Enzo Mari slams creativity: the viral Instagram video

Creativity is a concept steeped in false myths. It’s an obsession that keeps us awake at night and weighs on the spirit; a chimera we’ve yearned for since the dawn of time, hoping one day to be admitted into the Olympus of the “true creatives”, bottomless wells of ideas always worthy of their exalted calling: “creativity”. 

But are we born creative, do we become so, or — more prosaically — do we just pretend? And what if a certain kind of creativity were nothing more than yet another pop relic, polished by trends and ready to be wielded by anyone afflicted by a vague existential restlessness? Speaking of it uncritically often has the same grating effect as chalk that’s too hard on a board that’s too smooth: it screeches. Much like Enzo Mari’s one in a popular 2012 video that’s resurfaced from Instagram’s digital purgatory, where the Milanese designer seems to answer these very questions with blunt finality, dismissing them with the nonchalance of someone who’s seen far too many trends come and go: “There is no word more obscene and unhealthy today than the word ‘creativity’ [...] Nothing is produced, just crap — in the name of creativity.”