LES ARCANISTES
Milano Design Week 2019
On the occasion of the Milan Design Week 2019, Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto, Creative Directors of Studiopepe, investigate the strong bond of Matter with Symbols’ archetypal power in an unusual location full of charm.
Studiopepe’s Manifesto Project for Milan Design Week 2019 is held inside a large industrial space, a former gold manufacture dating back to the 1900s.
The Arcanists were ante-litteram chemists, who held the arcane and secret knowledge of formulas able to create porcelain and to work with materials such as glass and metals.
The word Matter comes from the Latin root Mater, Mother, substance from which all the others are derived. The archetype of the Mother represents the ability to give life. The major Arcana are 21 (plus the Fool) and are a means of knowledge of the collective unconscious theorized by Jung.
The creative spark in the Arcana is represented by the Empress, a symbol of creativity, of the feminine and of openness to all possibilities. Hence the suspended game between matter and divination in a personal interpretation by Studiopepe.
Studiopepe, in collaboration with their partners, designs a path through design and bespoke pieces, re-editions of historical pieces, art pieces and installation rooms in which the connection between matter, archetypes and the power of symbols is deepened.
Over the centuries, from Renaissance courts to Jungian psychoanalysis, forever suspended between the rational and irrational, divining practices have become increasingly complex rituals.
The interpretation of the Arcana is a tool for personal growth, through the study of the archetypes that the cards represent.
The experience of Les Arcanistes translates into a sequence of spaces: the Source of the Vibrational Water, the Materioteca, the Alchemic Laboratory and the Mantica Society.
The Source
Water, the creator of every form and every substance, represents rebirth and regeneration. In this room, you can experience the ability of water to vibrate at different frequencies by observing its vibrational dance on its surface and touching it to experience its vibration with the body.
The Library of Matter
Where materials are explored as a fundamental element of the alchemical process. Through work on matter, man first accesses self-knowledge and then universal knowledge, through the world of archetypes which is a perfect blend of matter and spirit.
The Alchemic Laboratory
It represents the possibility of physically experiencing the essences of the spirit in its various realities, and it is the space where alchemical water is distilled.
The Mantica Society, in the underground floor is the heart of Les Arcanistes, the place dedicated to divination where the reading of the Arcana is reinterpreted through the use of symbolic objects.
After The Visit and Club Unseen (winner of the Frame Awards Prize 2019 as Bar of the Year), Les Archanistes is the third Manifesto project conceived by Studiopepe for the Milan Design Week.
“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.”
F. Nietzsche
