UFO (Performance Aboard a Boat by UFO-Mino Vismara—Violin

One Wilshire, an edifice located in Downtown Los Angeles, tells the fiction of office space inside a building with the appearance of an office building. Around the turn of the 21st century, One Wilshire became more of a data center than a clerical workplace for people. As we transition from processing paperwork with stacks of physical paper into a society where data is digital, the idea of storing “paperwork” gradually becomes an action without the participation of humans.1

COVID-19, a global pandemic that transformed how people work, emptied out downtowns of many major metropolitan areas around the world into husks of office buildings without humans. Furthermore, the idea of digital paperwork became the only contactless paperwork that matters in a new and mysophobic reality—all administrative processes are kept as non-physical as possible. The office meetings are now on Zoom, framed within screens that zoom in and out of the private spaces where residential activities happen. One Wilshire is not an office building—yet the digital matter that makes up the human bureaucratic functions are now passed through and stored inside of a building that looks like an office space.

1 Varnelis, Kazys. The Centripetal City. See https:// www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/17/varnelis.php.

UFO, Investigation of the control of the State over the territory, 19711973, Patrizia Cammeo/Riccardo Foresi Archives, Florence As a new reality stranger than fiction, the world we live in now collapses layers of experiences that are simultaneously factual and fictional. This short story, “Zoom of a Zoom of a Zoom”, zooms in and out the spaces that used to be real, but are still real in an immaterial way, omnipresent between multiple scales.

1 Varnelis Kazys, The Centripetal City. See https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/17/varnelis. php.

e

c

a b

d

Scale, Displace, Replicate

(ab)Normal

Even today, in the context of the innumerable symbols that distinguish contemporary society, icons prove to be a decisive means used by individuals to communicate and to identify with what are true communities. Over the course of the last few decades, from the artistic avant-gardes to architecture,1 the change in scale of these signs, starting with the colossal, has been widely employed to evaluate their relevance and their nature as an eloquent device. Examples of such alterations in size, from enormous statues of women to buttons as big as lakes, can by now be found all over the globe, becoming an emblematic testimony to a state of affairs.2

Given the role that these semantic procedures play in the system of communication and language, the modification of dimensional parameters can be considered a way of undermining the hierarchical structure of society. Originally tried out by the advertising industry of mass society, altering the size of icons has established itself as a sophisticated tactic of political marketing, to the point where it has become a weapon in what we could call a genuine psychological war. It is clear that manipulation of an object’s dimensional relations amplifies the impact of the messages that it conveys to the emotional unconscious of the user, going as far as to trigger primordial reactions of attraction or repulsion that are hard to control. The premises of the experiments with the manipulation of icons can be found in the studies of Edward Bernays,3 considered the pioneer of a psychological approach to marketing. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays was perhaps the first to utilise translation of the meaning of icons as a vehicle of expression, with the precise aim of inoculating the collective imagination of American society in the period after World War I with unconscious desires. The “Torches of Freedom” campaign4 launched by Bernays in 1928 with the objective of encouraging the consumption of cigarettes by women, is a perfect example of the experiments conducted on the psychosocial impact of the advertising medium. Until the end of the twenties, it was in fact considered socially unacceptable for women to smoke cigarettes and viewed as a sign of immorality, partly due to the fact that the image of the cigarette in a woman’s mouth was perceived as explicitly pornographic. With “Torches of Freedom,” Bernays put into practice what he had learned from psychology: he disconnected the cylindrical geometry of the cigarette from its presumed resemblance to the male phallus and turned the paradigm on its head by persuading potential female consumers that buying cigarettes would acquire them a

UFO, Dollaro lamp, wedding of Michelangelo Caponetto and Dominique Papi, Florence, 1972, Patrizia Cammeo/Riccardo Foresi Archives, Florence

4

244 Antologia scritti gruppo UFO 1968-1978 ANTO

ANTO 245 4. Antology LOGY

1. Florence Faculty of Architecture— 85 Days of Occupation

Vittorio Maschietto, ‘Facoltà di architettura di Firenze 85 giorni di occupazione’, Quindici, no. 10, 15 April-15 May 1968, p. VI.

Florence: on 23 January 1968 the Faculty of Architecture is occupied by the students. This occupation extends to most of the Faculty, with students striking on average for three days. The police charge at a sit-in in front of the Rectory, causing many injuries. A few days later the Carabinieri turn up at the architecture Faculty to take down names; it is a Sunday afternoon and only about eighty people are there. The next day, the students go to the police station to furnish a full list of the occupiers. They are turned away. It is therefore sent by post.

The distinctive quality of the Architecture Student Movement is the approval and definition of power in the hands of the Assembly.

The power of the Assembly is considered necessary to counterbalance the power of the research institutes and allow independent decision-making about the type of work to be pursued at the university.

Compared to the fruitless attempts at reform that resulted from the struggles of previous years, this formulation of power through the Assembly is a structural upheaval that: — does away with the separation between didactics and research — demolishes academic authoritarianism, in terms of both the forms of blackmail that deprive students of all power to protest (disciplinary sanctions, certifications of attendance, scholarship exams), and the top-down power structure based on chairs (entrenched academic “despots”). — has the political aims of ensuring the right to a higher education and attaining a general student salary — ensures that the struggle can spread beyond its own confines and act in concert with other

Movements of global protest, both nationally and internationally.

