Exhibitions within this program open for reconsideration some of the most provocative projects of the last decades through the acts of collecting and exposing archival material. Featuring projects by: Mario Bellini Alberto Rosselli Zanuso/Sapper Joe Colombo Gae Aulenti Ettore Sottsass Jr. Gaetano Pesce Archizoom Superstudio Ugo La Pietra, Gruppo Strum 9999 http://www.ymag.it/schede.asp?id=1910