IRIS CERAMICA GROUP AND MC A ARCHITECTS PRESENTS IN BOLOGNA THE PROJECT POLLUTION 2018
It was in the sixties that Fondazione Iris came up with the idea of Pollution, a revolutionary artistic project reflecting on pollution, as an act of political, social and environmental accusation.
In Bologna’s Piazza Santo Stefano, from October 8 to 14 1972, Gianni Sassi, artistic director of Fondazione Iris Ceramica and the instigator of the whole project, appointed 26 artists to draw the horizons of an ecological conscience and represent 26 different “ways of responding to mutant nature”.
Mario Ceroli, Ugo La Pietra, Armando Marrocco, Claudio Parmiggiani, Gianni Ruffi and the UFO group produced some of the installations in the square, which had been paved over with ten thousand ceramic tiles representing lumps of soil, made by the company especially for the occasion. The same image appeared on the cover of Battiato’s album Pollution, released in the same year; the musician performed at the exhibition on its closing day.
The horizon of the challenge, which is more relevant than ever today, is identified in the words of Romano Minozzi, who was Chairman at the time and still is today: “Iris believes that problems with quality of life are already having a major impact on industry in Italy, and that they will become of key importance in the near future” (interview in HUMUS no.1, 1973).
In 46 years, the company has grown into the Iris Ceramica Group, offering a model of a zero emissions factory and products with zero environmental impact: the perfect condition for creating a permanent laboratory questioning the relationship between man, nature and public space.
In continuity with the cultural and social value of Pollution 1972 and the power of its message, the Iris Ceramica Group promotes Pollution 2018, identifying young people as the visionaries of today, capable of imagining and planning the future, coming up with new ways of working in urban space and establishing a new hierarchy of sustainable values for man and the environment.
The young professionals of the SOS School of Sustainability post-graduate academy, founded in Bologna by Mario Cucinella, have been commissioned to express the themes of Pollution 2018. The method adopted in the study programme and the holistic vision with which SOS addresses sustainability issues are the foundations on which to build a project combining education with research and professional practice.
“We share a profound common vision of sustainability with the Iris Ceramica Group,” says Mario Cucinella, “a company which has been working in this area since the seventies, with Pollution, for a new aesthetic of pollution and the publication of humus (1973-1975), a magazine of culture, strategy and ceramic technique published every four months. The owners already had a clear vision of the relationship between industrial production and pollution at that time. A vision which is still a part of the company’s heritage, and, almost 50 years later, has transformed the problem into an opportunity that is not only economic but environmental. The future will increasingly be about the quality of materials, the capacity of materials to play an active role in reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Not just an active logic, but one that determines the entire production process”.
Pollution 2018 will be a laboratory for sharing and dialogue between multiple voices, with the participation of the Iris Ceramica Group, SOS School of Sustainability, students from Bologna International School, Ascolto Attivo, Laboratorio delle Idee and experts in a variety of disciplines, each of whom will bring their own skills and alternative way of perceiving and living urban space.
The work team has traced a route that begins with the act of accusation characterising the first edition of Pollution, and searches for new tools permitting responsible, shared, participatory use of urban space, in which to rebuild the bond between man and nature.
The reflection that is emerging will be represented in the historic centre of the city of Bologna during the next edition of Cersaie 2018.