Paolo Deganello. Architecture, Operaismo and Autonomia.pdf (original) (raw)

I am writing a book about the Italian revolutionary left from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. In particular, I focus on the artists, architects, designers and historians who used the ideas and struggles of operaismo and autonomia to produce visual works, or to re-think the history of literature and architecture. [fig. ] One of the recurring figures of my book is Paolo Deganello. Deganello was a member of Archizoom. You are perhaps familiar with Aureli's book The Project of autonomy. Aureli was the first to highlight how important operaismo was for the Archizoom's project called No-stop City. Deganello was the most operaista of the group, and while he subscribed to the criticism embodied by No-Stop City, he was nonetheless convinced that a Marxist could not simply denigrate the 1960s phantasmagoria of commodities. The epistemological and political novelty of operaismothe priority of the workers' point of viewpushed him to appropriate the seductive power of commodities and repurpose it to serve the needs of what operaismo called "the class". My paper concentrates on some of Deganello's projects before, during and after Archizoom. On the one hand, I would like to cast new light on some neglected works, unearthing their political texture. On the other, I aim to provide a more visual and perhaps unsettling perspective on operaismo and autonomia. The iconography and material culture of these political movements occasionally suggest narratives that are at odds with the mainstream accounts of them. This project is a work in progress. Some of my interpretations are provisional, as this is a work based mostly on archival material and I still need to visit some archives and examine several additional drawings and texts. [fig. ] In 1962-1963, Deganello and the other future members of Archizoom went by car from Florence to Turin in order to visit the editorial team of Quaderni Rossi. The link