From a stone to a simulated human heart, the Italian designer Andrea Branzi and Japanese designer Kenya Hara, trace the design history of tools from the stone age to today, in the Neo Pre History – 100 Verbs exhibition at the Triennale di Milano.
Curators Branzi and Hara’s poetic exhibition retraces the long journey from the instruments of ancient prehistory to the latest nano-technologies.
A journey inspired by the power of “100 verbs” and “100 instruments” which, like streams of mysterious, life-giving energy, guide the viewer through the dark clouds of history and of infinite space.
The succinctly conceived, linguistically charged exhibition lends itself easily to book form, and the accompanying catalog is filled with stark scans of the implements from the show and poetic descriptions of what our worldly impulses mean.
No 64, “Attack: To assault an opponent, using weapons. To actively and strategically deliver injury and harm to another.” is paired with a Vespa scooter with a bazooka, 1956-1959.
They have done so by choosing a hundred tools, and exhibiting them in chronological order, to show the development of the stone, for example, to a rudimentary device for crushing, into progressively more refined ones, like arrowheads.
Each object is identified by a verb to indicate its function: smash, kill, learn, love, relax, intimidate and so on.
A journey inspired by the power of “100 verbs” and “100 instruments” which, like streams of mysterious, life-giving energy, guide the viewer through the dark clouds of history and of infinite space.
Reaching all the way to today’s frontiers of scientific research, which is striving to prolong human survival by creating spare parts for our bodies.
The as yet relatively unexplored twenty-first century is in this sense a new prehistoric age – a time when the destiny of humanity still had no clear direction and when objects possessed many meanings, from their practical uses to ritual and magical functions.
Artificial thought today marks the beginning of a new anthropology, a new stage in human evolution, in which – as in ancient prehistory – we cannot make out our overall destiny but only our individual leaps in the dark.
This loss of direction is still very much a part of the extreme vitality and creativity of human thought and technology, which is to be found both in instruments of death and in the extension of life towards a future still waiting to be explored.
The exhibition does not therefore intend to investigate the future, but rather to look at the present and at its most ingenious and dangerous aspects.
The exhibition, which forms part of the XXI Triennale International Exhibition presented throughout Milan this summer, moves through the centuries to the propellers, engines, cars, missiles and assault rifles of the industrial age, while acknowledging improvisational examples of design, that have become ubiquitous and immensely powerful, like this white flag of surrender No 62.
“Artificial thought today marks the beginning of a new anthropology, a new stage in human evolution, in which – as in ancient prehistory – we cannot make out our overall destiny but only our individual leaps in the dark”….. Andrea Branzi
Branzi and Hara, aimed to subjectively break the full spectrum of human desire down to 100 actions, so they selected single items that correspond with common verbs and housed most in glass vitrines.
The show begins with an utterly simple instrument representing the word “exist”: “an unprocessed stone, found in nature.”
No 2 & 3 Objects stones, a crude ax head with a handgrip (“hold”), and another ground down into a progressively blunter instrument (“destroy”).
No 10, “fear” (an ominous granite burial chamber);
No 22, “love” (a jade bead meant to attract spirits);
No 41, “improve” (a Merino sheep, evolved in Spain by careful breeding)
No 49, “think” (a manuscript of the poem “L’Infinito,” handwritten by Giacomo Leopardi);
No 68, “fascinate” (a 1950 bottle of Chanel No. 5);
No 74, “trend” (a 1979 Sony Walkman);
No 96, “rely” (a 2008 iPhone 3GS)…
The hundredth object, chosen to symbolize “regenerate,” is the visualization of a reproduced human heart, circling back to the origin of life itself.
no images were found
The narration “by words and objects” is developed through verbs and artifacts relating to them which refer to the most various needs of human life: utensils to get food and containers to store it; devices to kill and annihilate; objects for communication, for writing and for traveling; a sofa for relaxing.
Proceeding along the exhibition, the verbs relate to increasingly sophisticated wishes and to artifacts which constantly push forward the limits of the possible, like a wing suit to fly, an erotic doll to love, and technological prosthesis to replace part of the human body.
Andrea Branzi
The exhibition retraces the long journey from the instruments of ancient prehistory to the latest nano-technologies.
A journey inspired by the power of “100 verbs” and “100 instruments” which, like streams of mysterious, life-giving energy, guide the viewer through the dark clouds of history and of infinite space.
Reaching all the way to today’s frontiers of scientific research, which is striving to prolong human survival by creating spare parts for our bodies.
The as yet relatively unexplored twenty-first century is in this sense a new prehistoric age – a time when the destiny of humanity still had no clear direction and when objects possessed many meanings, from their practical uses to ritual and magical functions.
Artificial thought today marks the beginning of a new anthropology, a new stage in human evolution, in which – as in ancient prehistory – we cannot make out our overall destiny but only our individual leaps in the dark.
This loss of direction is still very much a part of the extreme vitality and creativity of human thought and technology, which is to be found both in instruments of death and in the extension of life towards a future still waiting to be explored.
The exhibition does not therefore intend to investigate the future, but rather to look at the present and at its most ingenious and dangerous aspects.
Kenya Hara
” As human beings, we have developed our skills by means of tools. At the same time, tools have increased our desires, so the history of man’s desires can also be viewed as a history of tools.
A hundred tools and a hundred verbs, ranging from the Stone Age to the present day, have been chosen for this exhibition.
The verbs indicate human activities, which is to say, desires that have become words. And, if we match the tools and verbs, we can create a vision of the history of human desires that is easy to understand.
Human history bears the signs of a whole series of religious, political, technological and economic changes, but in this exhibition the strands that weave the story of mankind have been completely left out. In other words, the aim is to observe the history of mankind from a single point of view, free from any influence of religion, technology, ideology, race or whatever.
Now that we are in the twenty-first century and heading towards an age of artificial intelligence, it is essential to reflect on how humanity is to evolve and what situation it will find itself in.
The Neo-Prehistory: 100 Verbs exhibition retraces the history of mankind from a general point of view and, to the extent that it examines the bases we are on, it constitutes a watershed and well expresses the message of “Design after Design” of the 2016 Triennale.
I consider it very important that I have been able to put on this exhibition in collaboration with the designer and design theorist Andrea Branzi.
First of all, take a good look at the objects from the Stone Age: the first tools that man managed to create still exist in the hands of modern man, and maybe reflect the same intelligence, and the same mistakes.
At the same time, they are very beautiful and in this beauty – I believe – we can possibly read the destiny and future of humanity.
I do hope they can help you imagine what the future that awaits humanity might be”
