Archive

February 19, 2013

Mission Afterviews


Special commissions: Luke Butler, Kevin Killian, Jerome Reyes, Zarouhie Abdalian.
Screening: Rä Di Martino, Sherman Ong, Irgin Sena, Marinella Senatore, Xavier Stentz, Ming Wong.
Curated by Michele Fiedler, Sharon Lerner, and Xiaoyu Weng.

Publication: 










Screening at old Victoria Theater on 16th and Mission




Zarouhie Abdalian, Now Showing, 2012. Commissioned intervention on theater marquee. 
Still: Irgin Sena, Untitled, 2010. 5:35min.
Marinella Senatore, Speak Easy 2009. 15min.
Rä di Martino, Copies Récentes de Paysages Anciens, 2012. 8min.
Xavier Stentz, Alternate Ending, 2012. Loop.
Luke Butler, commissioned poster for Mission Afterviews. 



May 24, 2012

Sotto la Strada, la Spiaggia






Referring to the slogan written during the French May 1968 protests “Sous les pavés, la plage” [“Under the Paving Stones, the Beach”], this exhibition presents works by artists making generative gestures able to redefine our relation to reality.

May 1968’s slogan implied a promise that after the upheavals, after using the weapons offered by the city itself — paving stones — prospects for a better life could develop.
 On this occasion, the slogan has changed with a shift on the word ‘street’, which connotes an apparatus of well-established structures that can be manipulated in order to reach the promised beach. The pieces included show a coherency in their ability to exist and act within existing structures and while grasping to these structures, they also work outside of them.

Pieces in the exhibition deal with strategies like disruption and counter-narrative, creating new visions of everyday life, and making room for doubts about what is assumed as real or true, in order to create new conditions for visibility within the socio-political, cultural, and urban contexts. The memory of the Situationist International - who elaborated techniques involving a playful-constructive behavior and awareness of the urban landscape - is thus in some way present in the exhibition.

Furthermore, with a specific focus on post-conceptual-practices, the exhibition seeks to define a line running through different generations of artists who developed a reflexion on the state of things, by working with different strategies from intervention to subversive affirmation, institutional critique and political minimalism.

Underneath the Street, the Beach focuses on the here-and-now of works and initiatives by Italian artists who are strongly involved with the contemporary. How to be contemporary in such an overloaded historical context, and how to respond to the physical and mental presence of the past.


Artists: Yuri Ancarani, Francesco Arena, Ludovica Carbotta, Angelo Castucci, Danilo Correale, Luca De Leva, Tomaso De Luca, Giulio Delvè, Tony Fiorentino, Helena Hladilova, Renato Leotta, Beatrice Marchi, Liliana Moro, Maria Pecchioli, Alessandro Quaranta, Andrea Romano, Mirko Smerdel, Nico Vascellari, and Valentina Vetturi.

Catalogue includes interviews with and articles of: Cripta 747, GUM Studio, BOCS, Frau Frisör Fosca, Teatro Valle, Lavoratori Dell'arte, and Xing.

Curated by Benoit Antille, Michele Fiedler, and Andrey Parshikov



Visitor with Maria Pecchioli's Versus Player, 2012. Installation with sound; modified turntable playing a live concert record of pop-singer Claudio Baglioni back and forward to find hidden subliminal messages.
Install view: Nico Vascellari, Lago Morto, 2009. Installation, 16 videos of clandestine hardcore concerts in Vittorio Veneto, loud sound, audience pictures framed.

Detail of Lago Morto.



Alessandro Quaranta, Kames Te Pijas Kafa?, 2003. Video installation, documenting a conversation over coffee with a gypsy from the Roma community which setteled in Turin in 1980, and have been now kicked out.
Back-- Ibid. Liliana Moro. Front-- Tony Fiorentino, Removed Some Bricks From the Street is a Sign of Revolution, 2009. Documentation of an action in six polaroids. 
Right-- Tony Fiorentino, Cleaning a Lamp for Street Lighting, 2012. Video.
From left-- Liliana Moro, Articolo 1 and Home, 2011. Found objects, sound installation. Sculpture-- Francesco Arena, Struttura Articolata, 2012. Sculpture made of leaflets given out by the Red Brigade which are hold together by smoked cigars. Wall-- Mirko Smerdel, I Vostri Grattacieli, 2010. Series of 30 digital prints on paper, text was taken from a street tag in Napoli and over imposed on images of utopic and grand buildings.
Left-- Tomaso De Luca, 100 Heads of the Hunter, 2010. Drawings on paper of decommissioned italian sculptures that lay in a garden outside of Rome.  Right-- Beatrice Marchi, N˚5, 2012. Installation, plants that form a home-madeChanel N˚5 fragrance garden. 
Install view. Left wall-- Tomaso de Luca, The Sleepers, 2010. 6 pictures documenting the artist's action of introducing two decommissioned and forgotten male statues to one another in Rome. Far-- Lago Morto detail. Front-- Giulio Delvè, And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, 2009. 
Instal view. De Luca, Marchi, Delvè.
Giulio Delvè, And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, 2009. Sculpture of ready-mades, love paddle-locks forcefully removed from their original place.
Detail. Beatrice Marchi's N˚ 5. Roses, ylang-ylang, jasmine, vanilla, eucaliptus, and more.

