Prada Frames by Formafantasma | Review

I attended the event Prada Frames in Milan (6-8th June 2022) for koozArch.

Link to the full article here: https://www.koozarch.com/essays/symposium-review-prada-frames

Here my (unconventional) review:

We are living a planetary, climate emergency that we caused. We have known it for some time as we knew its consequences. The multidisciplinary symposium Prada Frames, organised in the Braidense Library in Milan from 6 to 8 June 2022 by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin (the famous duo Formafantasma) looked precisely at “the complex relationship between the natural environment and design” during these challenging times.[1] Specifically, the organisers looked to the forest ecosystem as a starting point for an intellectual and pedagogic debate that opened to planetary ecosystems, natural resources’ extraction, forms of coexistence of animate and inanimate beings in view of the devastating climatic changes that are affecting all of us, from the Global South to the North.

Despite the underlying "sense of hurry in the ecological transition"[2] of our society that I subtly perceived throughout the three days of the event, I was left with the impression that the debate on these crucial issues may come too late. In fact, apart from some optimistic guests who proclaimed that design can contribute to “recomposing ecosystems”,[3] or that is at the base of the “epistemic changes” guided by scientific research,[4]almost all the speakers ended up admitting that however much one can propose ingenious, sustainable, ethical, aesthetically pleasing design solutions, no matter how far we can operate in the fields of education, legislation and the economy[5] - either acting at the individual, collective, local or global scale - it is certainly possible to mitigate the damage but it is basically impossible to solve the problem.

The ambitions of Prada Frames were high, and the sensitivity and richness with which these delicate issues were treated have been commendable. Prada Frames probably sanctioned once and for all the end of anthropocentrism in design research. It called for a change in narrative and action, a pedagogical commitment that borders on activism and moves beyond obsolete disciplinary boundaries.

Sins

What was missing at Prada Frames was perhaps an explicit realisation that human beings – especially those driven by profit through extraction – are the most destructive species on this planet. It is an awareness that should, however, be followed by a pacification with ourselves.  

“I would say” said Amitav Ghosh “that climate change, the migration crisis, COVID, even this war that we are seeing now, they are not the causes: they are symptoms of this enormous acceleration in consumption, production and distribution that we have seen in the past thirty years.” Paola Antonelli and Alice Rawsthorn integrated these reflections by reminding us how sustainable design was a form of atoning for the sins of our modernist, extractive and colonial past. At the same time they proposed perhaps the most positive of all the views shared at Prada Frames: we live in a period of multiple, simultaneous emergencies and they all have a substantially political dimension, but a new, radical and ethical approach to design can help us to solve them.[6] In essence, “designers can unsettle ‘business-as-usual design’” through conceptual approaches that can ultimately change worldviews.[7]

More-than…

The sudden awareness of this worrying picture along with the fundamental caesura caused by the pandemic – a break that finally allowed us to stop and think about the fragility of our individual and collective existence – has, however, stimulated an acceleration in the epistemological overturning of intellectual thinking in the creative fields, de facto undermining the Cartesian dualism nature-culture. The pre-pandemic references to the decolonization of Western thought, the slow changes to sustainable production, the research on the perverse financial mechanisms of resources’ extraction and carbon offsetting that shaped the design of objects and cities suddenly became central topics of discussion. We are living a rapid, collective awakening. Anthropocentrism is giving way to the category of the "more-than-human":

More-than-human
More-than-western
More-than-individual
More-than-productive
More-than-profitable
More-than…
More-than…

Empathy

The forest has a subject status.

Through anthropological,[8] cosmologic, ecofeminist and filmic perspectives the forest was finally made visible during the symposium,[9] reaching a subject status, becoming a protagonist in fictions, tales and narratives that reinforce the sense of belonging, precisely, to the forest. Citing Emanuale Coccia,[10] Stefano Boeri warned us that even if Westerners developed greater empathy towards other animal and plant species, they would still not be able to escape the sin of anthropocentrism. Do we, therefore, need a “new anthropocentrism”? Or should we overcome centuries of enlightenment and return to the animists’ ancestral fear of nature?[11]

The forest has a legal status.

