Vera Sacchetti and Matylda Krzykowski founded Foreign Legion in 2018 as a curatorial initiative for systemic change in design, architecture and the arts.
Critically questioning obsolete social structures and conventions, Foreign Legion aims to amplify historically underrepresented voices and champion equal and fair opportunities.
Their first projects together as Foreign Legion include the symposium ‘A Women’s Work’, and the exhibition ‘Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitioners’ at Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden.
They are currently developing a new publication, titled ‘We Are Foreign and We Are Everywhere: Networks for Systemic Change’, and have just contributed to the ‘Arts of the Working Class Magazine’ as part of the German pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition — Venice Biennale.
Q > What’s the most satisfying part of your work (and why)?
MK > If all expectations of everyone involved are met.
VS > I find the daily exercise of persistence to be the most rewarding, alongside the moment when things, people and projects come together for the first time. A lot of potential is unleashed (or comes full circle) in those moments.
Q > Does humour help you overcome challenges?
VS > Always.
MK > Humour can be the challenge. It can act as a disguised moralist.
Q > Who or what inspires you?
MK > I get inspired when I am surprised. It is the most rewarding reaction that can happen to you.
VS > At the moment, and under the current circumstances, I find great inspiration in small daily tasks and accomplishments, what Yona Friedman called the “micro-joys”. They keep you going.
Elsewhere, I keep listening to great minds share their knowledge over the internet in Instagram Lives and Zoom calls. It’s been inspiring to just listen, these days: recently I heard great things from Paola Antonelli, Alice Rawsthorn, Michelle Millar Fisher, Zöe Ryan.
Q > Tell us about moments in your life that helped define or change your identity.
VS > I feel like the moment we’re going through is definitely one of those. Others are related to the act of changing contexts: moving to Porto, to Rotterdam, to New York, to Milan and finally (or for the moment), Basel. All those were opportunities to start from scratch; as Frantz Fanon wisely put it, “in the world through which I travel I am endlessly creating myself”.
MK > I have lived a quite uncompromising life in which I encountered many people who have affected me, or who I have affected. Vera reminds me of it frequently. I guess, I live for these moments with today’s or tomorrow’s practitioners that somehow have the nerve to want to make the world their own.
Q > Building connections with ‘places’ through presence and absence: tell us about your journeys and which places have triggered memorable emotions.
VS > This seems like an odd question in the present moment, where we are forced to be in place rather than moving around. Matylda and I have travelled more than we should for a lifetime, I think. To me, some of those trips seem absurd and unnecessary now, but all of them taught me something. Others seem essential: time spent in Japan and Iran recently was a welcome change of perspective for many reasons.
MK > As Vera already said we have seen and probably also influenced quite some places. My recent journey to the Californian desert where I stayed with the American artist Andrea Zittel has made me realise that you aren’t free because of choices, you are rather free within limitations. I got back to Berlin two months ago and that clearness and pureness of the desert was present here too.
Q > Opening conversations around taboos — where would you start? Which topics should we be discussing more?
VS > The current pandemic can open portals to discussions that need to be happening. Not just about feminism, climate change, universal basic income, new ways of leading countries and creating community. But more than discussing, I find the present moment to be a great opportunity to do things and put them to the test. We will all be greatly transformed by this experience.
MK > Systemic change in education. In times of distant learning we gathered proof that the present or future of education is not online. We entered an unexpected phase of forced experimentation with technologies but it is evident that there is no substitute for human interaction. I can see that with the students I work with at AA London, Die Angewandte in Vienna and HKB Bern. I would start with building actual test sites for learning and experimentation.
Q > What makes you angry?
VS > Superficiality, ego trips, misogyny. Patriarchy!
MK > Hypocrisy and violence. Patriarchy is embarrassing.
Q > Which things would you like to include more in your life / and less of?
VS > The current moment is a good one to pose these questions, but I don’t know that I have an appropriate answer. I think we’re all just trying to endure and survive. Time will tell what will remain or blossom in our lives.
MK > I wonder if I travelled so much in the past years not because I actually wanted it, but because it was offered to me. Every week I would take a plane or a train for work. But I actually like being in one place.
Vera Sacchetti is a design critic and curator. She serves in a variety of curatorial, research and editorial roles, most recently as one half of the curatorial initiative Foreign Legion and associate curator of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial – A School of Schools. She is co-curator of TEOK Basel and co-founder of editorial consultancy Superscript. Her writing has appeared in Disegno, Metropolis and The Avery Review, among others.
Matylda Krzykowski is a designer, curator and artist focusing on collaborative and performative projects in physical and digital space and the development of experimental formats such as ‘Desktop Exhibition’, ‘Superprojekt’ and ‘Design Date’. She is a founding member of Depot Basel, place for contemporary design, Switzerland, and is a former participant of the Jan van Eyck Academy. Her work has been internationally presented and she has given lectures and workshops worldwide.
