MADE IN MIND #11 by Made in Mind Magazine

COVER |

Mustafa Sabbagh

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Francesca Pirillo

DIRETTORE RESPONSABILE Dario Carotenuto

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MUSTAFA SABBAGH _________ Marika Marchese

Mustafa Sabbagh is an Italian artist and photographer, born in Amman, Jordan, in 1961. He grew up in the Mediterranean Sea area but was educated overseas. In New York he became assistant to Richard Avedon and in London a lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. Mustafa Sabbagh “has been recognized as one of the 100 most influential photographers in the world, as well as being one of the top 40 nude portraitists - the only Italian - in the world” according to Enrico Ratto in an interview in ’Maledetti Fotografi’. His recent work centres on rewriting history of art through photography, as the main instrument of epochal mythology. Convinced that aesthetics, refined and audacious, cannot exist without ethics, Sabbagh bases his work on the search for today’s myths that admit the intrinsic weakness of the human, transfiguring it into a beauty that, even if daring, pushes the viewer to search within himself for the truth. Mustafa Sabbagh’s photographs are often portraits revealing the psychological nature of character. They are masked faces, sacred icons, figures borrowed from Christian symbolism and art history, as well as still lives. Beauty, the unusual, the strength of the works, rendered through the photographic medium, are brought out by the use of a black background, as if they emerged from birth, like the Maieutic technique, which according

to Plato helps others to ‘give birth’ to the truth. This method consisted in the exercise of dialogue, that is, in questions and answers, such as to determine it in the most autonomous way possible. So Sabbagh takes us before his subjects and questions us. The artist is inspired by the seventh book of Plato’s The Republic in which the myth of the Cave is told. In the story, prisoners who have never seen light since their birth, once they achieve freedom and have their ‘sight’ restored with the help of light, discover that everything becomes interpretable, enabling them as men to go beyond the limits of their knowledge of the moment. With Plato’s myth of the Cave within Mustafa Sabbagh’s photography, we are placed in front of new views and it is up to us to interpret them and try to understand the world. Black contains many meanings, possibly the whole life of man. From the black night, to the darkness in which lovers hide or fear monsters, as happens with children. Black, chromatically is the absence of colour, while its white opposite is the sum. Divine and profane, black and white. The ‘non-colour’ that contains the sensuality, the mourning, the black of military shirts, the ink, the elegance of black, the darkness of reason generates monsters, the black souls, the wickedness of the human soul, the flags. Black desire, black humour, Soulages’s

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Onore al nero _ Hebe vs. Hebe fine art photographic print on dibond, ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist, Dino Zoli Foundation [FC] 150 x 180cm 2017

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Onore al nero _ untitled fine art photographic print on dibond ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist 100 x 125 cm 2015

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Onore al nero _ untitled fine art photographic print on dibond, ed. of 5 + 1 AP courtesy: the artist 100 x 125 cm 2016

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painting, Ad Reinhardt or Hermann Nitsch, Malevič’s black square. From the words of the French philosopher Alain Badiou, “black symbolizes indiscriminately both the lack and the excess” (Le noir. Éclats d’une non-couleur - Editions Autrement, Paris, 2016). What is black to you, Mustafa? When was the first ‘black’ work born? Black is a thought, not a vision. Conception occurs in total darkness. Life begins with black, the amniotic fluid is black, and so is the origin of a new life ... or of a new work. “Night, you guided me, Loved more than the early dawn, Night, which you transformed, With sweet alternate ardor, Even in the Beloved of the Beloved the heart!” By Giovanni della Croce, ‘The dark night of the soul’ Black is interpreted by Gregory of Nyssa, in the ‘Homilies on the Song of Songs’ as “as the great Moses began to enjoy the vision of God in the light, God spoke to him through the cloud; finally, having become more sublime and perfect, Moses contemplates God in the darkness”. What we learn from this is that the most precise knowledge leads the soul to look at what is hidden. To have Faith. “Black for Kandinsky resonated inwardly as ‘a nothing without possibility’, a nothing dead after the death of the sun; and it is the same

Onore al nero _ untitled fine art photographic print on dibond, ed. of 5 + 1 AP courtesy: the artist 125 x 100 cm 2014

