Global Tools Joined Shoes
Philological reconstruction of an idea from 1975

Franco Raggi

Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore

Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore. From left to right: Francos Burkhardt and Roberto Costantino

In June ‘75, some architects, designers and artists decided to create improbable objects in the courtyard of an old house in Milan. The first “Seminar of Global Tools” was held, the school of Radical Design without a specific location. The theme: “The body and constraints”. The intention was to compare the consolidated and accepted practice of technological, comfortable and functional design with a nomadic method for an archaic and dysfunctional design. The logical and procedural short-circuit generated useless objects, which were also provoking and reflexive, about the certainties of the project and about the need to keep alive the dialogue between art and design, and between the body as a primary tool and objects as preparatory prostheses to creatively re-–establish the idea of the form/function relationship. Seminar products included: tube eyeglasses to look yourself in the eyes, constricting bracelets, clogs to walk uphill, elastic clothes for persons joined together, and these shoes for a compulsory frontal comparison. Made experimentally in clay, they propose the frontal fusion of two different shoes, preventing any possibility of walking, and force the two persons wearing them into an inevitable but controlled promiscuousness of bodies and looks. The Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art gave me the opportunity to reconstruct in ceramic the object that at first glance seemed to be useless. I like to bring back to life the spirit and the intention, as well as the subtle charm of an undoubtedly functional product of the project made thirty years ago with Alessandro Mendini, Davide Mosconi and Nazareno Noia.

Franco Raggi

Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore

Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore. From left to right: Stefano Parodi, Mayor of Albissola Marina and Lionello Parodi, Mayor of the Citiy of Albisola Superiore

Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore

Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools. Lungomare Montale, Albisola Superiore

Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools (prototype)

Scarpe vincolanti Global Tools Global Tools was made in 2006 by Attese Edizioni on occasion of the 3rd Biennial of Ceramics in Contemporay Art.

Alessandro Mendini, Davide Mosconi, Nazareno Noia, Franco Raggi, Scarpe vincolanti (from left to right: Franco Raggi, Ettore Sottsass), 1975

Project made during the workshop “Global Tools, th body and constrains”. By Alessandro Mendini, Davide Mosconi, Nazareno Noia and Franco Raggi, 1975

Photography:
Fulvio Rosso

Projects

Limited Edition

I Am Wasp, by Simonetta Fadda

The paperweight of Alberto Viola

The Attese Edizioni collection
in the Ceramics Museum of Savona

The potter wasps of Albisola

The Rose Gardens
by Andrea Branzi

Michelangelo Pistoletto and the
Ceramics of the Third Paradise

Changing the world
with a vase of flowers

4^th Biennial of Ceramics
in Contemporary Art

100 chalices and 100 patens
for Pope Benedict XVI

Handmade in Albisola
La Triennale, Milano

The House of Asger Jorn
at Albisola

Technological innovation
and ceramic craftsmanship

Franco Raggi and the
Global Tools Joined Shoes

3^rd Biennial of Ceramics
in Contemporary Art

The Music of Ceramics

Le Socle d'Albisola
by Corrado Levi

2^nd Biennial of Ceramics
in Contemporary Art

The local ceramics tradition
and the globalization of
contemporary art

Artist's Ceramics
Ariana Museum, Geneva

1^st Biennial of Ceramics
in Contemporary Art