A talk with Gianluigi Ricuperati

You work as a writer, essayist and curator: an interdisciplinarity that emerges from all of your projects. How do these activities communicate with each other? To which one do you feel most bounded?

I coincide with myself when I write. At the same time, I feel like writing isn’t enough in this time – or in my time, at least. So I would say that I feel bounded, really tied up, to the spontaneous happiness of the moment in which an idea comes to the skyline of mind. And this idea will be able to take different shapes. Anyway, the figure that contains them all is always a book. Someone said that the world begins and ends inside a book, isn’t it?

The mutual contamination between disciplines – even those that seem extremely different – became a prerogative of artistic and creative activities. What are the benefits of this particular approach?

When I was a boy – at university, in high school, during the nineties’ – it wasn’t that common, but I already felt like a fate the calling to get curious about everything and to find deep conceptual links between several codes of expression.

Music, architecture, poetry, action. There are mirrorings, methodologies, hidden rhymes, almost invisible.

Based on this reflection, is it possible to give a univocal definition of art?

Art is a process of wake, submerged into the privileges of dream – and collaboration.

You have recently inaugurated Faust, a space half-way between a museum and a library, where people can hide until dawn, take a coffee and converse, just like in an old café letterarie. An unusual and, somehow, poetic project. How did it develop and how did the people of Turin welcome it?

Faust is becoming a broadcaster of contents through different medias. And, of course, it will keep on hosting the all-nighters, and expanding and popping like a mushroom in several contexts: hotel rooms, radio shows, marketing events, books. The most curious citizens reacted with a lot of affection. Faust – the shop – attracts special people

What does the program foresee?

Meetings, talks, concerts, projections, discussions, performances, exhibitions, or just the shared flow of released time.

You have also worked as creative director for Domus Academy, a powerhouse of young talents to whom transmit stimuli and from whom being inspired. How can the new generation of creatives help re-launching the art field in Italy?

If there’s a place where to design is an imperative, it’s Italy.

Are you working on something new in this period?

A book, for example. But also a catalogue of Faust Editions. And many other things, more or less urgent. Now I’m flying to Tokyo, listening to ‘Inflated Tear’ by Roland Kirk into the dark aerial night.

Are you familiar with Mutina? Which aspect do you like the most of our company?

I love Mutina’s attitude. I love their products. I’d like this plane to be covered in Mutina’s tiles. I think the company is a model for many entrepreneurs: a project that creates culture and beauty in a contemporary way.

What’s your favorite project? Why?

I really like Accents, the new project with 34 installations. It reminds me of a museum of life.

If you have to associate it with a novel, which one would it be?

Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec, 1978