30 Sottsass

When I Was aChildWhen I was very, very young, a childof five or six, I was certainly no infantprodigy, but I drew pictures of homes,flowers and vases, gypsy wagons, round-abouts, and cemeteries (perhaps be-cause the First World War had justended) and then, when I was a bit old-er, I carved beautifully tapering sailingboats out of the tender barks of MonteBondone pine trees; I also built a steam-boat (which promptly sank) out of woodan{ strips of metal, using the toy pres-su-e'boiler of one of my schoolmates.This boy was the rich son of the ownerof the Grand Hotel, and together withCiorgio and Paolo Crafier we builtcableways as long as 200 meters, whichran from the houses on the Adige ashigh as the rocky summit of Doss Trent,for we had found a storehouse of ballsof paper strings abandoned in a cellarby the retreating Austrians (or perhapsstolen by grandfather Grafier). There,in a forest brook, we even built an ex-traordinary windmill which also drovea mechanism with a hammer, etc., erect-ing it amidst raspberries and the sunlitwebs of enormous spiders. When I wasa bit older, about nine or ten, I built ba-rometers and wooden spyglasses in myUncle Max's workshop (my uncle wasa joiner) in order to follow the move-ments of the stars, but of course neitherthe barometer nor the spyglass everworked, despite the design I had madefor an astronomy of my own imagina-tion . . . and so it went.

It has always seemed to me themost natural thing in the world to drawand make things; anything that I or theothers could use to measure air, space,time, days and nights; anything that

would wake me up in themorning,trem-bling with the fixed idea that there was

something to do or perhaps that I hadonly to run down to the wood stillheavy with dew, silence, and the smellof mushrooms, in order to see whetherthe thing that I had made, that we allhad made, was still working; whetherwe had been right to make it, now thatI was looking at it with the coolnessthat came with the night-if you followme.

It has always seemed to me themost natural thing in the world to spend

my days like that, trying as best as Icould, along with the others, to become

one with the passing time, to become

one with the Planet whirling us roundin and out of the seasons. Together withthe others, bending over the ground and

scrutinizing myself in the eyes of the

others when I handed to them-as if Ihad picked it up as I was loafing around

-something I had made mYself' I re-

member the time I brought Nanda thatwhite piece of pottery with the red, yel'low and green reliefs that I had added

in the form of hillocks. She smiled and

smiled and kissed me very lovingly.However, even if I Put the things

I had made in the hands of others, actu-

ally I don't think that I ever distin-guished much between designing a thing,building it, and using it; not even be'tween the fact that I did it alone or withsomeone else. If I got the idea of build'ing a boat, I was the one who designed

it, I was the one who built it, captainedit in the Pacific, defended it from the

mortal danger of the atolls, and droppedanchor near the coral beaches; when wewere together, if we got the idea ofbuilding a cableway, we were the ones

to design it and build it, and we, "thepeople" to use it. Nor, as we built thesethings did we have any idea of handingthem over to anybody in particular; wefelt no arrogance, no sense of powercoming from the knowledge of what wemay have been able to do. Neither I northe others considered ourselves design-ers, artists, craftsmen, or engineers forthe public, and even less in any way dis-tinguished from the public: we werenot looking for consumers or observers,nor did we seek any approval or dis-approval beyond what we all found inourselves. Whatever we did was reward-ed by the very act of doing it, by thedesire to do it; and anything that wasdone was, after all, part of one extraor-dinary sphere only: life. Design waslife itself : it was the day from dawn todusk, it was the night-time vigil, theawareness of the world that surround-ed us, of its matter, lights, distances,weights, resistances, fragility, use andconsumption, birth and death. And whatelse ? . . . It was, at this point, also theawareness of our group o{ boys as a fullgroup which was very much alive.

Now I've grown up so much thatmy chest is covered with white hair. Ino longer build boats from bark, norcableways with the family's shoeboxes

and the spools of the sewing machine-spools spirited away from Mother whois bent over torn shirts. Now, sometimes,just as I did then, I do large pieces ofceramic work or I make pieces of furni-ture as big as tombs, or other thingssuch as instruments for journeys per-haps even more mysterious and cer-

tainly more difficult within the sea ofknowledge and in search of a private andpublic Sadhana whose white beach, alas,

When I Was aChild 3l

has still not appeared on the horizon.But this rarely happens to me: it's

a personal matter, an afiair between meand life, which I have rarely had thetime to look after. Instead, now that Iam old, they let rne design electronicmachines and other machines of iron,with flashing phosphorescent lights andsounds which couid be cynical or ironic.Now I am only allowed to design fur-niture which sells, furniture-they say-of some use, use to society-they say-and other things that sell "at bargainprices" they say-so they sell more-forsociety-they say-and so I am now de-signing things of this kind. Now theypay me to design them. Not much, butthey pay me. Now they are looking forand waiting for models from me-ideasand solutions which end who knowswhere.

