edith retrospective series

Euroluce

Notes, words heard
and told during
salone del mobile,
Milan, april 2024
by Nathan Raccah

1

This plane ride was a blast, so mundane. So the pilot do; suck in cold morning coffee and take off from turpid Brussels, land in Milan, nibble snack while the sun pierce through, leave that behind and land back for a heavy lunch-break in Charleroi, followed by an alcohol-free spritz apero in Milan, and make it just a little late in the night for the family meal in Ittre.

Torn apart but always home, maybe they’re then one of a rearticulated geography that only exists through constant pull of gas energy and one’s focus on similarities rather than differences, where repetition engrave spaces in an artificial continuum. Hmm do you really think so?

2

Fair, Foire, Salone.
an immaculate tyranny of cool and modernism.
Eindhoven, Brussels, Milan.
My grandfather came here before.
Tunis, Paris, Milan.
Prototypes were made, of product never resolved; sand, leather, plastic.

Now is time, to focus on being exceptional.
At least doing exceptional,
smart, aware about what’s happening.

As we are an, organisation with purpose, is an institute.
Factually a collective, but awkwarded.

The opposite of a collective is a lonely man.

We don’t actually like the name so much.
What would all that big marketing plot, that push be for if the name changes and no link can be made anymore between the old self and the new?

3

Casa Commune.

The lamp that started as a replacement of the cheap ikea lantern that our landlords installed and that became it’s own thing. In the end it’s a working table, with; plywood pannel unglued from to high of a table base, stools diligently provided by the organisation, snugged under provide minimum elevation and compartments for storing tools and daily accumulated mess, in the center; aluminium trays or tray papers highlight current elements of inquiry. Objects build in the house, found in the house, for it or not. Because sometime just a wood finish can be enough, like the Koons like blue varnish. Display of wealth for some, poorness for others, not a display for the rest. But we’re getting better at organising space with little means. The tricks of the trade; dim lamp, light divider, rope, low table.

4

How is each teapot each of us?
I guess I’m ornamental, square non square well reflected.

Those little poems our arrangements are.

Find back tax paper as your lamp shade. Cardboard box side table to fill up back when moving out. Don’t poor epoxy on it or it will stay a side table for the end of time, rubish when you don’t need a side table anymore. Books are nice as stacks, so I think; structural, active storage, temporary solution.

It’s so cute to see her making an object, so focus, so slow.
The result of many small gestures,
little dance, for a solid state of an idea to emerge.

Brusselians houses can look quite similar to one another; same floorplan, same mantle.
To recognise one’s home in someone else’s interior is a bad dream.
The Palais de justice is a bad dream,
and politic shapes.

It’s works we should have done before, but we didn’t really had the time, paid time I mean so weird to think that school partly shaped our living room.

5

To nest the hotel like its said in the text,
the possibility of comfort.

Podiums moved to the corridors for the volunteers to seat on, and the tired, the waiters; care over display. Can exhibit be more than a fiction? Sustainability is implicit, embedded value of the simple ground we build on. A keyring corkscrew for instance. How does it feel not to care about one’s home. People are living terribly, and nobody care, they don’t, it is a last resort, who cares? where does this obsession for the domestic come from?

First person in, to welcome, to be, welcoming, a nice guy enters, slowly like a wild cat, eventually bends over the books. As soon as you enter you get the speech so I sneak in and tell him the story; People don’t touch books, don’t grab nor look at them, but the objects you can find in the book, if you want to go through it.

6

Du coin de l’oeil, a nice guy enters, he’s flipping through the pages and takes his time, and no, no talking, just leaves the room. Good, interest shouldn’t be systematic. I like that weight, that freedom to be or not, grabbed by some speech.

Break in the room a man, probably owns the building, nobody like that, but then he started holding his moist hand. I am not willing to have a bad interaction though.

Enters the room a tall and old woman with a bright red cowbow hat and glitters on her cheeks.
A class of finnish toall, all denim, in a whims, they enter all, and leave as swift.
Just a tall guy, a second in front of the lamp, and leaves calmly.
7 super loud fill up the space, a whistle, hey Carlo!
some Are so soft, whisper, big bright orange ikea bags.
saa fff prezzi si si ha hoo and so that is, really?
follows follows, lines of interests, undisturbed by the eavesdrop.
Sometime we ignore them and they become ghosts.
It’s just a space, attempted at connecting.

7

it’s living in the exhibition, in this vip side of the space, or having a serene detachment, and discernment, of our expectation, and sacrifices. regarding the real expectations of that sacrifice when it comes to some stuff related to design writing to the peer so its not so ewkward and one can continue to take pictures of us like… but we like it like that cause that what we wanted to no? and it never failed us nor yield us and I don’t think we’re stars now? but we’re pictured, It’s hard to stay not smiling when the guy is taking all these shots, and they’re talking italian and its great and ho they continued to and the others are coming…

They don’t look like press people? friends of the press? do they? they look like my mom. What are they suppose to look like anywa? I mean, they are often like early on trends, so stylish and young, but not so much because it can still be places of prestige, and critic and informed, mature discernement, so very old makes sense too. They’re expecting something to happen I feel, when a light breeze enters the room, objects float around for a bit, set, escape, and still the room returns. Milano’s air also, is in here, active if not displayed. Slightly displayed in fact.

8

Giving photographs what they want, very precious atmosphere, nature is on our side.

So her work is just to spend time on sn, collect these tiny images as real objects, and then believe enough real people are behind her and reach. It’s furniture, with a bit of expression, but mostly commercial aspect to it. Walking from cringe weirdly luxurious. More strokes more art? Doing, that until finding my audience. But I thought you were… you really look like him.

