COMO.- In the words of Lorenzo Butti, the event’s creator and artistic director, "We are now at our fourth festival and are more than ever convinced of the validity of the path of knowledge and awareness we have embarked upon and that it is making a real contribution to encouraging the public at large to actively explore the wealth of the artistic and architectural heritage of the Lake Como area. It is an increasingly indispensable road of knowledge to travel in an era of globalisation in which we can become aware of and celebrate our diversity through site-specific exhibitions of art and design in a renewed dialogue between different cultures. The journey has to start from what history has handed down to us, accompanied by a fundamental awareness of the importance of preserving what we have, while creating anew what has not been seen before and promoting it. These activities and experiences engage in a close dialogue with museums, archives and figures of note in the local cultural environment with the aim of increasing what we can term experiential tourism. This is increasingly important and vital for our local communities and for the environmental balance, as we seek out new and customised experiences of this area."
The theme of this festival will be Neo-nomadism, a concept moving seamlessly between real and digital life in a survey of new movements of culture and labour. These have always featured throughout the history of mankind but are now also very much associated with the phenomena of the great economic divide and of climate change. The festival event explores how the constant movement of people is a defining element of our times that is also influencing creativity.
The programme for 2022 includes ERRANTI, a group exhibition curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM) featuring some of the best-known Italian and international artists and designers.
The open call for independent designers, publishers and galleries dedicated to contemporary design hosted at the Casartelli Science Museum is back this year, with all works submitted by exhibitors to be sold through an online auction in collaboration with Catawiki.
Design will also be the by-word at Casa Bianca, a historic residence overlooking Lake Como and open to the general public for the first time, realised in collaboration with Galerie Philia, and exhibiting the work of a selection of designers in the rooms of this historic residence.
The journalist Prashanth Cattaneo has been entrusted with curating the talk section at Villa Gallia, entitled Refreshment, which offers visitors a wonderful opportunity to meet and to get to know authors and experts in Italian design at an exclusive location on Lake Como. Running parallel to the events at the institutional locations, the festival also includes a series of fringe or off projects in the city of Como itself.
ERRANTI, Palazzo del Broletto and other places
"Wandering and error have the same root in Italian...Error is closely linked to the idea of the errant knights of novels, adventurers obsessed by their actions and driven by never-ending quests. The multiplicity of picaresque adventures, wanderings and actions of the knights are dominated by the unpredictable presence of error. Together with madness, which lurks in the background, risking the jeopardy of the hero’s progress, which is ever subject to insidious deviation. Error also undermines the characters' rational plans and conditions the very values that inspire them in ways that may thwart any chance of achieving the quest. The pursuit of the protagonist’s desire throws up illusory characters, obliging such men to pass through a web of fictions where error and wandering reign, in a world of false certainties, and the perennial possibility of plans being abandoned.” --Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM)
The programme for the 2022 event includes ERRANTI, l'arte oltre il limite del visibile (art beyond the limits of the visible) involving works that exist but that elude the gaze, a project for art and the local landscape curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM); taking a route that winds its way through the Broletto but also through the festival venues and other places. It is a project whose discovery is the reward for a relentless search for the work and the place.
The works are pictured as guides entrusted with the task of marking out the route and tracing the horizon. It is an exhibition that is as a journey, like a lesson in storytelling, and a way of shifting the point of view. But above all, ERRANT is the theme that runs through the works, because errant is the history of human beings, a history of movement and diversity and exchange, where we are each of us biological and cultural crossbreeding and crossroads.
Francesca Alfano Miglietti chose 20 important personalities from the world of art and design namely: Hanna Burkart, Franko B, Letizia Cariello, Gianni Cinti, Cesare Fullone, Alessandro Guerriero, Stephan Hamel, Francesco Jodice, Roberto Kusterle, Enzo Mari, Antonio Marras, Sandro Mele, Bruno Munari, Andrea Nacciarriti, Daniela Novello, Fabio Novembre, Marco Paganini, Lucia Pescador, Cesare Pietroiusti, and Franco Raggi, whose works suggest different attitudes, and different ways of living and thinking about the fluid relationship between identity, the local landscape and borders.
Photographs, videos, installations, objects, projects that stimulate us to reflect on the idea of departing, of the work itself as a nomadic condition poised between physical and symbolic territories. Works and places: a combination to lead the public to become active, attentive and wandering spectators...
Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM) teaches Theory and Methodology of the Contemporary at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. Curator of exhibitions, reviews and conferences and author of essays, she lives and works in Milan. Her research focuses on the multiple themes of contemporary transformation, such as external influences on languages, the body and its modifications, the incursions of urban art, new technologies, fashion and design, and the relationship between the visible and invisible as the frontier of new contemporary poetics. Since 2010 she has been curator of the ARTE E CINEMA BRERA film festival at the Palazzo del Cinema Anteo in Milan, now in its tenth year. She is a member of the Fabio Mauri and Mimmo Germanà scientific committee, artistic consultant for Tender Stories, London, Milan and since 2013 artistic director of the Nonostante Marras space, Milan. Winner of the Luigi Carluccio Prize for Art Criticism 1990, Commissioner at the Venice Visual Arts Biennale 1993, and on the panel of judges of the Leone d’Oro prize at the Venice Biennale 2017.
Design Contemporary Selection, Casartelli Science Museum
Catawiki Design Expert Adelaida Perez: “Lake Como Design Festival and Catawiki are excited to join forces for the second time to offer an international digital platform to some of most exciting emerging and established contemporary designers at this year's edition. In tandem with the physical event and its Neo Nomadism theme, our online auction will enable the distinct work of these designers to reach our millions of global users who are deeply passionate about forward- thinking design.”
The Nobel Hall of the Casartelli Science Museum will host a contemporary design selection occupying the centre of the prestigious hall walled by a long array of antique glass cabinets that house an amazing collection of articles of scientific interest. Design Contemporary Selection will display the projects of independent designers, publishers and galleries selected by the festival together with Catawiki who have responded to the open call promoted by the festival until 15 July 2022.
All the works presented will be put up for sale through an online auction in an exclusive collaboration with Catawiki. Attracting ten million visitors monthly from 60 countries to Europe for collectables, and works of art and design, Catawiki has collaborated with major partners and institutions such as Maison & Objet, Architectural Digest France and the Dutch ELLE Decoration for which it has created special co-curated auctions showcasing current design and lifestyle trends.
Special Guest, Casa Bianca
Design will also be at the forefront at Casa Bianca, a historic residence overlooking the first branch of Lake Como, as it opens to the general public for the first time on the occasion of this fourth year of the event. The villa will host a selection of designers’ works in its rooms in cooperation the Galerie Philia. An international gallery of contemporary design and modern art with offices in New York, Geneva, Singapore and Mexico City, Galerie Philia promotes selections of works in a transcultural approach with a network of harmoniously interconnected roots in a broad and heterogeneous collection that does justice to the beauty of each unique creation.
Lorenzo Bini, Agustina Bottoni, Cara/Davide, Samuel Constantini, dAM Atelier, Piotr Dabrowa, Draga & Aurel, Emelianova Studio, Pietro Franceschini, Karu Design, Jan Garnareck, Lupo Horiōkami, Morghen Studio, Frederic Saulou all take part in what is a quite unique installation occupying the two floors of Casa Bianca.
