Road to (R)evolution

“Road to (R)evolution” is a structured reflection on the automobile and its future mobility, seen through the eyes of the past and the present. It starts with just two key questions: How did we imagine the future 100 years ago? How do we imagine it today? The answers are a journey through time from the start of the last century to 2056, accomplished via installations and videos. Because the revolution is not knocking at the door, it has already come in and we are its privileged spectators.

The road to the revolution starts with a tunnel, an immersive experience in the history of Quattroruote summed up in a kaleidoscope of its covers, retracing 60 years of automobile history and so cultural, social and industrial history too. If we want to know where we are going, we must know exactly where we have come from.

Quattroruote decided to narrate the future using the poetic of the drive-in, the place where people watched the stars (of Hollywood) beneath the stars (in the sky). Two spaces reconstruct these non-places, today virtually extinct. In the first, the video provided for visitors retraces the path of artists, intellectuals, writers and film directors from the early 1900s to the final decades of the century, illustrating how they imagined the new millennium complete with flying machines and monorails suspended in mid-air. From Marinetti to Fritz Lang, Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke plus the pre-visions of film directors such as Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) and Steven Spielberg (Minority Report).

In the second video, Mike Robinson, a car designer of vast professional experience, speaks to visitors from 2056, explaining the evolution of mobility over the next 40 years, from totally self-driving cars to absolute road safety (a world with zero accidents). The “physical” incarnation of the style is represented by Shiwa, a concept ensuing from collaboration between students of the Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin and Quattroruote: a self-driving electric and cognitive car that can read its passengers dreams and needs. These young pupils were children not so long ago so the next space is devoted to children and filled with model cars to be coloured and decorated, providing space for creative fantasy.

The road ends in an area packed with touch screens where visitors can choose from a menu and find out what car and component manufacturers are experimenting with for the future (self-driving cars, alternative forms of power, connectivity between the car and the outside environment). A video wall hosts dozens of people’s visions of the car of the future. Normal people committed to imagining tomorrow with us – and the revolution of mobility.

12 April – 12 September 2016
Road to (R)evolution
Serrone della Reggia di Monza
Curator: Gian Luca Pellegrini
Coordinated by: Emilio Deleidi
Creative contribution: Mike Robinson
Co-production: MCM Comunicazione and Works Italy