Glossary for the New Millennium. Andrea Branzi and Elisa C. Cattaneo

Glossary for the New Millennium is an exhibition curated by Jeannette Sordi and Felipe Vera for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Quinta Normal Chile showcasing recent projects by Andrea Branzi and Elisa C. Cattaneo. The exhibition reflects on their relevance in relation to emerging and dynamic contexts such as the Chilean. Since the sixties, the work of Andrea Branzi, Italian artist and designer, founder of the Radical movement in Italy, has made a practical and theoretical critique of the development and impact of the modern rationalist movement. In his recent formulation called “New Athens Charter”, Branzi elaborates a creative speculation on the principles that should govern the metropolis of the present. A metropolis that will not offer permanent solutions but will be based on reversibility. A metropolis allowing functional undefinedness, in which cohabitation between the living and the dead and between men and animals can occur. A city that can be thought of as a hi-tech favela, including a personal computer every 20m2. Cattaneo, has continued the work of Branzi, developing ideas and concepts in a contemporary practice, articulating the notion of WeakCity, as a theory and praxis. The exhibition has been curated as a manifesto that condenses ideas, perspectives, and words that can allow us to talk about what a metropolis means for the third millennium. The artists provocations lead to critical thinking of aesthetics as well as natural and sensory ecologies of the contemporary city, proposing new urban, human, physical and erotic relationships; weaker, reversible and diffuse.

The exhibition includes two versions of the New Athens Charter drawn by Andrea Branzi, his video Wild Metropolis, the Weak City manifesto in five representations by Elisa C. Cattaneo, and a dialogue between the two artists / architects / urban thinkers on a possible Glossary for the New Millenium developed and recorded for this exhibition.

– Andrea Branzi and Elisa C. Cattaneo. Glossary for the New Millenium. Curated by Jeannette Sordi and Felipe Vera, Museum of Contemporary art of Santiago MAC Quinta Normal, November 2014.

The catalogue of the exhibition is published by ARQ Ediciones (2015) as “Andrea Branzi. Ten Humble Suggestions for a New Athens Charter | From Radical Design to Post Environmentalism,” in English and Spanish. The book expands on the work shown in the exhibition, with two introductory essays by Jeannette Sordi and Felipe Vera.