Now everything seems to havechanged-everything. The things that Imake (alone or with my companions)seem to have changed, as well as theway of doing them, because-farewell OBlue Planet, farewell melodic season,farewell O stones, dust, leaves, pondsand dragonflies, farewell O torrid days,with dead dogs lying by the roadside,with shadows in the woods loominglike prehistoric dragons; farewell OPlanet. For now the things that I do Iseem to do sitting in an air-conditionedbunker or damp artificial light-sittingat this table of white rolled section,sitting in this chair of silver plastic, thecommander of a spaceship traveling atthousands of kilometers an hour, as Isit crushed against this chair, motion-less in the sky.

Now, I have to do my thinkingabout things from an artificial space

without either place or time; a placeonly of words, telephone calls, meetings,schedules, policy, waiting, and failures.Now I am a professional acrobat, actor,tightrope walker for a public that Idon't know and I can hardly imagine-or rather, a public that I invent myself,a faraway public with which I have nocontacts, a public whose talk, applause,and disapproval reach my ears like amufled echo; and in the newspapers Ican read about its wars, catastrophes,droughts, suicides, flights, poverty, andworried holidays along crowdedbeaches, in smoke-drenched stadiumsor wherever else they go. How can Iknow the people who expect things fromme? Those who will use my boats ofbark and my cableways which do notwork? They made me become an o'art-

ist" because, otherwise they wouldn'tpay me. Some people-either becausethey want to pull my leg or because theyactually believe it-even call me Master.Others look at my long hair and say,"How I envy you, you can get awaywith it, you're an artist." And all ofthem now expect explanations, solutions,somersaults I they want to hear the bellsjingle on my cap while they stand andlook on, carefully groomed by the bar-ber, fitted by the tailor, educated inschool, made rich by production, andworthy by their "work." There they siton small or large thrones that they haveconquered, or even on kitchen chairs,because they have been told that theyare not artists, that they cannot afiordto wear long hair, nor to design theirown clothes, nor build their own furni-ture, nor to make up their own sonf4s,nor to write their own poetry, nor toplay with their own children, nor even,

in the end, to know very well wherethey are, nor even to know where theforest is, stones, dust, leaves, ponds,spring, summer-where life and deathare.

I'd like to break down this strangemechanism that I've become involvedin. I'd like to break it down for my ownsake and for the sake of the others, formyself and along with the others. I'dlike it if I didn't have to take on therole of the artist only because that waythey pay me; and I'd like it if it neve=even occurred to them that someonc.isan artist and so he has to be paid for it.

I'd like it if either all of us ornone of us were artists, just as we werewhen we made drawings, boats, ships,windmills, cableways and spyglasses.I'd Iike to think that in some way Icould recover the happiness of myyouth: the happiness in which "design"or art-so-called art-was life itself, andin which life was art-by which I meancreativeness, the knowledge of beingpart of this Planet and of the living his-tory of the people around us. I don'tknow whether I'm being clear. I'd alsolike it if during this perpetual journeyin search of a common Sadhana, themore fortunate and more beautiful peo-ple, the washed and scented with theirhappy eyes, were companions and notmasters, neither priests nor preachersfor those whose destiny it was, perhaps,to be less fortunate-if there are any, ifthere really are any. And I'd like it ifthere were no more talk about the for-tunate and unfortunate, of better andworseo of those who are artists andthose who are not; if instead they talkedabout things to do together, about thethings we are surely all capable of do-

Sottsass

ing, as we were caPable of doing to'gether many years ago'-

And that's the long and the short

o{ it.I should like to find a Place where,

together, people could trY to make

things with their hands or with ma-

chines, or any other waY, not as boY

scouts nor even as craftsmen, or work-

ers? or even less as "artists,t' but as

men with arms, legs, hands, feet, hair,sex, saiiva, eyes and breath-and tomake those things not to possess them

and keep them or even to give them to

others, but to see what has to be done to

make certain things-that is, to try tomake them, to see whether all of us can

make things, other things, with ourhands or machines or whatever else.

Can it be tried?My friends saY it can.