Questions On is a video interview format created by C41. Three are the ‘simple’ questions asked to our network friends, partners and creative minds. They tackle the current situation: How do they see their future, what kind of changes do they expect and how they are going to react to this unusual situation that we are living these days?

The final episode about this topic is with Barbara Gueiu. Founder, partner, executive producer, r&d of K48 Production and C41 Creative Production Company. She is also the co-curator of these episodes of C41 Questions On, we thank her for the idea that let us start this new series of interviews.

You can watch the interview on the C41 YouTube channel and also read it below.

1. Future — How do you feel about your future when everything will be back to normal?

This question makes me think a little bit because I am not sure that we will go back to normality, and from a certain point of view I wish that the normality to which I was used will change. If there is something I have learned from this period of forced break due to an health situation that has caused pain, suffering and issues, whether economic, political or social, after all in this great moment of pain and reflection I have been given the opportunity to see what is the future of my normality, or the normality of my future, not sure.  What made me reflect throughout this period was the value of time.  The value of time that a person owns. Normality, before the break, the lockdown due to this situation, didn’t provide me with a lot of time to reflect, to live moments of intimacy with my family, to deepen my research in relation to my job. Normality was to be in a wheel that kept on turning, that surely made some mechanisms run, some gears bigger than my existence, but that basically was turning on itself, it didn’t lead to any discovery. So, if I have to imagine my future, in a moment in which the world will start living again as we were used, I imagine a future where people have the possibility to keep some time for themselves without feeling guilty. This is what I imagine for my future, and that of others people honestly.

To slightly bring back the human being to value the own life. After all, I find that being able to work on the oneself also creates the opportunity to enrich the community and it is from this starting point that I would like normality to start back. I have serious doubts that this will happen, but if there is something worth fighting for, or taking risks, perhaps it is this one. We should also think that I would not want people to forget about this period, how can we avoid forgetting about this period? Valuing what we have learned over this period, both from a personal point of view and from a collective one.

2. Change — What kind of changes will affect society, work environment and world itself?

I honestly don’t know how the world will change, how society will change, how work will change. I think it’s still too early to be able to imagine this kind of change. I think it’s still a long process we have ahead, surely this virus has triggered a mechanism of change, this is a fact. I still can’t imagine how and in which way it will change because while we live this principle of change we all try to remain attached to what was the reality of the past so it’s very complicated to imagine a future in which we are still strongly attached to the past and at the same time we live the troubles of the present.

3. Reactions — What are your reactions to this essential process of adaptation?

This process of adaptation has been very natural, we have been asked to respect rules and I have respected them. In my daily life it certainly changed my life. I have two children who used to attend school and now partially attend online school, but they are not to be blamed for partially attending it but due to a school system that was absolutely not ready for this kind of occurrence. One adapts, one adapts and I think that the strength of this moment is also the demonstration that there is a great desire to move forward. The moment you’re asked to apparently stop, you basically move on, you continue with your life.  So I can’t really talk about reaction, the reaction is that instinctive one. Everyone basically has fundamentally found a way to keep himself alive and even regarding work, I find that, in my specific job which is in the world of communication, of advertising, there wasn’t a moment in which we stopped. On the contrary, in a very short period of time we immediately looked for a way to communicate despite the troubles of the moment.

Featuring: Maria Teresa Salvati @myspotofbeauty

Curated by Riccardo Fantoni Montana, Luca A. Caizzi, Barbara Guieu
Words: Riccardo Fantoni Montana, Stefania Zanetti
Editing: Vittoria Elena Simone
Line production: Alice De Santis
Visual: C41.eu
Thanks to: Alessandro De Agostini, Robin Stauder