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The Preppers project: a sneak peek
We talked with Beatrice Leanza & Anniina Koivu on the installation "Prepper’s Pantry: Objects that Save Lives", presented by mudac at Dropcity Convention 2023.

Impending disasters and global crises; government, policies and emergency preparedness. In the middle lie the preppers. But who is a prepper? In the words of curator Anniina Koivu “someone who believes that a natural disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and actively prepares for it.” A prepper can take many forms and their toolkit might be very different, but all of them are interested in surviving. In this conversation, we learn about mudac’s research interests, the history of the survival movement and what risk, resilience and preparedness can mean when imagining possible futures.

This interview was developed as part of the media partnership with Dropcity Convention 2023, winner of the public call Festival Architettura - 2nd edition, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

KOOZDuring the Milanese Design week, mudac will present two projects that offer insights into its future programs, research agendas and collaborations. Specifically, at the Dropcity Convention 2023, the installation Prepper’s Pantry: Objects that Save Lives, a project by Anniina Koivu, is the preamble to an exhibition that will unfold at mudac in 2024. How does this research project sit within the wider ambition of mudac as an institution?

BEATRICE LEANZA Places where the incumbency of crises and emergencies can be confronted with optimistic criticality and a sense of purposeful agency are fast eroding from our public spheres. Institutions of culture are essential conduits to render the future of imaginable and inhabitable constructs. Entities like museums can and should nurture the exploration of ways in which past and present can be rekindled so that an empowering relation with what is to come can emerge. The Preppers project is an example of how mudac aims to be a future-facing institution that supports research-driven agendas across various scales, as well as collaborative frameworks invested in alternative pedagogies and social empowerment through the investigation of phenomena of disciplinary and conceptual transversality. The broad-based field of observation premising this exhibition opens up the question of survival and the specificity of its human understanding while problematizing not only our obvious reliance on material reality and nature‘s resources, but also interrogating the very premise of “life”, “aliveness” and consequently what measures and protocols we put in place to design novel collective constructs—of human and other nature.

"This exhibition opens up the question of survival and the specificity of its human understanding."- Beatrice Leanza

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KOOZ The survivalist subculture has evolved throughout the past century responding to specific natural disasters and emergencies whilst taking on different forms. What prompted your interest in the question of prepping? In what ways and to what extent has this theme and practice resurfaced in relation to the recent energy crisis?

ANNIINA KOIVU Last autumn, following the pandemic, I came across a series of articles about the rising interest in emergency preparedness. Intrigued by this preppers’ movement and its subcultures, I delved deeper and discovered that preparedness is not a recent phenomenon—it has been around since at least the Great Depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash. Each decade since then, society has experienced some form of crisis—from political uncertainties and wars to terrorist attacks, social unrest, the recent pandemic, and the looming environmental crisis—and all of these crises have attracted new members to the prepping movement. By looking at a timeline, one can clearly see a parallel between these events and the increasing number of people taking matters into their own hands.

"Who is a prepper? A prepper is someone who believes that a natural disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and actively prepares for it." - Anniina Koivu

Who is a prepper? A prepper is someone who believes that a natural disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and actively prepares for it. However, preppers are not all the same. We easily think in extremes, the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, a hoarder of canned beans, a religious doomsdayer. But there are various subcultures of preppers: survivalists are associated with a more combative style of preparedness; bushcraft practitioners advocate for self-sustaining practices, DIY and alternative independent lifestyles; off-grid activists completely cut themselves off public supplies; and the vast group of retreaters avoid conflict and aim to become invisible.

Today preppers are a global movement that spans all ages and classes. Some preppers have become social media influencers or TV stars. Imagine there are over 200 reality TV shows that follow survivalists living in the wilderness, the desert or out at sea. The success of shows like Lost, The Walking Dead, or most recently The Last of Us, are just some examples of the prepper culture's increasing prominence in popular culture.

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KOOZ The act of prepping is particularly relevant in Switzerland (mudac’s host country), where articles 45 & 46 of the Swiss Federal Law on Civil Protection promise every Swiss inhabitant access to a bunker. This has resulted in the construction of around 360,000 bunkers, which could host approximately nine million people (i.e. the entirety of the Swiss population.) Could you expand on this specific approach and how it differs from other international strategies?

AK As catastrophic events are becoming increasingly common, the prepper movement is concerned that governmental agencies may not be adequately equipped to respond quickly and effectively to emergencies affecting all citizens. To better comprehend this motivation, we are examining various government initiatives, public defense programmes, civil protection measures, and evacuation plans. For instance, FEMA (the US Federal Emergency Management Agency) currently advises individuals to have all necessary supplies for 72 hours in case of an emergency.

Since the end of World War II, public defence programmes have built a significant number of underground fallout shelters. Various governments advised citizens to build private shelters, particularly during the Cold War. Private shelters have taken on various forms, with building plans for shelters being published and promoted in the US, while Switzerland and Finland have incorporated shelters into their public building guidelines, resulting in a high number of underground facilities. Helsinki's Underground Masterplan is particularly noteworthy, with many of the spaces currently in civil use, including swimming pools, art museums, churches, karting tracks, and other facilities.

