When Thinking is Doing

2023-

The day after I moved to Topolò, the first episode of “When Thinking is Doing: a radio show for handy theory” was broadcast at Radio Robida. Originally, this project was supposed to focus on craft and it’s peripheral manifestations, but it quickly became more encompassing in scope as it started to deal with different perspectives regarding aesthetics, philosophy of technology and materialism(s). The show’s format fluctuates between formal theoretical framings and informal conversations with guests, who have hands-on experience in some specific practice (chefs, woodworkers, programmers, masons, painters, choreographers, etc.)

Season 1 / 2023

Things disclose worlds. Subjacent to any symbolic sphere, the ways we approach our earthly dealings are mediated by hard artifacts. What can we learn through their making? In When Thinking is Doing, we aim not so much to think about craft, but rather by means of it.

EP01 / The thought of craft and the craft of thought / 11.03.2023

EP02 / Objects of Immanence / 27.05.2023

EP03 / A Matter of Flatness / 25.06.2023

EP04 / OOO and the Carpentry of Things / 22.07.2023

EP05 / Post-Digital Craft, with Tomasz Symosz / 22.07.2023

EP06 / Industry and Art(ifice), with FAHR 021.3 / 02.12.2023

EP07 / Artigiainer, with Tommaso Garavini / 02.12.2023

Season 2 / 2024 (ongoing)

The world is a whole. From a materialist perspective, between dense solids and rarefied plasmas, the discontinuities of tangible matter are always a question of scale and never actual interruptions on the fabric of reality. And yet, not only do we perceive, but we also enforce borders.

A border separates. It stipulates a distinction between elements. It creates opposites out of what is. What are the consequences of this segmenting action for the ways in which we conceptualize the world? Is there something advantageous to approach intellectual impasses by establishing simple antinomies among things? Could it be dangerous to polarize? How and why?

In the second season of When Thinking is Doing, we will indulge in bordering thought. In each episode, Antônio Frederico Lasalvia conceptualizes craft and its neighboring areas by creating clear categories around them - often, only to find out that these limits are porous and trespassers negotiate their confines just as we are not looking. Through the perspectives of different guests engaged with hand and head work, we will try to better understand not only the complexities of making, but of the making of the world.

EP08 / Aesthetics and Statics / 06.03.2024

The eighth episode of WTID comes in hybrid form. The first part (1:38) of the show is a theoretical introduction where we problematize the very notion of craft following art historian Glenn Adamson’s critique of craft’s origin in the wake of the industrial revolution. How can we deterritorialize craft and its congenital opposition to mechanized labour? In the second part of the show (13:00), some of the questions raised in the introduction are tackled from the perspective of guests antonio sotzu and jean ni. In our conversation, matters of pleasure, knowledge and meaning in old-fashioned techniques are discussed in relation to their territorial approach to stone artifacts making/maintenance. We also discuss their life-project Foghiles, based in Semèstene, Sardinia, where borders between life and art are dissolved.

EP09 / Digital and Analog / 02.04.2024

The term craft is usually reserved to qualify a way of making material things. How would this notion stand when transposed to the immaterial realm? In the ninth episode of When Thinking is Doing, Antônio Frederico Lasalvia is joined by Kirsten Spruit and Benjamin Earl in order to think through the border between the digital and the analog. As we look for procedures analogous to craft within digital tools, we consider themes like the poetic web, handmade websites, Ben and Kirsten’s “code of conduct of code”, as well as their growing interest in rituals of maintenance.

EP10 / Good and Bad Taste / 29.05.2024

In the tenth episode of When Thinking is Doing, Antônio Frederico Lasalvia is joined by Suzanne Bernhardt and Phillip Kolman in order to think about the making of food. In the introduction, the culinary arts are considered in relation to other forms of aesthetically engaging with matter, such as painting or sculpture. Could it be that the different social standings that these practices historically reached is related to a phenomenology of sensory experience? In the second part of the show, we go outside to pick wild-cherry flowers. While foraging in the forest, Phillip and Suzanne speak about how they see their cooking practice with regard to autochthonous food cultures, the role of the ephemerality in taste and the ecological consequences of alimentary production.

EP11 / Form and Matter / 01.09.2024

Between matter’s character and maker’s character, what might craft mean when one attends to the way in which raw materials express their forms? In the eleventh episode of When Thinking is Doing, Antônio Frederico Lasalvia is joined by the architect and cabinetmaker Diogo Amaro in order to think about the border between form and matter. The conversation touches on themes like anticipation and spontaneity in work, the role of prototyping, the contrast between serial and singular production and the consequences of an empirical approach to design.

EP12 / Material and Immaterial / 30.09.2024

Art matters. Or, at least, art is made out of matter. Or is it? In the twelfth episode of When Thinking is Doing, Antônio Frederico Lasalvia is joined by Ola Korbańska in order to think about the border between material and immaterial. As we follow the sewing of an iteration of “THE FLAG OF 3,” our conversation touches on themes like: the materiality of words and the longest way of writing things, the incorporation of gender struggles into artistic discourse; the adoption of constraints as a creative methodology; the phased development of technique over time; the joy of making things; and the purposeful contamination of artworks by their contextual conditions of production.

EP13 / Autographic and Allographic / 02.11.2024

When Jan van der Pleog was in Topolò last August, I followed him through the restoration of two wall paintings he made a few years ago. As one of the murals metamorphosed into the third version of itself, while the other kept its former colors and composition, it left me wondering about the who and the how of art. // In the thirteenth episode of When Thinking is Doing, Antônio Frederico Lasalvia speaks to Jan van der Pleog about his work as a painter. The conversation touches on themes like Jan’s relation to the village of Topolò through the years thanks to Stazione Topolò / Postaja Topolove, his early experiences in the shift of mediums from oil painting to mural painting and his phased approach towards his practice, based on the isolated stages of composition and execution.

In 2024, the When Thinking is Doing became part of The Other Radio/Radio Drugega, which is financed by Javni zavod GO! 2025 - Evropska prestolnica kulture, Nova Gorica and is part of the official program of the European Capital of culture.