Federico Porro - Hostilia

The project originates from a critical brief: to respond to a “frictionless” digital landscape that anesthetizes touch and flattens conflict by reintroducing friction as a structural condition of the present. From this premise emerges Hostilia, a biannual magazine conceived as a five-issue cycle, addressing a politically engaged, culturally aware audience. The title derives from the Latin adjective hostilis, evoking “hostile contact” as the inevitable encounter between entities whose coexistence generates tension, weight, wear, and transformation. Each issue investigates a specific consequence of contact — Pressure, Wear, Resistance, Collision, Constraint — framing conflict not as spectacle but as a generative force. The first issue, Pressure, examines pressure as an invisible structural force acting on bodies, infrastructures, and systems, articulated through four progressive stages — Accumulation, Compression, Deformation, Breaking Point — to make perceptible how tensions build, intensify, and ultimately exceed systemic limits.

From conceptual framework to material execution, the project translates conflict into physical experience. The selection of rough, high-weight papers, pronounced typographic contrasts, and a grid system conceived as operating under stress transform the publication into a perceptual device. Materiality — weight, friction, resistance — becomes performative rather than decorative, amplifying the forces under investigation and counteracting the smooth neutrality of digital environments. The visual structure mirrors the thematic progression: density accumulates, space compresses, layouts bend, and moments of rupture interrupt the reading flow. The result is an editorial artifact that does not merely represent hostile contact but embodies it, using matter as a critical instrument to render structural tensions visible and tangible.