May 2019
When in late 2018 Bialetti Industrie S.p.A. is facing bankruptcy, artist David Bergé started gathering and cataloguing Bialetti octagonal stove top coffeemakers in different sizes and models, as well as clones by other brands.
Although the Moka Express itself is part of the collection of major design museums around the globe, it is hard to find a genealogy of the products, critical literature or even (ironically, coffee table) books explaining and celebrating the history of Bialetti.
David Bergé is currently preparing a new artistic work: OCTOGONAL ORIENTATION, to engage with this phenomenon.
During his residence, in collaboration with the Museum of Anthropocene Technology, field research took place with visits to factories in ruins, the Alessi archive, and interviews with members of the Bialetti family and with museum and art curators.
(text David Bergé)