Eleonora Gasparini

How does the presence of an empty exhibition space communicate with the mass-productive nature of a Graduation Show? How do people engage with something which normally comes filled - with outcomes, objects, and any sort of “materiality”? Once one enters this installation, they will realize that nothing is on display, staying true and coherent to the radical decision to stop designing and producing altogether. Moreover, the structure has been thoughtfully assembled from found components that can be taken apart and reused elsewhere, leaving no trace behind. This choice stems from the urgency of a deeper reflection on the relentless capitalist cycle of production and consumption of which (industrial) design is an accomplice. As such, the discipline itself - commonly understood as a problem-solving and sense-making practice - is called into question. 

The project is part of an ongoing and broader inquiry that unfolds through theoretical research and an exercise-based practice of unlearning. Together with community peers, concepts such as nothingness, stillness, unproductiveness, un-functionality, and nonsense have been collectively explored and challenged. 

The negative space of a chair is a new activation for testing the paradoxicality of emptiness and stillness. In the midst of cultural indigestion and hyperactivity (both inside and outside the Academy), emptiness is here claimed as a fundamental gap for silence and pause, rather than a mere absence of the object. The “empty” space of refusal and unproductiveness invites stillness, doing nothing and simply listening - to the loudness of the negative space, while partaking in the co-creation of a social sculpture in pause.