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colour that Rimbaud associates with a vowel, the letter A of Atramentum, the ‘black swathed corset of shining flies’. It is the colour of the absence of light, of non-light, of non-life, which covers the human skin like tar on the feathers of birds” (critical text by Roberto Farneti - exhibition by Mustafa Sabbagh, ‘XI commandment: Honor to Black, Atramentum, Museum of San Domenico - Forlì).

embodies the groundlessness of everyday life. The artist photographer in the XI commandment: You shall not forget, gives a warning in which memory must be the medium to reach Nirvana, in the words of the artist, the catharsis. Sabbagh’s works are extremely cultured, a sublimated richness of references to literature, art history, philosophy, religion and all that is life. So, by deciphering the colour black, we see a galaxy.

The black figures of Mustafa Sabbagh are covered with a layer of black clay and the contrast between the opacity of the material and the ‘fresh’ draft determines, just like the colour, vivid and shiny on the canvas, the plastic value of black on black. The subjects portrayed, in the absolute elegance of the composition, live suspended in a metaphysical atmosphere, such as the video installation ‘Anthro-popgonia’ (2015), set up for the personal exhibition at the San Domenico Museum complex, in the Church of San Giacomo. In the seven diptychs, men and women, today’s Greek myths, are floating, the paradox between media’s hyper-communication and the ever increasing lack of communication, embody the obtuse behaviour of our generation subjugated by perversions and fears in a continuous self-celebration through social networks, exaggerated narcissism and ephemeral that

What do you believe in, Mustafa? I believe in the myth that becomes human. And I believe in the man who, to find it again, gets rid of his divine nature.

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The XI commandment, ‘Memory as commandment and schizophrenia as a method’, in which schizophrenia is indicated as a convulsive method of searching, without pause, of light at the bottom of the darkness, in which alteration of our thought is where Mustafa would like to push us. He would like us to feel as misfits would in this society and reject the basis of a new ‘sentimentality’, which should let ourselves be touched or un-touched depending on the situation. In this splitting of the mind, we must reach (it is a duty), an order that the artist gives us through these photographs, triggered by his unconscious, to push

Onore al nero _ untitled Diptych Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist 100 x 125 cm each 2015

Onore al nero _ untitled Diptych Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist 100 x 100 cm each 2014

Onore al nero _ untitled Diptych Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist, Farnesina Contemporary Art Collection [Rome] 90 x 100 cm each 2014

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ArtLemma _ untitled Diptych Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist 125 x 100 cm each 2012

Memorie Liquide _ untitled Diptych Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist, Ferrara Arte Foundation [Ferrara] 125 x 100 cm each 2012

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us to continue, choose whether to have Leth - forgetfulness or Alètheia - truth. As pilgrims we access the sacred way (of immortality), reflect on human experience and on its relationship with the Cosmos. It is known that memory was considered by the Pythagoreans a fundamental element of intellectual activity, in order to have from her an important food for an immortal spirit. In Forlì, Mustafa Sabbagh’s XI Commandment confronts another great artist, Antonio Canova, for the bicentennial of the creation of Ebe, creating a second maiden, this time alive, almost like Sarah, wife of Abraham. Which contains the maturity of life, no longer the goddess of youth, considering that eternal youth is one of the characteristics of the Gods of Olympus it is difficult to evaluate exactly its role. Perhaps in an archaic period of the myth its presence was necessary to give the Gods their perennial youth. Here instead, Ebe is black, no more than an ethereal white, she is a mature woman, she has a sagging skin no longer turgid, reminding us of what we are and that time runs its course, which leads us to the myth of Chronos and abandons us, in the exasperation of being mortal men. The disturbing artworks of Mustafa Sabbagh, kidnap the viewer, deny him of all stereotypes and give him a new vision of the world, regenerated. Starting from the night of myth, to the dichotomy of memory, we enter a path waiting to find the soul, hidden in some corner. Many projects by Mustafa Sabbagh are concerned with humanity observed in all its aspects, plumbed and thrown back to the viewer to enable him a personal vision. On the

