Paolo Deganello Architetto
Intifada
Anno: 1988
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Produced by : Venini
This product appears in the Venini Catalogue under the name Prothesis, but I call it "Intifada", but I call "Intifada", but people at Venini said it was not a good idea at that time. It is a flower growing from a glass rock and it can only stand thanks to a steel prothesis. it is intended to show the cruelty of that prosthesis and the flowers desperate will to live. During Saturday night dinner at 13 Gobbi in Florence with Ettore Sottsass, nanda Pivano and the other colleagues of Archizoom group, i often clashed with Sottsass's pacifism and maintained the unavoidable need for armed struggle on behalf the weak. My colleagues ften kicked me in the shins under the table because I woludn't "give up" and the argument often got heated. My flower holder, which should have been sold most of all to luxury restaurants that love to keep a little flower in the center of the table, is now in some museum but has certainly not had an enthusiastic reception in the marketplace, even if it has been called Prothesis. And neither has the increasingly dramatic struggle of the Palestinian people had much success as criminal indifference to the massacre continues as teenagers throw stones at tanks. Can design pose itself as a denunciation of human misery?