The present we love

Carlo Giordanetti worked as creative director at Swatch from 2012 to 2019. He is now a member of the Swatch Design Committee and CEO of the Swatch Art Palace in Shanghai. He is also the man behind Swatch’s presence at the last seven editions of the Biennale. This year Swatch will produce a site-specific by a the Japanese artist VERDY at the Giardini exhibition venue, while at Arsenale, it will build a bridge between Venice and Shanghai with Swatch Faces 2024. Swatch innovates and creates, and we are looking forward to seeing their latest creations in this 60th Art Biennale.

Your new special watch, BIENNALE 60TH, is “pure, essential, direct design with an unexpected touch” and has been designed in cooperation with art collective Claire Fontaine. The watch is made with bio-sourced materials. Let’s talk about your idea of time and your relationship with Claire Fontaine.
The perception of time changes according to who you are. Currently, I feel time as a challenge, meaning it feels like a circle I keep running on, trying to make as many laps as possible. I feel like I’m going faster than the clock hands! To win over time feels absolutely amazing, always. I am lucky I don’t feel constrained by time. I think I’m pretty good at managing it, and it doesn’t scare me. It’s still a challenge, though. Every year, we design a special watch for the Biennale. I didn’t even know the Biennale’s theme, Foreigners Everywhere, came from a piece by Claire Fontaine, and that I would contact them to design our new watch. We were happy to work together, and I love what came of it. Foreigners stand out on the clock face, and Everywhere is placed where the Swatch logo usually is. The logo is still there, but you have to look for it. The way visual space is managed is very interesting. Other than BIENNALE 60TH, we also commissioned a design to our guest artist. This year, we picked a Japanese artist. He is non-traditional and very pop. His language is that of street art, with a little provocation thrown in. Usually, we work horizontally on the space the Biennale assigns us, but this year, we’ll build vertically. It’ll be fun, and totally in line with the theme! I can’t tell you more than that, you’ll have to see it.

Contamination between art languages at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel.
This is what we do day after day. Most artists who take their residency at Art Peace Hotel never pick a single art language on the welcome questionnaire. Even those who pick ‘visual art’ only – which is quite a broad term, anyway – add something else to it. This is especially true for younger artists: they want to find their voice in several languages, in all avenues of expression. It doesn’t matter that their technique is still raw. “I might want to do that one day”. Still, I think we should help up-and-coming artists to pick the practice that works best for them. An outlook on art that is just too broad may work against them in the long run.

The choice of Shanghai for the Swatch Art Peace Hotel.
The Swatch Art Peace Hotel was established in Shanghai in 2011, at a time when we were going all-in in the Chinese market, a time when price and appearance were essential parameters. We wanted to offer accessible products. Back then, we still used plastic, not bio-ceramic, and our watches were colourful and fun, so different from the diamond-and-gold aesthetics that China loved. We had to add something to our brand, that’s why we decided to open a workshop there, to make the Chinese market understand the art behind the project. We did wonder whether it made sense to replicate the experience elsewhere, but in the end, we decided against it. To build something of the same scope and to the same high standards would be a very large investment. We decided for ‘satellite campuses’, possibly fixed-term. The true richness of our project, anyway, lies in the community-building we have been able to foster, something that temporary residencies couldn’t do. Also, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel is growing – we are looking at over 500 artists. Our project is all about identity, we are proud of it, and we are proud of the work our artists do and show around the world.

Different and strange aesthetics for the 60th Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere.
What I love about Swatch is the strange, the different, the provocative. The trick, though, lies in the fact that the strange must have a reason to be there. It works similarly in fashion: when you look at some avant-garde designs, you may get the impression that everybody is doing the same thing, and yet, in some places, there’s order, there’s a reason. At Swatch, we feel like we shouldn’t be too orderly, too constrained. The artists who work with us allow us to do just that. an artist’s touch legitimises any inflammatory stance. Swatch is successful because it keeps both together: perfect quality in its products, paired with diverse, open culture. That’s how we thrive: from chaos, order emerges.

Swatch and the Biennale.
Biennale gives us visibility that goes beyond the brand. Slapping our logo on any event just won’t do it for us, that’s not the kind of presence we want. What is beautiful about our relationship with the Biennale is that it allows us to create content. We both worked hard to make it possible. In our first year, Biennale trusted us with a space at the Arsenale, where we produced our first, fantastic project. We want to be discreet and respectful as far as our rapport goes. Still, this is our sixth edition together, and it’s becoming apparent that there’s something important behind what we do, there’s a story. And this is surprising coming from us, since Swatch has always been all about variety. Our core concept is ‘innovation and experimentation’. Swatch’s founder, Nicolas George Hayek, once said “the only thing we are consistent about is inconsistency”. Well, what we do at Biennale is maybe the only exception we make to that rule.

Featured image: Carlo Giordanetti