Tools For After is a cultural project that won the first Capitali della Creatività [Capitals of Creativity] competition, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, aimed at both the Italian Cultural Institutes and the Italian diplomatic-consular network, worldwide. The project, created by Angelo Gioè, the current director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Beirut, and curated in its entirety by architect Maurizio Corrado, was presented by the Italian Cultural Institute in Melbourne, the Italian Cultural Institute in Beirut (Design), and the Italian Cultural Institute in Sofia (Design), and will soon be presented by the Italian Cultural Institute in Belgrade. The initiative showcases the Italian approach to tackling the challenges of the Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene is a method of reading reality. Everything is changing: the economy, how to think and make culture, the very view of the world and the human being’s place in the cosmos. The issues, fears, needs, concepts, rules, scenarios and discourse on which our culture is based have suddenly become obsolete and unusable. The point of no return is behind us; we have entered the aftermath.
What can we do? What are the tools for the after? What scenarios await us? What issues need to be addressed? We need to imagine.

TFA is a workshop of ideas, solutions, projects, imaginings, models and tools to draw a collective map of the imaginary of the Anthropocene, a collaborative exploration of possibilities, solutions and ways to deal with everyday practice. It is a call to a utopia, to develop the imaginary, to propose ideas, and to build a survival manual for the world’s coming transformations, an atlas of solutions, a range of strategies.

After Tools for After Design at Sursock Palace this last spring, the Italian Cultural Institute of Beirut, in collaboration with Metropolis Art Cinema Association, presents Tools For After Cinema, a selection of the most interesting proposals of new Italian cinematography, presented to Lebanese audience. The six days of cinema work around themes related to the Anthropocene. The selection was curated by Maurizio and Antar Corrado, along with Elisa Roncalli.

Art Session 1 

Twentieth-Century Backwash, by Maurizio Finotto, 8 min

Currents collect and deposit plastic. Objects are returned, chewed, metabolized and deposited on the beaches as relics and memories of the past and everyday life. Suspended in a temporal limbo, they corrode, fight battles, wear out. They are pop symbols of twentieth-century culture, reminders of a people leaving traces of themselves―memory, nostalgia, consumerism. Seasons like geological eras, traces of lived life and incorruptible plastic. The signs that surface, faded and incomplete, tell us who we are and who we were.

Year of production 2019

REOPENING COLOSSEUM, by Davide Morabito and Luca Lancise, 52 min

In the vast spaces of the Colosseum, inaccessible due to the Covid-19 emergency, a small extended family of men and women continue to care for a fragile giant that has become their second home. Together, they face their greatest challenge: to build a new way to visit one of the world’s most famous monuments, to reopen it to the public, and to secure its future.

Release date 2020