11 male and female students from the Rome and Milan campuses questioned themselves on the theme “Future Matter”, the focus of the 2024 edition of the Cosmopolitan project. Here are the results, on show at Casa Emergency over the past few days during Design Week.
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IED works on show for CosmoIAm
Date
22 April 2024
Once again, Cosmopolitan explores the perspectives of Generation Z with a call to creativity and a focus on the forms the future is set to take, as seen by the younger generation. IED had no choice but to respond: 10 works of visual arts that speak of fears, projections, hopes, dreams, disillusions, the need to adapt, proposed by 11 young designers from the IED centres in Rome and Milan, combined in terms of the content and expressive languages used. They were on display for CosmoIAm at Casa Emergency during Milano Design Week in an event featuring an exceptional godmother, singer Levante.
WORKS ON THE SUBJECT OF FUTURE MATTER
The video Where Are We? by Federico Bassani (Graphic Design, Rome) expresses the sense of personal uncertainty about the future: the fear of lost parenthood, of a broken career, of failing health, depicted as the rubble of a bombed building in which everyday objects stand out. Giada Casu (a.k.a. Casu Arson, Illustration, Rome), nostalgically explores old family films in the video Relative Future, wondering what tender moments will we have in the future. Giulio Giuseppe Di Gregorio and Veneranda Lamberti (Fashion Stylist, Milan) reflect with irony, in Casi umani (Human Cases), on the inability to communicate and the ostentation of characters, those we would like to be or seem, when seeking a relationship.
Adaptation is the key word in two works. Maria Caterina Galli (Illustration, Milan) in the artwork Fish Market tries to give a positive and at the same time crude vision of the future of the human species, in an unnatural underwater setting, as a consequence of global warming. Here, however, man is intent on everyday actions, symbolising the power of adaptation to all conditions. In Metamorphosis (in the main image) Davide Giacomasso (Fashion Stylist, Milan) reflects, including via the use of AI, on the impact of technology and the constant need nowadays to add innovation upon innovation, with the risk of causing such a profound change that it has an impact on the configuration of the biological DNA of the natural landscape around us. The only way out is for the designer to learn to live with future expectations, anticipating needs and displaying the spirit of adaptation that is useful to sustain metamorphosis.
In Echo of Desolation, Mattia Lavacca (Graphic Design, Rome) explores the problems Planet Earth is currently dealing with, expressing its rebellion in the form of a volcanic eruption. In the almost abstract photographic diptychs of Nothing ever happened, Mirko Ostuni (Photography, Rome) depicts the loves of today's life, in which the digital is both a means of contact and knowledge and an end to reflections, focusing on sensations experienced first-hand.
In the artwork Words we carry by Sofia Quadrivi (Graphic Design, Milan), an enigmatic figure emerges through an intricate tangle of metal wires, symbolising Gen Z and the sense of imprisonment it feels towards the future. Each thread reflects a fear, a concern or a challenge, forming a powerful image of a connected but ensnared youth, seeking emancipation and change. In the animated short Memory Reboot, Gaia Trappolini (CG Animation, Rome) brings a humorous take on the bond (passing through electric current) between an old man and a youthful-looking android, who is taking the final memories from the former - dying in hospital - as if he were a hard disk.
Finally, in the work Cracks, Camilla Zanetti (Fashion Stylist, IED Milano) perceives the future as an empty vessel to be filled with stories and labours, but marked by the cracks of existing inequalities and injustices, which sound just like creaking: the sound that accompanies the emergence of a crack. As it widens, the fissure neatly but subtly separates two parts, which will not fit together again except by the hand of man: the vase is not broken, the cracks (with a collective effort) can be repaired.
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