On 26 February, motion “A” is approved by the General Assembly: — power shall be exercised at the Faculty of Architecture by the General Assembly: the latter includes everyone who publicly acknowledges its power — individual members of the teaching staff shall take part in the General Assembly on the same footing as individual students

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT FOR CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

A PROJECT BY Beatrice Lampariello False Mirror Office Andrea Anselmo Gloria Castellini Giovanni Glorialanza Filippo Fanciotti Boris Hamzeian

EDITORS Beatrice Lampariello False Mirror Office Andrea Anselmo Boris Hamzeian

CONTRIBUTORS (Ab)normal Marcello Carpino Mattia Inselvini Davide Masserini Luigi Savio Alesssandra Acocella Peter Behrbohm Bureau Spectacular Jimenez Lai False Mirror Office Andrea Anselmo Gloria Castellini Filippo Fanciotti Giovanni Glorialanza Boris Hamzeian Adam Nathaniel Furman Jacopo Galimberti Giovanni Galli Andrew Kovacs Beatrice Lampariello Parasite 2.0 Stefano Colombo Eugenio Cosentino Luca Marullo Point Supreme Konstantinos Pantazis Marianna Rentzou Simon Sadler SONDER Traumnovelle Léone Drapeaud Manuel León Fanjul Johnny Leya ILLUSTRATIONS CREDITS Carlo Bachi, Lapo Binazzi, Patrizia Cammeo, Riccardo Foresi, Titti Maschietto (UFO) Michael Webb (Archigram); Archigram Archives Gianni Pettena Ugo La Pietra; Ugo La Pietra Archives Archizoom; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou Superstudio; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou Alessandro Poli, Roberto Gherardi; courtesy Alessandro Poli Archives Guy Debord, Asger Jorn Carlo Caldini, Fabrizio Fiumi, Paolo Coggiola, Paolo Galli, Andrea Gigli, Mario Presti, courtesy Elettra Fiumi Adolfo Natalini Archives Gruppo T; courtesy Gabriele Devecchi Archives Christo; photo Massimo Piersanti, Archivi MAXXI Arte | Fondo Incontri Internazionali d’Arte (AIIA); courtesy Fondazione MAXXI. © CHRISTO by SIAE 2022 Claes Oldenburg Domus Edilizia Moderna Madelon Vriesendorp Point Supreme Gianni Pettena Nick Hannes Adam Nathaniel Furman False Mirror Office Andrew Kovacs Bob Civil Traumnovelle Jimenez Lai Bureau Spectacular Peter Behrbohm SONDER (ab)Normal Parasite 2.0

Beatrice Lampariello and False Mirror Office thank: Lapo Binazzi, Patrizia Cammeo, Titti Maschietto, Elettra Fiumi, Gianni Pettena, Francesco Caneschi, Emma Bellavita Mussio, UCLouvain, FRAC Centre-Val de Loire, Italian Council, Rolex Centre Library, Fondazione Ugo La Pietra, Casa Masaccio

The book is dedicated to Roberto Gargiani and to the raft of the Medusa he built for young visionaries, the LTH3 laboratory

Project realized thanks to the support of the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture as part of the Italian Council program (IX edition, 2020)

Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT FOR CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTUREUNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT FOR CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

Published by Actar Publishers, New York, Barcelona www.actar.com

Graphic design False Mirror Office - Actar D

Copy editing and corrections Tadzio Koelb Arnau Grima i Santacreu

Translations from Italian Christopher Huw Evans Johanna Bishop

Printing and Binding Arlequin SL

All rights reserved © edition: Actar Publishers © texts: the authors © design, drawings and photographs: the authors

Cover Image: UFO, Chicken Circus Circulation, San Giovanni Valdarno, 1968

Image pp. 10-11: Riccardo Foresi, photographed by Carlo Bachi, 1973, Patrizia Cammeo/Riccardo Foresi Archives, Florence

Image pp. 64-65: UFO, Photography, Faculty of Architecture of University of Florence, 1968, Patrizia Cammeo/Riccardo Foresi Archives, Florence

Image pp. 150-151: UFO, Polyurethane column, 1970, Patrizia Cammeo/Riccardo Foresi Archives, Florence

Image pp. 244-245: UFO and Marino Vismara, Performance for the Venice Art Biennale, B/arca A.N.A.S., Venice Art Biennale, Venice, 1978, Lapo Binazzi Archives, Florence This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, on all or part of the material, specifically translation rights, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or other media, and storage in databases. For use of any kind, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

Distribution Actar D, Inc. New York, Barcelona

New York 440 Park Avenue South, 17th Fl New York, NY 10016, USA T +1 212 966 2207 salesnewyork@actar-d.com

Barcelona Roca i Battle 2-4 08023 Barcelona, SP T +34 933 282 183 eurosales@actar-d.com

Indexing ISBN: 978-1-63840-992-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948147

Printed in Barcelona

Publication Date: July 2022

The publisher has made every effort to contact and recognize the copyright of the owners. If there are cases in which the right credit is not provided, we suggest that the owners of these rights contact the publisher who will make the necessary changes in subsequent editions.