Discussion and Book Launch / “The Mollino Set,” with Lytle Shaw and Etienne Turpin

Date: Thursday, 13 June 2024, 7–8:30 pm
Location: Cabinet Berlin @ Fahrbereitschaft, Herzbergstrasse 40–43, Building 8.1, 1st floor up, 10365 Berlin-Lichtenberg (map and directions here)
Free admission. Limited space; please RSVP here. (For queries, email events@cabinetmagazine.org.)

Please join us for a discussion to celebrate the launch of our new book, The Mollino Set by Lytle Shaw.

In 2017, Shaw, a professor of some repute in New York City, received an intriguing offer from a stranger in Belgium to write a text on Carlo Mollino—Italian architect, furniture designer, theorist of Alpine skiing, softcore pornographer, and aerial daredevil. Traveling to northern Italy over the course of the next year to conduct what he calls “field research,” Shaw comes to realize that Mollino’s conflicted legacy offers a unique window on the role that postwar Italian politics and culture played in the country’s reimagining of itself as a victim, rather than a proponent, of fascism. But almost from the very beginning, his scholarly investigations are stymied by a series of mysterious incidents that suggest he is but a pawn in a larger game beyond his powers of comprehension. Before long, Shaw is forced to adopt—as best he can—Mollino’s swashbuckling style as he is chased down the ski slopes of the Aosta Valley and across the rooftops of Turin. Like Shaw’s The Moiré Effect (Cabinet Books, 2012), The Mollino Set is a work of incisive political and cultural history in the shape of a rollicking caper novel.

The evening will feature Shaw in conversation with Etienne Turpin.

About the Participants

Lytle Shaw is a New York–based writer. He teaches literature at New York University and theory at the School of Architecture, University of Limerick. His books include New Grounds for Dutch Landscape (OEI Editör, 2021), Narrowcast: Poetry and Audio Research (Stanford University Press, 2018), and The Moiré Effect (Cabinet Books, 2012). Shaw has also published essays on artists including Zoe Leonard, Robert Smithson, Gerard Byrne, Paul McCarthy, and the Royal Art Lodge for institutions such as the Reina Sofia, the DIA Center, Whitechapel Gallery, De Hallen, and the Drawing Center.

Etienne Turpin is a philosopher and general editor of K. Verlag in Berlin. He recently co-edited Decapitated Economies (K. Verlag, 2024) which examines the peculiar commonalities shared by the museum and the guillotine in order to consider their respective roles in contemporary insurrection, and co-authored Productions of Nature (K. Verlag, 2024), which brings together a decade of research and writing on the natural history museum as a habitat interface.

This event has been made possible by a grant from the Lambent Foundation.