"This selection of exhibits includes items that could potentially save lives during a lockdown at home, in a public shelter, or on the move." - Anniina Koivu

KOOZ During the past decades, hundreds of guidebooks and YouTube tutorials have been published on how to survive off-grid, what food to stock, which air-filter to buy, how to keep warm or which walkie-talkie to use. However, the actual objects and furniture pieces that make up a survival kit have not yet been researched. At the Dropcity Convention, visitors are invited to step into a Prepper’s Pantry, a place which houses objects, tools and equipment believed to be essential in case of an emergency. What motivated your interest in developing a new broad-based research on preparedness as a 1:1 experience?

AK The first exhibition in Milan serves as an initial introduction to the wider research on preparedness that we will conduct over the next 18 months. To familiarise visitors with the preppers movement, we have chosen to showcase one of its emblematic elements: the Prepper’s Pantry. This selection of exhibits includes items that could potentially save lives during a lockdown at home, in a public shelter, or on the move.

Camille Blin, Anthony Guex, and Christian Spiess, with graphic designer Frederik Mahler-Andersen, brilliantly conceived of the exhibition as a storage-cum-shop kind of space, inviting visitors to take a closer look at the life-saving objects on display.

"This endeavour opens up the opportunity to redesign paradigms, learn from our ingenuity and pilot visions for a resurgent future." - Beatrice Leanza

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KOOZ As research is in progress, how do you foresee the project developing in the coming months? What are your ambitions for the exhibition at mudac in 2024?

BL For this and other projects we are initiating at the museum—including The Last Pencil—the process of development is an operation of active engagement between partner and collaborators. Therefore, the weaving of an experiential narrative composed of contributions and reflections about the topics and stories we chose to champion becomes utterly relevant. To establish a dialogue with other cultural institutions but also with educational and productive sectors is important. With Anniina and our team, we will activate the process through various fascinating facets, including the field of design at large—architecture or engineering—as well as industrial supply and resource management, up to sociological and economic studies. It is an in-depth research around a very human phenomenon that stresses how viscerally invasive and often abusive is our relation with the non-human world on which we depend. At the same time, this endeavour opens up the opportunity to redesign paradigms, learn from our ingenuity and pilot visions for a resurgent future to which younger audiences, students and different communities can build a connection to in creative and inspiring ways. For me, Preppers is a project in which we ask ourselves once again what it means to ‘be together’ and what togetherness holds in itself.

"Despite its widespread presence, the impact of the preppers movement on design and architecture remains largely unexplored." - Anniina Koivu

AK I can’t wait to get a better understanding of this new topic. Despite its widespread presence, the impact of the preppers movement on design and architecture remains largely unexplored.

Our research will take us on a global journey, from the Arctic Svalbard Global Seed Vault to the disaster-prone Philippines as well as places in East Africa and Oceania, luxury bunker condos and preppers’ expos in the USA and some of Europe's most advanced civil bunker facilities. We will interview experts on civil protection plans from Tokyo, Amsterdam, Naples, Helsinki, and California. In addition, we will investigate history's first examples of underground living and speak to anthropologists to better understand the origins of preparedness. We will track down off-grid survivalists to gain insight into their everyday lives in and with nature. We will also consult with interior designers and psychologists in space aviation about how to design for secluded living. These are just a few starting points of our exciting journey and we will present our findings at mudac in autumn 2024.

Bio

Anniina Koivu is a design writer, curator, consultant and teacher.Based in Milan and Lausanne, she works across a number of fields, from curation to art direction, product development, and editorial and research projects. Her clients include Kvadrat, Arita 2016, Iittala, HDW, Vitra, Phi Foundation and the Shorefast Foundation, for whom she is design director of the Smaller House furniture collection for the Fogo Island Workshops. In 2018, she co-founded U-Joints, a research project and exhibition series that looks atthe connections in architecture and design. U-Joints – A taxonomy of connections was published in 2022. As part of the Supersalone curatorial team for the Milano Salone del Mobile 202, she developed The Lost Graduation Show, a large survey exhibition of graduation projects from all around the world. She is co-curator of Plastic —Remaking Our World (Vitra Design Museum/V&A Dundee/Maat Lisbon, 2022-23). She has written and edited numerous publications, including the comprehensive monograph Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec: Works (Phaidon, 2011) and Vico Magistretti: Stories of Objects (ECAL/Triest, 2020), an investigation into the little-considered moment in the lifespan of design objects when production stops. In 2021, she founded the knitwear brand Koivu. She is Head of Master Theory at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne.

Beatrice Leanza is the director of mudac – Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts, Lausanne in Switzerland. She is a cultural strategist, curator and critic with a background in Asian studies who was based in Beijing for 17 years. She has served as executive director of maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, creative director of Beijing Design Week, and co-founded The Global School, the first independent institute for interdisciplinary creative research established in the PRC. She is an advocate of a critical practice founded on social engagement, educational empowerment and place making applied to institutional and cultural agency. Interviews and articles about her and her projects have appeared in publications such as Artforum, CNN Style, Domus, Dezeen, Frieze, T Magazine/The New York Times, Flash Art International, The Good Life, Il Corriere della Sera, among many others. She is a member of the international advisory board of Design Trust (Hong Kong) and is a European Young Leader (2018 – present; Friends of Europe Foundation, Brussel).

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.

Published
21 Apr 2023
Reading time
9 minutes
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