ZEITGEIST19 Curated Podcast

Episode Summary:

In this episode we meet Dr. Roberto Ridolfi, who speaks with us about the rising inequalities, the phenomena of nationalism and the fragile side of globalisation. Through the lens of multiculturalism, he explains to us why we are in the same storm but not in the same boat and how different cultures are responding to COVID-19’s paralysis according to their assets and beliefs. Roberto shares with us how he envisions the recovery of the global economy and why we should eventually regenerate a new way of thinking and redefine the concepts of solidarity, tolerance and partnership in our delicate world.

How can we transform the economy in a more sustainable one? Why do we need contemporary philosophers more than ever? What is the new paradigm to look at?

*In Collaboration with MdA Design Agency, this episode is dedicated to the dilemma of multiculturalism in relation to the current global isolation. Having experienced the terrifying pandemic, which affects all segments of our living, one wonders Are we really in this together or have never been this much apart?

The Speaker:

Roberto Ridolfi graduated in Engineering from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" (1985), continuing his studies with a PhD in technologies (1991) and a Master in Business Administration (1998). He has 35 years of professional experience, 25 of which with the European Commission as Principal Coordinator, Head of Division, Director of Department, Ambassador to various countries for the European External Service. He has worked and lived in 9 countries on 4 continents: Brazil, United States, Italy, Malawi, Namibia, Kosovo, Belgium, Uganda and Fiji Islands. He is currently assistant general Director of FAO, with special responsibilities for FAO, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, support to the World Food Summit in 2021 and for the G-20 in 2021. Both tasks are strongly aimed at achieving the goals set by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs that underpin his work as a Blended Finance manager since 2008 in investment funds and architect of the EU's external investment plan.

Hosts: Elizabeth Zhivkova & Farah Piriye

Co-host: Maddalena d'Alfonso, MdA Design Agency

Sign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.com

For sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at [email protected]

Episode Summary:

In Episode VII, one of the leading voices of our generation, Arturo Galansino, Director of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, transports us to the capital city of Tuscan region, as we dive into a timely conversation about how art can reconnect us with the environment, how a museum can turn into a laboratory for experimentation and join forces with the science; and how the foundation is looking for more sustainable paths of operating. The episode features Galansino’s thoughts about artworks communicating in poetic yet effective ways, touching the visitors souls and spirits; as well as his major objective, which is to bring Florence, known for its glorious past, back to the international map of contemporary art scene.

The Speaker:

Arturo Galansino, who previously held curatorial positions at Musée du Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery and Royal Academy of Arts in London, worked on such critically-acclaimed exhibitions as Verrocchio, the first major retrospective dedicated to the master of the Renaissance genius; Giovanni Battista Moroni; Rubens and his Legacy; Renaissance Impressions, amongst others. Galansino, who was educated in Milan and subsequently in Turin, where he gained a research doctorate in Art History and Criticism, is now chairing Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence - the first example of an independent public-private cultural foundation in Italy. Together with his team, Galansino develops a cultural strategy of exceptional consistency, forging new ways of communicating art and culture to its audience, conducting an energetic dialogue between Old Masters and Contemporary Art, all within the historical setting of monumental Palazzo Strozzi.

Hosts: Farah Piriye and Elizabeth Zhivkova

Sign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.com

For sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at [email protected]

Episode Summary: In this episode we meet green tech entrepreneur Lubomila Jordanova, who shares with us her vision on a carbon neutral and conscientious economy. She is a firm believer that each of us has the power to pave the way to a more sustainable future of the world. Lubomila talks about the most recent challenges in fighting Global Warming and the importance of every small act. She also suggests on how a company can reduce its environmental impact and how her innovative digital platform efficiently assists in re-creating the agenda towards running a more ethical business, gently syncing in harmony with our planet. Why? Simply because there is no plan B for it. Now is the time when we have the opportunity to reshape our economies and support life on Earth.

How to become future-proof? How to be part of the fight against Climate Change?

The Speaker: Lubomila Jordanova is a Bulgarian technological entrepreneur based in Berlin, Germany. She is the founder of Plan A (https://plana.earth), the first Emission Reduction Software which allows businesses to calculate, monitor and reduce their carbon footprint. As well she is a co-founder of GreenTech Alliance movement, putting in touch environmental and technological start-ups with mentors and investors for the sake of a better and more sustainable future for all.

