Focusing on contributions that explore composites as forms of art and design, as research methodologies and practices, and/or as theoretical concepts, issue 60 of the journal Azimuts proposes look at composites as a way of presenting or representing realities.
Different hypotheses have been explored by the researchers and creators gathered here. Reading their proposals, we can consider that their narratives define composites either as smooth, since the glue that aggregates the various components is invisible, or as rough because the glue, conversely, is visible. Thus, this issue of Azimuts proposes, through the authors, to understand and define the specific materialities of this glue in that it is a binder, negotiating relationships. It is then a question of considering these sticky materials as a space, a transition, a break, or even a silence. Or, to quote novelist, poet and philosopher
Édouard Glissant, "as a relationship, an opposition or a consequence".
The editorial team wished the magazine to implement the composite, both in its graphic layout and in its two editorials (text and image): the Call for Contributions and the Visual Editorial.
Thus, without further ado, we are offering a composite synthesis of the aggregated articles:
In his interview with design historian Indiana Collet-Barquero, designer Alex Delbos-Gomez discusses the research he conducted as part of his Advanced Diploma in Design Research, where, drawing on Édouard Glissant's philosophy, he defines composites as baroque. The stratified and sedimented telescoping of materials thus becomes a creative tool.
Philosopher, designer, and web developer Adrien Payet analyses the intrinsic functional and morphogenetic capabilities of the original web composite, based on HTML and CSS. From the field of design, and with a certain political urgency, Payet calls for prioritising the specific qualities of the web in order to resist the domination of scripting.
Researcher in Graphic Design and Visual Studies Louise Wambergue-Gouble analyses the composite architecture developed on euro banknotes to define the composite as a fictional assembly of buildings representing major European artistic movements. This montage is intended as an attempt to create a common identity for the European Union.
Artist Colin Riccobene describes his sculptural method as composite: claiming a roaming practice, he takes material and memorial fragments from the spaces he explores, which he then binds (glues) according to their plastic, technical or even sentimental qualities.
Design researchers Gabriele Colombo and Donato Ricci's proposal lies at the boundary between composite and composition. Considering that data obtained through research processes are informal and heterogeneous materials, they explore the methods used to reorganise these contents in order to establish new meanings and uses.
Considering translation as a reassembling mechanism, we decided to present a previously unpublished French version of a text by Spanish artist Pedro G. Romero on the "mosaic law" that, according to him, is inherent in all reassembly. Breaking an image, he asserts, implies a law governing its future reconstruction. His text asserts a science of the broken, of the fragment.
In her article, interaction designer Margaux Crinon, drawing a bold parallel between the sampling gesture proposed by the Akai MPC 60 and the sampling gesture orchestrated by researchers in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, invites us to perceive composite as an ecological practice.
Designer Cécile Poulat treats composites as a narrative system of the situated stories of the stratified spaces that constituted them, starting with a case study: plywood, recovered from the dismantled World Trade Center building in Brussels. She also approaches it as a system allowing the recomposition of new relationships between objects, people, and architectural and urban spaces.
With his article "Black mass" ("Batteries Active Materials Mixture"), interdisciplinary artist and researcher Davide Marcianesi focuses on the toxic – and composite – powder obtained during the recycling or recovery process of lithium-ion batteries: a chemical and cultural mixture, invisible and dangerous, where human and non-human bodies deal with modern narratives and materials in which nature is reduced to an exploitable resource.
In her diploma project, designer Morgane Rousseau uses poems by Ilse Garnier, Giovanna Sandri, Jérôme Peignot and Pierre Garnier to develop composite objects where the typographic elements of concrete poetry become connectors to create new artifacts and uses.
Designer Leïla Bouyssou interprets wool fiber as a composite material and proposes a reversal of perspective: what stories do we want to tell, what objects do we want to shape through wool fiber when we recognise the impact of natural, economic, social and political conditions on animals?
The Spacetelling : Espaces, Fictions, Corps politiques Research-Creation team (Emmanuelle Becquemin, Simone Fehlinger,
Ernesto Oroza, Émilie Perotto).