one hand, like a curious child who tries to know how the game is procuring him fun and on the other, with the scientific eye of a ‘disconnector’ of reality. Considered a ‘serial accumulator’ of social urgencies filtered through the darkness of an unconscious, Mustafa Sabbagh upsets with the refinement of the mind and the wisdom of a gesture, returned to us in the form of art because the revolution, in the same words of Sabbagh, should be conducted in a tuxedo. What motivates you to create beauty? What do you let yourself be inspired by? Not from the pixel, repeatable metaphor of the cloning of man, a real tragedy carried out in this historical moment. The only way to create beauty - consequently, for our salvation - is revolution, and revolution as a weapon in our possession is to realize that beauty is a wound to be preserved. You do not want to heal. It is embracing the pain that sublime comes - and art is sublime, or it is not art. Inside the Church of San Giacomo, welcomed in the Museum Complex of San Domenico, a wall that this time does not divide, but unites the two edges of a skin, made of past with stuccos and plaster casts of the sculptures, conjoin to create the future for Mustafa Sabbagh’s works. It is black and is treated with the Japanese art of ‘Shou Sugi Ban’. This technique preserves wood for over a hundred years. An oxymoron if we think of the act of burning combined with conservation, rebirth and memory, Sabbagh delivers them to the users also in the form of a sensory installation.

Interest is everything for the Man, for the complexity of the individual considered in its entirety: beyond belonging to a genre, beyond stereotypes, beyond dogmas, a beauty that feeds on contrasts and wounds. Wounds that we find, again in the XI Commandment, considered magnificat of uniqueness understood as distinctive signs and as experiential enrichment. The wounds are compared to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, in which gold, in this case, the pleasure of the senses, the aesthetics, fill up and cover every discomfort. The artist’s Wounds, are Canova’s plaster casts from the Possagno plaster casts, badly damaged by bombing in the Second World War, and given a second lease of life. What do you want to represent? What message do you want to give to new generations? I like to think that our destiny is to be proud of our misdeeds. The pursuit of perfection scares me, Marika. Perfection represents for me the true nightmare of contemporary man. The artist, in the series Made in Italy© — Handle with care, acquired by MAXXI Museum of Rome (2015), is a series of 27 portraits of young men (sons of Italians together with Italian children of immigrants and immigrants children of Italy), standing by the sea, enveloped in an intense, intimate shade of blue that

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recalls the idea of infinity, in the words of Kandinskji, arousing nostalgia for their purity and supernatural nature. The artist tends to underline with this project that the young people in his portraits are not treated with the delicacy of their young age but as meat for slaughter, with origin, date and refining in Italy. Sabbagh does not like explicitly social works, “I was interested in the artistic gesture, the adolescents as bearers of a new value: the richness of diversity”. (Mustafa Sabbagh interview with Francesca Interlenghi) Looking back to the years when purity of looks, the simplicity of ambitions and the desire to live knew no limits and conditioning, we find another emblematic work of Mustafa Sabbagh, Candido, Compared to poetry, to a narrative in which “I was thinking of the weak of society while I was writing these words, a prelude to one of the projects I care about most. Everyone knows me for Black, but in reality Candido is a resounding work for me. It is a metaphor, the representation of pure innocence. The child represents all that unconsciously, without realizing it, can hurt.” “When the child was a child, it didn’t know that it was a child, to it, everything had a soul, and all souls were one.” (Peter Handke - Lied Vom Kindsein, quoted in Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders, 1987)

ArtLemma _ untitled Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist 80 x 90 cm 2014

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Made in Italy(c) - Handle with care #0001cherinet - DOCG | #0020pietro - DOC | #0006leonardo - IGP | #0002jan - IGP Lambda photographic print on white wooden box Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist, MAXXI contemporary art collection [Rome] 32 x 45 x 8 cm each 2015

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Candido _ untitled Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist 100 x 130 cm 2016

How beautiful is Candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect Candor. [Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass - Preface, 1855]

Hurry to wash your hands. No matter what they are stained of, you’re a child. Cain child is not to blame; guilt is on those who know its sense. And you do not know the sense of guilt; you are a child. What, indeed, is Innocence? Unawareness. Unconsciousness. To cast the first stone, just to see how many times it bounces on the water. Close your eyes, and close them to the others, to count up to tentwentyfifty, to have time to run and hide. Stain your hands in red, in a bloody red, to admire in awe the traces of your own impression. Clap your hands, even if they are stained; there will come the time to beat your chest, which now - as a child - preserves a pure heart, untouched by the barbarity of consciousness. Forgive me father, for I have sinned: that is the moment when you lose your innocence, when you distinguish, crowning it with sulphur, the sense of guilt. But now, still crowned with withered lilies, you play in a cement garden painted in neutral, silent, restless colours - like those of the flesh that protects you, that you have stained on your bloody red hands. By tempera, or by heinousness – unaware of itself, therefore candid. You are absolved, because a child is always a candid presumptuous, always a presumed innocent - whatever tragedy without texture could have stained his hands. Nobody needs to fix a texture to bond a child; what really matters is not solution, just absolution. For a handed-down innocence ... therefore, betrayed. Provided it is childish ... therefore, innocent.

