In fact, the workshop dedicated to the young artists in residence actually took its cue from a text, with Airò proposing that they read The Time of the Sorcerers by the philosopher Wolfram Eilenberger. The book parallels the biographical events of the philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer, during the years of the Weimar Republic. In the reflections of the four thinkers, the author highlights the creative attempt to overcome the codes of nineteenth-century academic philosophy, in order to achieve a regeneration of philosophical thought. Like “sorcerers”, such philosophers try to draw on ancestral roots, pushing themselves, in an almost thaumaturgical way, to face the unknown and to look beyond it.

Airò and the young artists spoke about these issues during their first week together.

With a more theoretical than practical approach, Airò wanted to convey his vision of making art more authentic: “Every new work” he explains, “should be either in the beyond or taken from it“.

As if involved in a modern maieutic circle, the artists were therefore asked to be able to go around different places within the Manifattura and try to imagine works that could be created there in situ. Then the idea arose of creating a single totemic work. After a long exchange of ideas, the first such exchange between the artists, the project took the shape of an “abusive pillar”, placed in an “uncomfortable” and “out of tune” position in relation to the surrounding architecture, in order to break the rhythm dictated by the real, pre-existing pillars.