Pathos Formulas

Pathos Formulas is the exhibition and installation project presented by IED Istituto Europeo di Design at the ex-Teatro dell’Oriuolo during Pitti Uomo 110. It takes the form of a research space in which fashion, visual arts and editorial practices intertwine in a shared reflection.

The project is curated by Francesca Gavin, Editor-in-Chief of EPOCH Review and Director of Visual Arts at Murmur. An author of numerous books on art and visual culture, Gavin is an internationally active curator whose experience includes Manifesta 11, Somerset House, Palais de Tokyo and MU Eindhoven. She also hosts the radio programme Rough Version on NTS Radio.

“Pathos Formulas is a very contemporary exhibition project, deeply rooted in fashion, presenting the work of 17 IED students”, explains Francesca Gavin. “The exhibition highlights how our experience of the world around us is shaped by human history, and how the creative innovations of today can become part of a dialogue that continues across generations.”

The initiative brings together the practices of students from fashion design, styling, photography, graphic design, video, sound and interior design, activating an intrinsically transdisciplinary framework. Fashion is taken as the starting point: a language to spread and trasnformation of images, gestures and narratives can be observed. 

“For IED, Pathos Formulas reveals a way of working in which disciplines are in dialogue and interwoven. The project takes shape through an open process, built on relationships and connections between different time periods. It is a space for exchange, an active surface in which images become tools for research between what we recognise and what still remains to be defined,” explains Benedetta Lenzi, Director of IED Firenze.

At the heart of the research is Aby Warburg’s concept of Pathosformel, understood as a principle governing the transmission and reactivation of expressive forms over time. The project conceives history as a non-linear structure, questioning how symbols, motifs and visual forms migrate, layer and re-emerge in new cultural contexts.

In dialogue with the Florentine context—an emblematic site for Warburgian reflection—the project unfolds as an open archive. It becomes a space of resonance in which the past is continually reactivated in the present. Here, “pathos formulas” are understood as visual and psychological citations that can move across epochs and geographies, transcending the boundaries of individual cultural traditions.

Pathos Formulas forms part of IED’s 60th anniversary year. Plural Intelligences is the theme guiding the reflection introduced by the anniversary and is explored through a public programme and the journal Notes on Plural Intelligences. The third issue, entitled Future Memories—which includes an interview with Francesca Gavin—is presented and distributed at the former Teatro dell’Oriuolo during Pitti Uomo.

Pathos Formulas forms part of the 60th anniversary year of IED. Plural Intelligences is the theme introduced for the anniversary and explored through a public programme and the journal Notes on Plural Intelligences. Its third issue, Future Memories, featuring an interview with Francesca Gavin, is presented and distributed at the ex-Teatro dell’Oriuolo (Oriuolo Theatre) during Pitti Uomo.

A spin-off of Pathos Formulas will take place from 22 to 25 October as part of Ultra REF, the special section of Romaeuropa dedicated to experimentation and the cross-fertilisation of different artistic languages.

The exhibition takes shape through nine research clusters developed by working groups bringing together designers, photographers, stylists, and visual artists. “It unfolds as a space of resonance in which the past is continually reactivated in the present”, Gavin explains.

The exhibition space brings together seven projects realised in pairs and two individual projects. A soundwork interacts with all the pieces, weaving their various themes into a sonic score that fills the exhibition space. An editorial graphic design project also brings the works together in a coherent, modular archive with the potential to expand over time. The students have worked both in pairs and individually. They developed thematic resonances that connect fashion-related research with the visual languages of photography, video, illustration, sound and graphic design.

Poised between installation and editorial practice, Pathos Formulas presents itself as a hybrid device combining archive, collage and publication. In line with IED’s educational approach, the focus is placed on process. Collaborations become an integral part of the project, generating narratives in which historical visions references and speculative visions overlap and transform.