If the boundary between humans and non-humans is disintegrating, then those that outlined the old-fashioned systems that have governed and protected our societies and their products should slowly widen too, incorporating natural ecosystems. Consequently, during the symposium’s debates Trimarchi and Farresin opened up to the "legal rights of non-human entities", which would make it possible to regulate the financialization of natural resources via the Carbon Market; a new form of "carbon neo-colonialism".[12] The previously advocated epistemological change should, therefore, include institutions (governments, universities, museums and so on). Unfortunately, however, Philipp Pattberg pointed out that due to "political unwillingness" and a series of "legal loopholes", international governments are not acting, consequently “failing us as citizens”.[13]

The forest has a cultural value.

This sentence would allow to overcome governments’ legislative impasse as it fits within the regulatory framework of the Global North. It also introduces to the very delicate subject of dispossession and displacement of indigenous people that follows the destruction of forests.[14] They see the forest as a “space of knowledge”,[15] a space for women’s resistance against imperialism,[16] a field of “pluridiversity”[17] and much more.

The man-tree symbiosis reaches its final stage here: to uproot trees means uprooting both individual and collective memory.

 Metamorphosis

 During Prada Frames I suddenly realised that the need to move beyond the dualism nature-culture had to ultimately extend to Cartesian space, which could be no longer geometric and visible but submerged and rhizomic, interconnected like the roots of a forest. These reflections align to the worldviews of indigenous researchers, thinkers and creatives for whom many of the topics addressed during the symposium sounded simply obvious.[18] In fact, the symbiosis between humans and the natural world (as explained, among others, by Sophie Chao, Ursual Bieman and Ghosh) is so evident that the simple word "nature" sounded obsolete to Prada Frame’s guests. Anna Tsing then proposed a new term, “interspecies connection”: we are all interconnected organisms, like trees with fungi we live thanks to the bacteria that inhabit our intestine.[19]Hence, she continued, “if we kill the forest we also kill ourselves” because we leave room for pathogens that can kill entire plantations or, as in the case of COVID, millions of humans.

These guest speakers overturned centuries of anthropocentrism with ad-hoc examples and simple, yet effective claims: “each one of us is a forest”.[20] Invited to close my eyes more than once during the three days of symposium I slowly felt my body transforming into a tree just like Daphne, the nymph. I now see it as a desirable metamorphosis for all those who intend to face the emergencies afflicting our planet today. Eventually designers, like all the inhabitants of the Earth, are called to change: the new human being that will emerge from this metamorphosis is the one who will try, perhaps with fear, perhaps with optimism, to slow down the catastrophe.

Notes:

[1] Prada Frames, pamphlet. The event was organised at the same time as the renowned Design Week, attracting a large audience after the long break of the pandemic. Differently from the fair, that is still based upon unsustainable models, Prada Frames shifted the debate from product to nature’s conservation, from profit to empathy between species.
[2] Beatrice Leanza, Session 4: Sensing.
[3] Andrés Jaque, Session 3: Designing.
[4] Ursula Bieman, Session 6: Inhabiting.
[5] The strength of this symposium lies in its interdisciplinary focus. Worthy of note is the presence of Niklas Tesla, expert in the Carbon Market, and Philipp Pattberg, expert in environmental policy.
[6] Paola Antonelli, Alice Rawsthorn, Design Emergency: Building a Better Future (London, New York: Phaidon, 2022)
[7] Anna Tsing, Session 6: Inhabiting.
[8] Elvira Dyngani Ose, Anna Tsing, among others.
[9] Teresa Castro, Session 1: Contextualizing.
[10] Emanuele Coccia, Metamorfosi (Torino: Einaudi, 2022)
[11] Amitav Ghosh raises this point in Session 2: Narrating.
[12] Formafantasma, Session 5: Governing.
[13] Philipp Pattberg, Session 5: Governing.
[14] Paulo Tavares has been extensively researching on the issue of displacement of indigenous people in the Amazon forest.
[15] Paulo Tavares, Session 5: Governing.
[16] CAVE_BUREAU, Session 6: Inhabiting.
[17] Ursula Bieman, Session 6: Inhabiting.
[18] During Session 6 Aric Cheng shared his experience in India.
[19] Anna Tsing, Session 6: Inhabiting.
[20] Amitav Ghosh, Session 2: Narrating.