Trough the eyes of C41, the photographer Alecio Ferrari and thanks to the art direction by Simone Piermaria, Flos casts an original point of view over its own archive. Framing and explaining Today trough a fresh look towards its heritage and story.
Diving in an almost endless collection of papers, sketches and photographs, grasping a glimpse over a thick heritage which is born under a new contemporary shape. The whole project developed trough set design by Patrizia Gatto aims to cast a point of view over the archive that is not intended to be or feel nostalgic, but rather to interprete the past accordingly to the current moment, using it to trigger thoughts and reflection over the present.
About ‘Framing Flos Archive’ – Words by Alecio Ferrari:
Recording
Coding
Structuring
Storing
Processing
Combining
The world of archives has changed significantly in the last 40 years when there were no computers or digital systems, when information were only available in printed form, and archivists dealt mostly with paper-based materials. With the advent of internet, information technology has made possible to produce more recorded information than any previous decade of human activity and then stored into servers and clouds. In this sense, archives passed from being physical rooms filled with shelves and paper to impalpable digital space and series of algorithms.
The act of classification and inventory has never been seen as a science, but uses a scientific method indeed. Archiving have become an important source of scientific and technical knowledge, roots and memory, identity of people, families, social groups, enterprises, and public and private communities. For what concerns the realization of the Flos Heritage Series, I have been asked to re-imagine and give life to the Flos printed archive. I had the privilege to dig into thousands of boxes, containing files telling (and proving) the company’s history. From original sketches of the Arco Lamp designed by Castiglioni’s, to slide films displaying magazine’s campaign of the 80s, from Philippe Starck’s portraits to the design researches of Michael Anastassiades.
In this sense, the ambition of the project was not only to simply display the heritage of the company, but also to exhibit the legacy that brought proficiency and manufacturing to the state of things nowadays. With the set design support of Patrizia Gatto, guided by the creative director Simone Piermaria, we have brought the language of scenography into photography to re-elaborate a new message turning the archival files into alive series of documents. The idea behind archives is to secure the preservation of a collective memory, creating a way to access to it.
