Manifesto
1
A cultural digital magazine
humus® focuses on the dissemination of culture to foster change.
It speaks to the world of architecture, design, art and ceramics and to everyone seeking unique, constructive standpoints.
2
Dig, discover, disseminate
Fifty years after the first, revolutionary publication of this magazine by the Fondazione Iris Ceramica (1973), humus® starts again from its roots to offer an approach based
on the objectivity of knowledge,
on encounters,
on original and participatory experiences.
humus® shares the values of an industrial group, Iris Ceramica Group, which has always – even way back then in 1973 – believed in the driving force of culture and environmental protection.
Half a century later, and in a completely changed context, humus® maintains this sense, starting from its literal meaning: nutrition that helps growth. We will therefore dig down deep, reaching to the roots of things and disseminating ideas that nourish.
3
A broad discourse on ceramics
For humus®, ceramics are the material of choice.
They are earth and work, culture and art. They are creativity and imagination in the hands of everyone. They are the catalyst that helps us to encounter the other. They demand patience, respect, listening.
We will use new standpoints and explore new pathways around ceramics.
4
humus® aims not only to discover but also to build.
humus® does not aim to add another voice to the many, but rather to create a place for listening, learning and growing.
We offer a space for the interpreters of design and ceramics, and for the voices of science and creativity – artists, photographers, researchers, scholars, experimenters – to illustrate their latest research works.
We will investigate different subjects: economics, sociology, literature, geopolitics, physics, biology, computing…
We will create connections and synapses that help to understand reality.
humus® also chooses a new rhythm: we will not chase sensation or novelty, nor the frenzy of the present, because quality demands time and selection.
We will wait patiently to harvest its fruits.
* The background of this page reproduces the ceramic surface of Pollution, an extraordinary initiative by Iris Ceramica, the historical brand of the Iris Ceramica Group, held in Bologna in 1972. That year, from 8 to 14 October, the central Piazza Santo Stefano was paved with ten thousand 33×33 cm ceramic tiles – produced, numbered and signed by Iris Ceramica – reproducing a lump of earth, representing the fertile humus of Pollution, the revolutionary project for a new aesthetics of pollution curated by Gianni Sassi, becoming the stage for the installations and performances of twenty-four artists and two musicians – including Franco Battiato – committed to the topic.
A few months later, in April 1973, the first issue of humus was published: a four-monthly magazine focusing on ceramic culture, strategy and technique published and distributed by the Fondazione Iris and curated by Sergio Albergoni and Gianni Sassi’s agency AI.Sa.