In factories where manufacturing becomes beauty
And five works of art were born thanks to the inspiration of five Pirelli factories around the world: for its Annual Report 2021, in fact, Pirelli invited four artists and a collective to five of its production plants (18 those present in the world, ed). The results can be admired in the volume, printed and digital, "A Beautiful Place, the art of manufacturing", which includes the essay by Mancuso and the reflection of the writer and urban planner Nadia Owusu, entitled Playing at the factory.
Pirelli, the factory and the art of manufacturing at the center of the Annual Report 2021 Gallery 5 Images View the gallery The journey of the artists Giovanni Mengoni, Tu Yonghong, Lisette Correa, Andrei Cavassi and the Brazilian artistic collective composed of Fernanda Borgi, Tony Felix, Susy Garcia and Pinguim created, respectively: a bucchero vase (black and opaque ceramic, ed); two paper cutouts; a mural; an aria on the cello and a song entitled Um lugar bonito. To inspire the artists, the factories of Settimo Torinese, Yanzhou, Rome, Slatina, Campinas. The creations dialogue with the production context to which they refer: the Italian artist Giovanni Mengoni pays homage to Settimo Torinese with the work Il giardino del tempo, and material art reconnects to a site where tires and compounds are produced. high technological content.
The sounds of the factory in Campinas, Brazil, inspired the creation of Um lugar bonito, a synthesis of bossa nova and funk; those of Slatina, Romania, the aria on the cello by Andrei Cavassi, which aims to evoke the encounter between tradition and innovation. It is part of the synthesis of the work of Tu Yonghong, master of paper carving, while the energy of Lisette Correa's mural will stand out on a site, the US one in Rome, entirely robotic but also a symbol of the journey into sustainability of the Group: the one in Georgia is in fact the first tire plant in the world to be FSC certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
A Beautiful Place: the art of manufacturing
The protagonists of the project " A Beautiful Place: the art of manufacturing "thus become part of a long-running history, that of the bond between Pirelli and intellectuals, artists: the publication of the Annual Report thus becomes an opportunity to reflect on the issues of contemporaneity and on the values of the Group. In 2020, the Annual Report had placed its reflection on the importance of human capital and the impact that technology has on people. The reflection on the connection between places of production and inspiration of beauty in the 2021 report is ideally inscribed in a continuum with the reflection on human dimension; human work remains central in factories, even in the most technologically advanced ones, but even in a similar context it is necessary to preserve space for the creative dimension. As Mancuso himself reflects, "the contact between factory and beauty [...] is essential to ensure that our minds are not reduced to mechanical minds but remain human, that is to say free and creative".
And creativity is also the ability to play, just like Nadia Owusu did in the essay “Playing at the factory”. The writer recalls the pleasure of disassembling and reassembling games, of transforming things into a space of invention. The factory "was tactile and playing with it produced real consequences, which my sister and I could see with our own eyes and had to live with".
The real consequences of doing business or manufacturing are still today crucial for billions of people, leaving the metaphor, and also for this reason the reflection on all aspects of production sites, in particular the most critical ones, must continue .
