Dietro la copertina. Feticcio
Editorial project for art and object culture magazine
Description
Behind the cover. Feticcio’ is a thesis project that is divided into two tracks (poster 1); there is a reflection on independent publishing, with particular reference to the contemporary evolution of the magazine, and there is the formulation of an editorial project, a series of five magazines about the intimate relationship we establish with objects. Like a sort of role play, the object of the study transforms into a narrating subject, who in turn speacks about objects to which we have delegated the sense of reality, confusing the plans that lead each design objective to also be an embodied desire. Who to listen to?
The main thesis (poster 2) proposes some points of reference for entering the contemporary debate on independent publishing, recording the current crisis of the definition itself (independent of what?), reflecting on the consequences of the digital pervasiveness that has hybridized its shapes, the artificial intelligence that modifies the tools. The study collects traces of the evolution of the information periodical among the pages of the most iconic newspapers on the international independent scene of the last twenty years. The examples taken from Menelique, eye magazine, migrant, Anxy, Mousse, monocle, Pie Paper, MonoKultur, Catnip, Suq, Kinfolk, Notebook, Wrap, Printed Pages are used as litmus tests, indices of the change in the relationship with reading as form of information and the metamorphosis of the publishing chain.
‘Fetish’ is the product of this reflection (poster 3); an editorial project that wants to tell the story of men’s relationship with objects, which has always been a relationship with reality and at the same time with the transcendent; to do this the idea is to put the magazine back at the center of the information experience, understood as an agile product endowed with the “lightness of thoughtfulness” evoked by Calvino in the prophetic hopes of the American lessons. Therefore it is an object that speaks about objects, placing itself in the double role of carrier and interpreter, container and voice. The plan is to produce 5 thematic issues (poster 4), reports of the “state of affairs” in various fields, told through the lens of creative making. Fetish, like a pawn on the gaming table of reality, a magazine of art and information, or perhaps of information art.
A fetish object is also made to be touched, a map of the experience (poster 5) guided the design; only 36 pages per issue, the attention span, not very pocket-sized format and all the warmth of natural paper. Each issue is a piece of a larger picture, the aim is to propose a study model that addresses the topic, designing the information experience according to a recurring structure; there are three sections of the content “mantra”: questions, confusion, experiences (poster 6). The project proposes as a prototype for content and layout the vol.4 (poster 7), dedicated to the internet, taken as a system of dialogue between objects, of which we are mainly spectators; from ritual masks to Rai stones, the idea of the fetish is equipped with the intelligence to guide the immaterial in our destinies (poster 8-10).
‘Behind the cover. Feticcio’ is a project that admits loss as a contemporary form of creative stimulus and that reflects on the human relationship with objects by proposing an object to relate to; the distance between ideas is only a function of desire. Intelligence is never artificial, if it is the measure with which we relate to our ability to create worlds, rather than suffer them.