Instal View. On back wall-- Danilo Correale, Untitled (The Future in Their Hands/The Visible Hand), 2011. Six close-up pictures of the hands of U.S. House of representatives board members in oath during a hearing regarding the current economic crisis. To the right of each is its fortune as read by a famous palm reader. 
Right-- Detail of Renato Leotta, Untitled, 2012. A 100 Lira coin, obsolete now after the implementation of the Euro which did not impede an economic crisis. 

Install view. Straight back-- Luca De Leva, Catering Blotto, 2012. Sculpture, installation, performance. A secret home-made alcoholic mix was given to visitors inside the exhibition space during the opening night. It was a secret 'illegal' bar inside the otherwise drink-free atmosphere of the gallery where entrance with liquids is prohibited. An oasis,  
Install detail.
De Leva's Catering Blotto.


Opening Night


Front-- Helena Hladilova, Selfmade, 2012. Installation of live grass on the cracks throughout the galleries' floor. Artists to the extreme left dressed in black. 

One of the opening night performances. Beatrice Marchi, Storie di Opera, Medley, 2012. Three opera singers singing fragments of famous italian operas to the miss-tones the artist's grandfather does each time he tells a story about his childhood in Veneto, where he would hear conservatory students sing after school at bars, and where he first heard opera in his life. 












Soon, PDF of catalogue.



This is going to be great, artists from Moscow, and Switzerland at GUM. 


Sat, 26th at GUM studio...


Systems of Order




























Francois Dey and A.P.
Yakov Kazhdan
Andrey Kuzkin
Ksenia Peretrukhina  
Anastasia Ryabova
Anna Shestakova


La nozione di istruzione si lega all'arte contemporanea che ragiona in diversi modi. Le istruzioni dell'artista creano ottiche per la percezione di un oggetto o diventano direttive per la produzione. Potrebbe anche essere inteso in modo diverso: un artista vede la realtà costruita come istruzione, mentre descrive lo stato delle cose individua i suoi elementi didattici, il sistema di ordine. In ognuno di questi casi vi è una sequenza di azioni, una narrazione. Questa piccola mostra con un grande nome cerca di attuare una ricerca che dovrebbe continuare.


The notion of instruction relates to contemporary art thinking in multiple ways. Artist’s instructions create optics for the perception of an object or become the directive on production. It could be also understood differently: an artist sees the constructed reality as an instruction, while describing the state of things in it and identifying its instructional elements, the system of order. In each of these cases there is a sequence of actions or a narrative. This small exhibition with a big name seeks to do a to-be-continued research in this field.


Opening 26 / 05 / 2012 h 6pm
Curated by Yakov Kazhdan

May 17, 2012

 Xing -- Live Arts Week
Bologna, Apri 25-May 5 2012
(pics with descriptions down)
web site -- very complete, documentation and texts.


Nowhere from the outside, piano-performance by
Marino Formenti


Palazzo Re Enzo from the outside






-------- There is a special allure in the previously unexperienced. As crowds grow accustomed to certain states of spectatorship, excitement becomes more about the comfort of repetition and less about perception. While the established cultural forms and institutions mostly allow for what has already proved successful (be it popular or high-brow entertainment), finding somewhere to experience this emotion proves difficult. Parallel to these cultural offers, and responding to a lack of curiosity, is where new spaces, dynamics, forms, and scenes are developed.
In this regard, Luigi Russolo’s manifesto “The Art of Noises” (1913) superbly describes the boredom of classical music against the new sounds of the machine-filled industrial city of his times. The whole manifesto—except for Marinetti’s onomatopoeic glorification of war— seems as if it could be relevant time after time if only the variants of classical and noise are substituted by others like pop and electronic. It is an energetic and unapologetic decree of change. I’ll settle for quoting just this:


         “The ear of an eighteenth-century man could never have endured the discordant intensity of certain chords produced by our orchestras (…). To our ears, on the other hand, they sound pleasant, since our hearing has already been educated by modern life, so teeming with variegated noises. But our ears are not satisfied merely with this, and demand an abundance of acoustic emotions.”

