As a visiting artist in residence at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in the early 1970s, Gianni Pettena undertook a number of ambitious projects. In Wearable Chairs, students constructed collapsable, simple wooden chairs that they wore flat on their backs. On foot and by bus they circulated around downtown Minneapolis, walking in single file and occasionally sitting in public spaces. The performance was documented in photographs and the journey’s narrative was retold from the memory of its participants. Pettena was affiliated with the Italian radical architecture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this work speaks to many of its relevant themes, including the nomadic quality of modern life and its impact on design, an interest in the body, and the occupation of public space—a peripatetic take on the era’s numerous immovable “sit-ins.”