mudac at Milano Design Week 2023

Inside Tunnel 46 of Dropcity the exhibition Prepper’s Pantry: Objects that Save Lives, a project by Anniina Koivu is a preamble of future research and an exhibition that will unfold at mudac in 2024.

“Preppers” and “survivalists” are terms that tend to evoke extreme, marginalised images: a woodsman in the tinfoil hat, a hoarder of canned beans, a religious doomsdayer. However, this subculture has in fact evolved over the last century, mirroring larger social trends. The Milan installation is a first introduction to a new broad-based research on preparedness, inviting visitors to step into a Prepper’s Pantry. A place to store backup supplies, the pantry houses objects, tools, and equipment believed to be essential in case of emergency.

The installation is designed by Camille Blin, Anthony Guex and Christian Spiess with graphic design by Frederik Mahler-Andersen.

Accompanying the installation is a second project commissioned to the creative studio oio, a collective of designers, technologists and bots working on future products and interactions, co-founded by Simone Rebaudengo and Matteo Loglio. Titled The Last Pencil, this cunning experiment launches a year-long residency as part of a new program strand exploring processes of collaboration between institutional and artificial intelligence.

The residency, the first of which features oio, will see selected creative practitioners use the museum as a case study and, by entering its operational system, prototype concrete ideas embracing the engagement of non-human agency in its practice. The Last Pencil is a project exploring the evolution of drawing tools in the age of post-human intelligences. Just like pencils have been a fundamental tool of human creativity throughout history, The Last Pencil is a provocative depiction of how artificial intelligences could radically change the way we design together, in a not-too distant future.

Lastly, as part of the program at the House of Switzerland in Corso Garibaldi, mudac is organising a public talk on Tuesday, April 18 at 11am, in anticipation of its playing host to muscon, the international museum conference that will take place in October 2023. Making Things Public: The Design of Institutions Now and Then is a breakfast conversation moderated by Beatrice Leanza in the company of international curators and directors, around the challenges and opportunities of building future-facing institutions in times when design and its publics are radically transforming. Speakers will discuss how the tools, methodologies, and missions of public engagement of institutions of culture nowadays can respond to the shifting parameters that define design and its role in our times.

Speakers: Aric Chen – General and Artistic Director, Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam), Johanna Agerman Ross – Curator of Twentieth Century and Contemporary Furniture and Product Design, Victoria & Albert Museum (London), and Ewan McEoin – Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne).