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Cliostraat goes to Venice (part 1)

A temporary auditorium

Phone call.

Nice one.

Do you want to make an installation for Venice Biennale?

Why not! Nice…

It has to be an installation for Asac (the Biennale archive).

The space has to be:

- A temporary auditorium (one conference per day, stage + 100 sitting people).

- The lecture is only 2 hours per day. The rest of the day, when people come they must be able to see some historical memories belonging to the archive.

- The overall space must represent the idea of mr. Giuliano da Empoli (the director of the archive) about contemporary culture. His most important book is called: "Overdose" and it deals with the overdose of information that is making ourselves drowning into a complete loss of meaning.

The conditions are simple: a budget of 50.000 euro, glory & fame for all the people involved in the work. Fee… …fee? What do you talk about? We give you the access to fame and you want to be paid? Come on! Do we pay the artists? No.

We have this idea that artists don't get payed because their expenses get covered by their galleries. Since we are designers and not artists, we don't have any gallery kindly covering our bills. Anyway. Blinded by the promise of glory and fame we decide not to be picky…

So, the frame is set. We have to work for free. By the way, it is not a little work.

Question. Weren't you the people that work only for a fee? Did you forget about the teaching by Bruno Munari?

Boys, let me remind you one thing. Never work without getting paid. If they don't pay you, it means that they don't respect your work. If you accept such a condition, you will never make it in life.

Yes, yes, yes.

We sworn not to work again without a reasonable financial condition. Unless Mother Teresa from Calcutta calls us.

No. Even if Mother Teresa calls us, we will ask for advanced money.

That's the way (in the meanwhile, we keep working for free).

Ok. When we design we use some principle absolutely given. To be paid for the work we do is one of them. Then, we have another principle absolutely given. That is not have absolute principles. Why do you make a promise? To break it.

We hope it is the last time (although we know that it is not true), we smile and we get on the work.

To work without being paid would normally be a deception. In this case it is not a deception, because things as they are on the whole give a lighten. In the end, we are happy. Each of the persons involved tried and did his best. Circumstances were not perfect, therefore some passages are (sometimes) hard to understand. But if you don't try to understand, you don't go anywhere.

Did Bonami try to arrange the best possible situation? Yes, he did

And what about Giuliano da Empoli? So did he.

Both of them spent great energies on the project - consequently, we cannot but be thankful.

The challenge is a tricky one. We get the floor plans of the Arsenale space, we go to see the space that is incredibly beautiful. A 20 by 20 meters room in the industrial archeology of the former Arsenal. We involve a number of friends into the project.

The group splits into subgroups. One reads every single word this Giuliano da Empoli has written in his whole life (despite being a very young director, he's one of those guys who spends the whole day writing). Another keeps in touch with Bonami, besides, there is the group handling with the suppliers (is there any possibility of raising funds through sponsors, so as to improve our budget position?), another group works on the models, and so on...

After some months we are ready, Marguerite did some incredibly beautiful models, we present our proposal.

Thousand and thousand transparent stripes, printed with materials from the archive. You enter and you are into this cloud of stripes. Hidden neon lights. Super-beautiful, but you cant' understand anything (following this idea that we live in an overdose of beautiful - but meaningless - information).

At the center of this cloud an empty space, cylindrical. In the cylinder of void a simple wooden platform. When there is not the lecture the visitor will find a couple of books out of the archive, some photographs, eventually a tape recorder (few items carefully chosen by the director of the archive).

It seems to work. It looks ok. We are ready to present it.

They like it. Only detail that it costs three times more than supposed. Don't worry (they say). We like the idea and we will find the money.

Translation: we have to find some sponsorship to cover the missing $$$.

We make an analytical list of all the producers of transparent printed fabric in Italy. We contact them all. We buy the manual of the perfect salesman. Phone calls, meetings, presentations. The days to the opening are less and less. We would like to panic, but we have to fake that everything is alright (key skill of the good designer).

Only two weeks to the opening and nothing is set. Then we get a phone call. The organizer forgot a prominent artist. They will place him in our 20 x 20 meters beautiful room. He is prominent. We are not. We move.

This is the moment to smile and not to get angry.

They move us in the ugliest theatre ever seen in three thousand years of Western Civilization. Keep smiling. No problem. We like it pretty much.

We go to Venice to see the space. In real life it is even worse.

We trash the previous project. In one night we make a new one. The following morning we call the suppliers to check the money figures. Since we have two hours to complete everything we try to squeeze everything in the original 50.000 euro.

In the afternoon we leave to Venice, to meet the contractor.

The following morning the first crystal panels are on the way to the building site.

There is no time to make any detailed drawing. Refinements, details and fancy are set on the spot. Lia, Diletta and Marylene gave a great helpful hand with the project. Without their extremely important contribution nothing would have been finished on time. They work for Asac and took charge of a very good deal of boring stuff.

The condition is not so good. The time schedule is so tight that there is no room for mistakes. If you do wrong, no way to fix it.

This is not a chess game. It is like being at the shooting range. 100 problems, one every five seconds. Aim, shoot, aim, shoot, aim, shoot.

Be cool. Don't be emotional. Being emotional doesn't help at all.

At times, design becomes a synonym of being quick and sharp. Like walking on the rope. Don't think too much. Just walk. Two hours before the opening, everything is finished.

It looks alright.

People are happy. We are happy.

http://www.labiennale.org/it/asac/99incontri/settembre/

on October 14 it's our turn. We will introduce ourselves, what we do, why we do it. If you are on your way, come and visit us.

Ready for next one (hopefully paid).

(Stefano Mirti, Cliostraat)

The temporary auditorium/exhibition display for Asac is a project by Cliostraat (Cristina Casula, Alessandra Esposito, Stefano Mirti, Matteo Pastore, Alessandra Raso, Matteo Raso, Francesca Sassaroli, Stefano Testa) with Eyal Fried, Marguerite Kahrl, Daniele Mancini,

www.cliostraat.com

> goes to Venice (part 2)