The 5th issue of Klat, a magazine made up solely of interviews with leading figures in contemporary art, design and architecture, is coming out at the height of the Milan Design Week. A really special issue, available in a print version as well as a digital one (for PC, Mac and iPad). The publication of the new issue also provides a first opportunity to take stock, and to make a very positive assessment, of the website www.klatmagazine.com: a platform launched six months ago that brings together dozens of blogs entrusted to the most promising names in contemporary art, design and other fields of creativity.
Klat #05 offers exclusive interviews with Nigel Coates, Flavio Favelli, Studio Formafantasma, Joost Grootens, Martí Guixé, Toyo Ito, Jasper Morrison and Peter Zumthor.
“Klat #05 is an exceptional issue, for two reasons: for the quality of its contents and the people interviewed, and because is to a great extent the product of chance,” says Paolo Priolo, publisher and editor-in-chief. “All of Klat’s issues are born without precise coordinates, intentionally avoiding editorial themes to be developed, theses to be upheld or schemes to be respected. All boring stuff. No outline, just the desire to interview designers, artists and other creative people with experiences and stories to relate, ideas to share. Smart people. The mosaic composes itself, without rules or prearranged associations.” And this is the norm. “With Klat #05, however, we have gone further: initially we had chosen whom we wanted to interview, and then unforeseen events, fortuitous encounters and involuntary changes of course little by little modified our original intentions, pushing us much farther away from them than we had thought. In the end, we closed with an extraordinary line-up: Nigel Coates, Flavio Favelli, Studio Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi+Simone Farresin), Joost Grootens, Martí Guixé, Toyo Ito, Jasper Morrison and Peter Zumthor. Yes, him. I’m well aware that a lengthy interview with Zumthor is a historic event.”
In addition to the eight long interviews, continues Paolo Priolo, “there are precious contributions from Carlo Stanga, who is responsible for the cover and the portraits, and from Edward Burtynsky, author of a sequence of photographs whose ecstatic gaze reveals the ambiguous beauty of oil, a source of energy that has once again become the center of delicate geopolitical balancing acts in these months.”
Klat’s website, a platform that brings together dozens of blogs written by designers and artists, has been online for six months. It is time to take stock: “The first assessment is more than positive. The number of visitors is much higher than our expectations. The idea of broadening the magazine’s scope of inquiry through dozens of blogs run directly by designers, artists and other creative people has worked. Today there are just under fifty blogs.” Klat is the media partner of Design Royale, an artistic-design happening conceived by Id-Lab and All Zone. Design Royale is an online workshop that culminates in a night of festivities: Friday April 15, at the Mediateca degli Atellani at Via Moscova 28 in Milan. From 11 pm onward. The indoor/outdoor spaces of the Mediateca (the Glass Cube, the secret garden) will be transformed into a wonderland thanks to the interventions of Leslie Borg, Arian Brajkovic, Elio Caccavale, Duilio Forte, Francesco Librizzi, Hagit Pincovici, Luca Poncellini, Giordano Rizzardi, Alessandro Scandurra, Antonio Scarponi and Anita Silva and the special participation of Dominic Wilcox (in an exhibition curated by Susanna Legrenzi). Web: www.design-royale.com / www.interactiondesign-lab.com / www.allzonedesignall.com / www.atellani.it / www.klatmagazine.com
website www.klatmagazine.com