Hosts: Elizabeth Zhivkova and Farah Piriye

Sign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.com

For sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at [email protected]

Episode summary: “We are literally surrounded with data. How can we imagine this invisible dimension of reality that is shaping our future?” In the current environment, today’s episode with an artist and designer Richard Vijgen (1982), whose work provides poetical interpretations of data and proposes a dialogue between the human perspective and the disembodied world of digital networks, algorithms and wireless communication, couldn’t feel more timely. Richard has collaborated with film makers, artists, scientists, academic and commercial organizations to visualize and explore datasets on many topics that he discusses with us, opening a door to an invisible universe of data science, new media artists and collecting habits of experiential and digital art.

About the speaker: Founded in 2009, Studio Richard Vijgen that is based in the Netherlands, has been evolving into an experimental practice that explores new technologies, interactions and aesthetics to visualize the invisible. Richard Vijgen’s work has been exhibited in and collected by museums and arts institutions across the world including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Barbican Gallery, ZKM, Ars Electronica, Vitra Design Museum and Manifesta 12. Richard Vijgen is a lecturer at the department of Art Design and Technology at ArtEZ school of Art and Design and frequently serves as a guest lecturer at art schools and universities across Europe and North America. He has received a number of awards and prizes including the Dutch Design Awards, Prix Ars Electronica (honourable mention) , European Design Award.

Richard Vijgen writes about data visualization and digital culture and has published articles in the Yale Architectural Journal, Volume Magazine, New Challenges for Data Design and the Parsons Journal for Information Mapping.

Hosts: Elizabeth Zhivkova and Farah Piriye

Sign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.com

For sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at [email protected]

Episode summary: What is principal to an art institution when it comes to big commitments such as commissioning? To what extent museums can contribute to the discourse about socio-ecological emergencies and How to remain relevant if people can’t physically visit the space? In this week’s episode, Suad Garayeva-Maleki, the Artistic Director of YARAT Contemporary Art Space in Baku, Azerbaijan, dives into the interdisciplinary universe of a contemporary art institution and the Politics of Ecology, Social practice and Humanocentrism. In this bold and crucial conversation Suad talks about a museum as a place where people come together and think together, where international artists arrive to create a work in response to regional context in order to become easily translatable to the local communities, and where ambitious projects should be realised focusing on eco- aesthetics and critical social issues.

About the speaker: Suad Garayeva-Maleki is the Artistic Director of YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Azerbaijan. YARAT is a not-for-profit institution with 3 exhibition venues, an international artist residency and a multidisciplinary public and education programme, including lectures, workshops, and festivals. Suad has worked on special commissions and projects by artists such as Goshka Macuga, Neil Beloufa, Hannah Black, Oscar Murillo, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Taus Makhacheva, Babi Badalov, Aida Mahmudova, Pedro Gomez-Egaña, Ilkin Huseynov, Zamir Suleymanov and others, as well as numerous thematic group shows. She also curated "The Union of Fire and Water"- YARAT's critically acclaimed Collateral Event at the 56th Venice Biennale in Palazzo Barbaro with Almagul Menlibayeva and Rashad Alakbarov. Her curatorial activity includes independent projects such as Mike Nelson's "Cloak" for Nouveau Musee National de Monaco (2016) and "It's OK to Change Your Mind: Contemporary Russian Art from the Gazprombank Collection" for MAMbo, Bologna (2018). Prior to joining YARAT in 2014, she was a specialist at Sotheby’s London where she curated groundbreaking exhibitions “At The Crossroads: Contemporary Art from Caucasus and Central Asia” (2013) and “At The Crossroads 2: Art from Istanbul to Kabul” (2014), as well as heading up the “Contemporary East” sales. She was a faculty member at Istituto Europeo di Design Venice in 2015-2016 and is a PhD candidate at the European Graduate School, Saas Fee.

Hosts: Farah Piriye and Elizabeth Zhivkova

Sign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.com

For sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at [email protected]

Episode Summary: In this episode we meet Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alves, whose work feels particularly urgent in the current environment we find ourselves in. Her research-based, highly poetic, and astonishingly courageous practice continuously addresses ecological and social issues for the betterment of humanity. In this genuine and intimate conversation, Alves discusses her childhood experiences that formed her artistic consciousness, how the global cultural scene needs to avoid categorisations, and how her body of work gives witness to silenced histories, creating spaces of agency for oppressed and discriminated cultures, ongoing environmental emergencies, and the never-ending crisis of cultural authority.

