Culture Now and EP Book Launch: Carlo Caldini & Martino Gamper in conversation with Alex Coles & Catharine Rossi.

To launch the first volume of EP, The Italian Avant-Garde: 1968-1976 (Sternberg Press, 2013), the architect Carlo Caldini and the furniture designer Martino Gamper discuss the legacy of the radical Italian avant-garde with the book’s editors, Alex Coles and Catharine Rossi.

Carlo Caldini is a Florence-based architect, and was co-founder (with Giorgio Birelli, Fabrizio Fiumi, and Paolo Galli) of Gruppo 9999. For EP, Carlo Caldini describes how the Space Electronic discotheque devised by Gruppo 9999 in the 1970s served as a progressive multimedia environment that nurtured the convergence of art, music, design, theater, and architecture in Florence.

Martino Gamper is a London-based furniture designer. For EP, Gamper talks with Michelangelo Pistoletto on the importance of Arte Povera as a form of socially engaged practice. Recent projects by Gamper include Monacopolis at The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and the Postmundus Chair for Nilufar in Milan.

Alex Coles is Professor of Transdisciplinary Studies, School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield. He is the author of The Transdisciplinary Studio (Sternberg Press, 2012) and the editor of Design and Art (MIT/Whitechapel, 2007).

Catharine Rossi is Senior Lecturer in Design History at Kingston University.

To coincide with the launch of EP Vol.1, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up (1966) will be screening at the ICA Cinema from Friday 31 May - Sunday 2 June.