10.45 Arrivals/Registration (The Space Foyer, Level 1) Design, Inhabitation, Play: Piero Gilardi in the context of Arte Povera 11.00 Isobel Whitelegg, Curator of Public Programmes Introduction 11.15 Robert Lumley, Professor of Italian History, UCL Habitable Art: In and Around Piero Gilardi building with words translation Italian e inglese house domus Domus table Piacentino swing Marisa interior design Michelangelo minus lying in the grass bombs over Turin lost world found in museum natura morta building-site industrial painting Pinot book-cover seagulls sit-in Gian Enzo wall floor ceiling Fabro parquet cement inflammable Kounellis river-bed Alighiero unstable object in Switzerland Tristan Tzara balla futurista TT DDP Flash guerriglia Fiat asylum Zoo Levi West Coast soft igloo tent Zorio Bosco dei mostri corso Casale church fresco restoration New York Accademia Albertina polyurethane machine plywood Strum landscape arte abitabile Robert Lumley is Professor of Italian Cultural History at University College, London. He has written extensively on contemporary art and culture in Italy. His publications include Arte Povera (Tate Publications, 2004) and he co-curated (with Francesco Manacorda) the exhibition Marcello Levi, Portrait of a Collector: From Futurism to Arte Povera at the Estorick Gallery in 2006. 11.45 Teresa Kittler, PhD Candidate, Art History, UCL Living Sculpture and the Art of Living When Piero Gilardi first exhibited his Nature Carpets in 1966 he spoke of these works emphatically as a proposal for an everyday existence. By situating these works within the home, they could become part of a lived experience. I examine Gilardi's Nature Carpets in relation to the question of lifestyle, particularly in response to a US lifestyle equated with consumerism. While this was one of the principal targets of Germano Celant's 1967 Manifesto for Arte Povera, Gilardi's industrially produced nature seems to offer a more ambivalent response to mass-production and the kind of lived experience it could offer. Situated within the context of postwar artistic practice in Italy and the USA, I consider the material, technological and psychic aspects of Gilardi's Nature Carpets as a dialectical engagement with the question of lifestyle. Teresa Kittler is an AHRC funded PhD Candidate in the Department of Art History at University College London (UCL). Her thesis, supervised by Professor Briony Fer, explores the concept of 'living' through the work of artists and art critics working in Italy in the mid to late sixties including Marisa Merz, Carla Accardi and Carla Lonzi. 12.10 Catharine Rossi, Senior Lecturer, Design History, Kingston University Playing with the Povera: Connections between Art, Architecture and Design in 1970s Italy Piero Gilardi and the Arte Povera movement took place amidst a wider set of avant-garde practices in art, design and architecture in early 1970s Italy, whose interconnections have not been sufficiently explored. From Riccardo Dalisi's thesis of tecnica povera, tested out by street children in the playgrounds of Naples, to Enzo Mari's Autoprogettazione, a project of DIY consciousness raising and Superstudio's utopian combination of nature and the high-tech, there are clear parallels between the Radical architecture and design of this period and Gilardi's work. This paper will explore these commonalities and this wider context in order to unlock and understanding this period, and Gilardi, in greater depth. Catharine Rossi is a Senior Lecturer in Design History at Kingston University, and was previously a Context Lecturer in the Design School at Edinburgh College of Art. She completed her PhD, on the of role craft in post-war Italian design, as the holder of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award co-supervised by the Royal College of Art and the V&A Museum. She has worked on exhibitions at MoMA and the V&A and, alongside contributing to academic publications such as Journal of Design History, she works as a freelance writer for Crafts and Domus, and maintains the blog thinkingaboutobjects. 12.35 Q&A (Robert Lumley, Teresa Kittler, Catharine Rossi)

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