Unfinished Museum

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Roberto Vogliolo

My engineering attitude tends to make me want to close projects, to put that missing piece so that the gears turn right, then when I think of many unfinished things, not only mine but that I have met over the years, I tell myself that they are also beautiful for their incompleteness.

For me, it’s like the first love story you thought would be the love of your life. Every time a project is born it is as if it were the first. This is also nice because for each new project the spark is reborn, I fall in love again.

 

Unfinished what colour/shape is it?

Purple, and has a helical shape, a kind of “fusillo” (a type of pasta).

If I tell you Unfinished what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?

The desire to complete something, I think of what is missing to complete it. I do not see the negative in the word unfinished, on the contrary, the question spontaneously comes to me: what needs to be done to complete it? The other thing that comes to mind is that there are so many unfinished things that are also beautiful despite being unfinished. My engineering attitude tends to make me want to close projects, to put that missing piece so that the gears turn right, then when I think of many unfinished things, not only mine but that I have met over the years, I tell myself that they are also beautiful for their incompleteness. I think of projects, more than works of art, of the many projects that have seen me involved, for example, the Digital Art Challenge which arrived at a certain point, then remained unfinished due to Covid. But what we have done exists for me and has value, however, it has brought and carries something … that something left unfinished acquires its own meaning.

Something you left undone?

I am reminded of the many things set up with the partners of my first startup Art & Com, which created projects for events and artistic works with a technological component, where our companies could do marketing and communication of their product, enhancing the art with innovative projects. For example, we sponsored the Baroque Music Festival in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, creating a beautiful project in 2000 and producing one of the first DVDs with multi-angle shots and multiple audio tracks, which at the time was something truly innovative. That company is unfinished, its business plan has never been realized. Then there are many other projects, perhaps because the things I like are not easily industrialized, so, almost by definition, it is easy for them to become unfinished, due to flexibility and innovation.

What emotions does the unfinished give you?

One of the things that makes me feel bad, it is not the idea or the possible judgment of others of a failure, I don’t care, is that I fall in love with my projects and if they cannot go on my heart cries because I think to what could have been and was not. For me, it’s like the first love story you thought would be the love of your life. Every time a project is born it is as if it were the first. This is also nice because for each new project the spark is reborn, I fall in love again.

Something unfinished that you would like finished?

Which do I choose? There are so many! What I care so much about and I think that sooner or later I will do, is the creation of a physical space surrounded by nature, among the mountains that I love so much, where shared innovation projects can be experienced, working with new technologies in synergy with nature, new forms of collaboration and expression, a little laboratory, a little jam session of innovation.

Long live incompleteness why?

… It is a stimulus to do new things.

When is a project completed for you?

This is the most difficult question, I don’t remember a single moment when I said to myself: here, this is done, cheers! The beauty of life for me is always having some new goal to achieve. As I go forward the project is transformed, it is a continuous journey. I can theoretically say that something is accomplished when the goals I had set for myself have been achieved, but I can’t set myself the goal of saying “I did it, I reached a goal”. In my projects, I see more of an evolution than a fulfilment, accomplishment is not really a goal for me, I can achieve intermediate goals that allow me to walk in a certain direction and maybe I run the risk of becoming a little inconclusive. But if they say jokingly, sometimes it happened with friends, you are inconclusive by nature, I answer: yes I don’t want to conclude things.

3 words you would match with unfinished

Openness, melancholy, curiosity. Even the unfinished thing of someone else makes me curious.

 

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