The factory is a Beautiful Place, beautiful because it can create and inspire beauty. The connection between these two realities is strong, actually “even intrinsic”, as the philosopher and theologian, Vito Mancuso observes in his opening essay of Pirelli Annual Report 2021. He says “factory and beauty, which is economics and aesthetic, are united by an essential element for both of them: resource.” The resource's transformation creates products and work of art, productiveness and magnificence, thanks to humans handcraft, since factory and art, first of all, are “manufacturing”.
Discover the project: “A Beautiful Place. The Art of Manufacturing"
To underline this connection we asked artists to visit some of our production plants in China, United States, Romania, Brazil and Italy and to be inspired by architecture, technology, people, sounds to create their works, made of resource and ingenuity.
In Brasil the artists are Pinguim, Tony Felix, Susy Garcia and Fernanda Broggi.
For them, “Machine beating, forklift horn, vulcanizer pressure, computer keyboard... at first, just ordinary sounds, disjointed and with no musical sense are art tools”. They were responsible for transforming the sounds of a tire factory into a contagious and innovative beat, present in the theme song of Pirelli's 2021 Artistic Balance.
The Campinas plant, significant in the company's history in Brazil and in the world, was one of those chosen to illustrate a Beautiful Place, the theme of this year's Balance. The music, composed from the inspiration brought by the factory, opens up the hidden beauty behind a relationship between machines and people. Tony says he would describe the project "as bold, completely out of the box, but full of love."
Paper cut, sculptures, street art and music: a mix of skills to celebrate such a special date for Pirelli. It has been 150 years since the company was founded, and much history has passed behind the gates of factories around the world. There were hundreds of components mixed and manufactured to become products that remain for decades as a reference in performance, safety, comfort and technology.
In a Beautiful Place, traveling from Bossa Nova to Funk, this unlikely mix between the old and the new, is permeated by the sounds of the Campinas factory. “It is interesting to realize, for those who, like me, did not know a factory, how there is beauty everywhere. In the architectural part and in the day to day, in the longing to return to the place where we spent the day, as some people have been away in recent years because of the pandemic. It's really a beautiful place in many ways,” explains Susy, the songwriter. Her lyrics say “we can hear the drizzle, after the storm passes. And now I feel prepared”, reflecting lessons learned in times of crisis, forging Pirelli's strong foundation to remain relevant in more than a century of existence.
Historically disruptive, Brazilian music carries with it an accumulation of external and internal references. With Pirelli, it's no different. Created in Italy, the company has been built over the years through experiences around the world, bringing in some of the cultural DNA acquired away from home. In the 2021 Balance Sheet, the Pirelli-Brasil link is presented as a two-way street, explained between rhythms. After all, "everything we live, made us see, the hidden beauty that embraces this place.” This is how it is with Brazil. It's like that with Pirelli.