About the Speaker: Maria Thereza Alves is a Brazilian artist and activist living in Europe. Alves’s oeuvre comprises equally political texts, artist’s texts, videos, mixed media installations, drawings, photographs, performances, in situ works, talks and documentations of important moments in history. Since the early 1970s, both the devastating effects of Portuguese imperialism on the indigenous peoples of her native Brazil and the impact of the Spanish conquest in the Americas, has been central to her practice. Through her creative and intelligent body of work Alves has addressed concepts that question social circumstances, researching social and cultural phenomena. In 2017, she was awarded the Vera List Prize. Selected exhibitions include solo shows at IAC - Institut d’Art Contemporain (Villeurbanne), Parsons - The New School of Design (New York), CAAC - Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (Seville), Musée d’Histoire de Nantes - Château des Ducs de Bretagne, and group shows at Manifesta 7 (Trento), Serpentine Gallery (London), (d)OCUMENTA 13 (Kassel), Bétonsalon (Paris), Crac Alsace, Jewish Museum (Berlin), 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, 29th Sao Paulo Biennial, amongst others.

Hosts: Elizabeth Zhivkova and Farah Piriye

Sign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.com

For sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at [email protected]

Episode Summary: In this episode we meet designers Andrea and Simone from Studio Formafantasma, who share with us their vision on regenerating design through continuing the discipline by integrating more intelligent contemporary interventions, while taking a step back towards nature. In the current context of the pandemic, two of their exhibitions, 'Cambio' in Serpentine Galleries and Rijksmuseum's 'Baroque in Rome', are closed to the public; they tell us about their unforeseen challenges in a time of prolific changes and their thoughts on the enhanced opportunities in the digital dimension. The duo discusses the importance of slowing down, incorporating sustainability into the design process and their optimistic beliefs in a more collaborative future.

The Speakers: Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, known as Studio Formafantasma, are an Italian creative duo based in Amsterdam. They are revolutionaries in the design field, having a multidisciplinary research-based practice, acting as a bridge between craft, industry, object and user. Through their path of exploration, their work has been presented internationally in museums such as New York's Museum of Modern Art and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, London’s Serpentine Galleries, Victoria & Albert museum; Centre Pompidou in Paris, and many others. Whether designing for a client or investigating alternative applications of materials, Studio Formafantasma apply the same rigorous attention to context, process and detail to every project they undertake. The added nuance for the duo is that they do so with an eye to the historical, political and social forces that have shaped their environments. Esteemed design critics listed their studio amongst a handful of practices that would shape the future of design.

Hosts: Elizabeth Zhivkova and Farah Piriye

Sign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.com

For sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at [email protected]

Episode Summary

The world’s biggest and most renowned design and furniture fair Milan’s Salone del Mobile, which was supposed to happen last month, has been officially cancelled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic - first time in its history, since its very launch in 1961. Today, ZG19 is meeting (at distance) one-of-a-kind Milan gallerist Nina Yashar, whose legendary Nilufar space is a must-see stop on the Design Week trail, to ask about how the misfortune is affecting the industry in long term perspective and how we should re-shape public spaces, incorporating smart technologies and well-being oriented trends in design.

The Speaker

An interdisciplinary universe of Milan’s design temple Nilufar gallery, located in Via della Spiga, is of three dimensions: Discovering, Crossing, Creating. Its founder, Nina Yashar, who was born in Tehran and moved along with her family to Milan during the swinging 60s, is a ceaseless explorer. Her vision stands at perpetually observing and scouting new talents and movements; continuously creating eclectic kaleidoscopes and heterogeneous matrixes by joining together time, geography and traditions; and finally eagerly giving life to bold projects and unrivalled site-specific shows, working both with great masters and emerging authors. Nilufar, meaning Lotus flower in Persian, as a symbol of creation and mysticism, composes dialogues between works from different cultures and periods in a single space, opening up doors to a new category that Yashar calls “functional art”, a hybrid where design meets art. Always a step ahead of her contemporaries, Nina Yashar supports a more female-integrated design scene, mixing vintage and contemporary pieces in the projects set in her enormous experimental interdisciplinary furniture showroom Nilufar Depot, founded in 2015.

Hosts: Elizabeth Zhivkova and Farah Piriye

Sign up for ZEITGEIST19's newsletter at https://www.zeitgeist19.com

For sponsorship enquiries, comments, ideas and collaborations, email us at [email protected]

EPISODE SUMMARY.

On this episode of ZEITGEIST 19, Peter Pichler has a coffee with us as he discusses the role of architecture and its potential for a greener future.

THE SPEAKER.

An architect, winner of the LICC award ‘Artist of the Year' and a former student of Zaha Hadid, Peter Pichler is a leading voice in the cutting edge design and building industry.

“There has to be a radical change - to think different and to build different.”

CURATED TALK.

Our curated talk with Peter Pichler took place in April 2019 at the historic N'Ombra de Vin in Milan. As well, we fundraised and benefited CrowdForest for re-planting Italian forests, damaged by wildfires, with drones.