So who starts creating new acoustic emotions, and for whom? They do it for themselves, the unsatisfied, at least at first, then the curious come, and a new audience is created. These reflections bring be to Xing, in Bologna, which has been activating new audiences for a while.
Xing is a cultural network directed and coordinated by Silvia Fanti, Daniele Gasparinetti, and Andrea Lissoni. They have been active as Xing (they were previously part of the Link project) since 2001, from their headquarters in Raum space. Since then, they have organized interdisciplinary events devoted to contemporary culture, with a nomadic approach, in Bologna and abroad. Early in 2012 the Dutch duo Fucking Good Art published “Italian conversations; Art in the age of Berlusconi,” an extensive collection of conversations with different Italian cultural workers. In this publication, Silvia Fanti explains: “I’ve been doing this already for twenty years. Since the beginning it was very simple. We were moved by a desire of direct knowledge. We invited the artists that we would like to see. We, ourselves, were the potential audience.” This year I had the chance to visit Bologna during their new festival Live Arts Week and form part of their extended audience, to see what they wanted to see, it turned out it was also what I wanted to see.
Live Arts Week was seven days of events that took place in six different spaces in the city center of Bologna. I had the chance to visit five of these places, and each one grew more enigmatic than the previous one, not only because of the events that took place inside them, but because the constant change of venues brought with it a kind of secret migrant audience, whose faces started to become familiar as we moved from one place to another, and this in turn created a feeling of intimacy. This activation of the center is clever also in that the uncommon settings leave behind any kind of established ideological associations with art institutions, concert halls, or theaters. It is important to point out, as Fanti emphasized during the conversation we had on the last day of the festival, that these spaces are being used, but they will be left empty. Xing does not fill them with art objects, nor are they planning to use them permanently - quite the opposite: the nature of most works is essentially performative, related to sound, other spaces are ambiences created by artists, and all will revert to their previous state after the festival is over. 
As mentioned above, during the last day of the festival I had a short but substantial conversation with Silvia Fanti and Daniele Gasparinetti. Gasparinetti mentioned that, parting from Plato’s ideas on democracy in The Republic, specifically the passage where the philosopher states that the only beauty of democracy lies in the many ‘colors’ that can develop within it, Xing is taking advantage of this positive side of the democratic order. This in fact concurs with their use of multiple locations and their interdisciplinary program. We focused on the festival and its venues as each one of them has a different story. These stories are interesting in that they show how Xing uses the many colors available to them.


Palazo Re Enzo inside, day-time
Installation and sound  by musician, artist,
and fashion designer Ottaven web site
One of the central venues of the festival is Palazzo Re Enzo, originally built in 1245, it is mostly used for elite dinners and parties. Seven years ago they achieved their goal of opening it to the public for a previous festival, and now the building also hosts the roBOt digital festival, which alone attracts another whole audience. This venue featured installations, ambiences, sound pieces, and a live electronic music performance with both local and international artists. Close to Palazzo Re Enzo is the Spazio Carbonesi, a private building whose young owners have grown in close contact with Xing over the years, and also share part of their ideology. Carbonesi opened every day at 6 pm and was used for concerts and performances. Another venue was the Museo della Storia di Bologna, a bizarre over-technological, Disney-like museum which, among other things, features an animated 3-D 15 min. film on the history of Bologna. Here, in a small room, Xing presented a collaborative experimental project by a group of young Italian artists.  Another venue was the Museo della Storia di Bologna, a bizarre over-technological, Disney-like museum which, among other things, features an animated 3-D 15 min. film on the history of Bologna. Here, in a small room, Xing presented a collaborative experimental project by a group of young Italian artists. Another venue was the Museo della Storia di Bologna, a bizarre over-technological, Disney-like museum which, among other things, features an animated 3-D 15 min. film on the history of Bologna. Here, in a small room, Xing presented a collaborative experimental project by a group of young Italian artists. Hotel Palace, which hosted a performance of French performance artist Yves-Nöel Genod, is exactly that, a Hotel. Fanti and Gasparinetti called it a new kind of squat: after a vain search for a suitable venue, the artist suggested using the lobby of the hotel where he was staying at. And so it was that there, they did one of the most ambiguous and interesting pieces I have ever been part of (as opposed to seen), one that really went beyond the distinction between members of the audience and performers growing from a normal cocktail party to a kind of decadent Buñuel movie. The last place I visited is the space of a store that had gone out of business a few months earlier, they called it ‘Nowhere’. Here, pianist Marino Formenti performed every day from 11 a.m. to 22 p.m., playing music by the likes of Cage and Eno. These performances were free and open to the public, and the space had a series of mattresses for the attendees that wanted to stay several hours, reading or lying down comfortably. A kind of place of rest in the heart of the city. The performance was also streamed live on the festival’s webpage, an extension of the festival that comes from ‘Nowhere’ into far away audiences’ homes. 

Palazzo Re Enzo big hall, inside, at night.
Live media by Orphan Fairytale, Dennis Tyfus/Vom Grill, and The Claw

Dennis Tyfus/ Vom Grill, singing and dancing. Ending with an electronic
slow version of The girl from Ipanema, high-pitched tropical feel in Bologna
directly from Antwerp

The Claw (Kingdom, Total Freedom, Nguzunguzu (Los Angeles)
Live electronic music, 4 person band More info


Antonia Baher, D is for Dog, Italian premiere
Part 1... synchronizing recorded sounds of her mother
and her mother's dog.
Part 2.... Story telling
Part 3.... amazing vocal performance, from human
language to dog noise. web site


Falling floors at the Museum of the History
of Bologna
Etruscan life size diorama
Light box of Bologna old city map, narrated re-enactment
on the plasma, and a motor bike


Giovanni Anceschi and Luca Trvisani's project with
10 young artists, including GUM Studio's Namsal
Siedlecki, who explained the project, a bit, to me.

Resulting picture, at a dinner.



Yves-Nöel Genod, Hotel Palace, Italian premier