Featured in appartamento, it’s a better drive.
Representations of the house over the house.
Black and white versions of teapots in kitchen, new pov, are jewels in themselves, and haunt the place.

Soon, pictures shot, business cards disappear.

9

Everything else remains,
the signs of success before the actual.

I’m also looking at them you know. I like looking at people sneaking into my stuff. here they come, I don’t have anything to offer, nothing to ask. In our space, we ask back, about them, about anything but are the best conversation.

So many dogs also, we were so happy!

The time people give you…
She didn’t say much but she stayed long,
touched. Artists among the crowd do like it.
It’s cute, why is it? Will it still be cute if it grabs attention? It’s cute because you didn’t notice it.
Is it a house for small people? Yet shallow general engagement, a matter of understanding? how to draw engagement?
Design emergency crisis.
Maybe Jasper drew our horizon; you don’t become famous without working on it, or did he?

10

He helped me to come to picture the socialties of designers as such. It’s like every generation has its landmark, references, stars, main references. Just thinking about it, there are some people that are kind of, not to say consensual because I guess in the commercial product desgin freak that would still diminish the work for its lack of real world ends, eventhough it is historically false, but, that are safe bet, operating as sign of appartenance, or stand as green flags for certain communities, schools, of thoughts. These landmark in landscape of design history only stand alone while the field its actual demographic is actually left empty, like shallow valleys.

Cringed, disfaced, sweat drop meeting my gaze on the floor, body compressed in stillness while my heart run around, just because they reached to the manager trying to get a sofa for free, as we offered to stretch the modularity of the system to absurd extremities as a trendy ad campaign.

11

So there is this group of young volunteer, we dont know how they arrived here, are they paid? irl design.er fans? do we owe it? a status? who are these mysterious volunteers? from where does their volunteering come from? We asked: having it translated in Greek, exotic, collecting translations like pokemons. From broken english to british english for a babelian common grounds, to evolve under the same roof. So many people went to read that text.
Im a writer, cause I’m read, even just cartels in exhibitions. Love and tourism, french spotted.

Reading Italien I don’t speak, yet with ease. The text became a little sculpture, that express with movements of the lips and vibration in the throat, an emotion that is a bit what the text tried to talk about, that is what I hear when I hear italian as a french, that is melancholia. The rupture between what we wrote and what I read, or the glimpse of the phantom of our words diffused, cover behind with a red and white soft fabric and suddenly a word become a world, doubled with the guilt and pleasure of reading italians translating the words of a french about italy, overlooking the bullshit. They wont read us now, they will read something we’ve never heard of.
translation, traduzzione!

12

Pipeline of printing older format, older ends with older means,
brought to purpose? Is contemporaneity coming from where?
Had to wire it up through usb to escape the local network, the machine thinks quicker, and print in less than 189 minutes.

Here is a legacy of projects, woven.
Representing the house, the idea of it. Casa Communale.
Cool house, I hope I would live there.
Ikea textile shelvings, gif kas.
Your address, where to buy them your address?
so fun to un Bringing a bit of that here, taking pictures.

Conversation with the british, design gossip, is a social thing first;
Could be a spring ritual, meeting your friends from all over the world.
World symposium of what designer talk about in milan.
Barbosa, bird house, do share a studio, so main aim was actually to, with the electric car.
Everything breaking, local fish, vocal fry.
The brutalism.

13

A fish brought back from late Esselunga, the biggest orata we could find with Louise, running to the store, skirt and high boots, destroyed sneakers flapping the ground, breathless up to the second floor, we’ve been there.

Italian delight is made of;
percolator, colomba and pannetone,
free grass, toppings,
cola with bier,
floating curtain,
queues enjoyed.

What are these industry reluctant teacher doing here?
in the middle of the plaza, should we really not hiii
Got ridiculed when not scamed or abused. What about you?

14

Seating on a bench back to back, stories about being
having done design, being the designer, designing, immediately identifying as such.
You grow up thinking its what you make that is worth anything, but curating has also a worth right you were smart, tastful enough to bring it, he says.
I feel like there is a bigger end than bringing the house in milan why milan, or if they were no house, what’s partageable? being there just to make a about being there.

We’re going, fifteen minute walk.

We met massimo.

Design is closer.

Lichtstad, euroluce
lost it, but it was about
my grandfather came here before
tunis, paris, milan.
sand, leather, plastic
prototyped were made, product never resolved.

15

Now I’m here, career ends where factories kick off.

However how big our name headlined excited prompts of quickly dropped landing page on the organisator’s website, it was impossible to get any idea of anything that happened just a few days later, all existing content as quickly pull back to the limbo of some intricated path of tabs and options. It was suppose to be big and it wasn’t, not for us. What is like a democratic facilitator for design exclusivism. How dare they having the audacity to redo the exact same thing the next year and every other years?

Maybe it’s enough, just to show up, to have fun, to meet one or two nice people, to get out of our town for a few days. At least we got free necklace pass and time to invest in leisure. Maybe we just lack ambition.

For next time, inventory, especially of books, bring to clean, small vaccum or nice broom, shovel, thinking of thieves.

As now, we are not building down but moving out.
don hier on
after a last stroke, pierce through again, the silence of the room.

16

The house we presented doesnt exist anymore. It endured several waves of great addition and dramatic subtraction. Because I spend more time in the house since I’m unemployed, they’re things I cant bare and that need to change. I recently bought a new pair of boots, they’re huge, and they smell strong, leather, attic, horse, old. We started smoking inside. We switched the tatami for a carpet. Now we removed the carpet and the tatamis are under the couch and behind the couch. It smells strong in the entrance. She passed buy, she smoked and shower. Some friends, it speaks dutch in the new living room.