[Mustafa Sabbagh, Candido – critical text, 2016]

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Philosophy, art and cinema, these three arts meet at the moment of the tableau vivant, the frame comes alive with real bodies. We could bring together a constellation of filmmakers, writers and artists of various kinds, all under your art, but with whom do you identify yourself most? With anyone who has been able to affect a furrow in me, because I am made of flesh, bones and memory. Often you said that when you create you let

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yourself be guided by a book, why is that? Do you follow a thread? The word still has the power, wonderful and convulsive, to surprise me, and a book is an accumulation of words. The only thread I follow is the one stretched to the spasm, on which I can still walk, like Genetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Funambolo ... another book. What end do you see for contemporary art? The only admissible conclusion for contemporary art is to create confusion, the only parent / generator of Individuals.

ArtLemma _ untitled Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist 100 x 125 cm 2013

Mustafa Sabbagh was born in Amman (Jordan).

and museums of the world – such as the Musée

sold-out monographs (such as About Skin, edited

Italo-palestinian,

de l’Elysée, in Lausanne, internationally considered

by Damiani and acquired by the permanent book

Middle East, his imprinting is cosmopolitan, while

as a temple of photography.

collection of Tate Gallery, in London) and in several

his attitude is nomadic.

Often protagonist of interviews and documentaries

permanent private and public collections, both in Italy

Former assistant of Richard Avedon, and teacher

inquiring into his visions, in 2013 Sky Arte HD,

and abroad - including the historical Farnesina Art

at Central Saint Martins College of Art and

through the series Photographers, elected him

Collection and the acquisition of a whole project by

Design in London, after a successful career as

as one of the 8 most significant artists of the

the permanent contemporary art collection of MAXXI

a fashion photographer recognized by the most

contemporary italian scene. To date, Mustafa

– National Museum of XXI Century Arts (Rome).

prestigious magazines of the world, starting from

Sabbagh has even been recognized, by an art and

Following his first retrospective “XI Commandment:

2012 Sabbagh focuses his research towards

photography historian the likes of Peter Weiermair,

You shall not forget”, the Mayor Leoluca Orlando,

contemporary

as one of the 100 most influential photographers

“in expressing deep admiration for his art and his

photography and video-art by a kind of aesthetic

in the world, and one of the 40 most important

gaze toward the same extreme point of the horizon”,

counter-canon in which punctum is the skin

nude portraitists - the only one from Italy, on an

conferred on him the honorary citizenship of the City

- diary of individual’s uniqueness. Harmony of

international basis.

of Palermo. Also in 2016, Nèon theatre company

imperfection,

His

raised

art

between

through

the

Europe

mediums

and

numerous

is inspired by his opera omnia for the realization of

anthropological enquiry through image construction

internationally accredited publications (including

the stage play “Invasions - dedicated to Mustafa

are the stylistic features moved by Sabbagh from

Faces - the 70 most beautiful photography portraits

Sabbagh”, awarded by Icon - Panorama magazine

slicks, to the areas of the most important galleries

of all time, curated by Peter Weiermair), in many

as one of the ten best 2016 theatre acts.

psychological

investigation

ArtLemma _ untitled Fine art photographic print on dibond Ed. of 5 + 1 AP Courtesy: the artist 100 x 125 cm 2013

and

artworks

are

included

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MICHAELA ZIMMER _________ Federica Torgano

During your career you studied sculpture at the Chelsea College of Arts, University of Arts London (UAL) Can you tell us how the sculptural element influences your current work? “Physical awareness” of spatial conditions, is as much the origin as it is the content of my work. It’s through a sculptural approach that I resolve issues of energy in ‘still’ images. As I was trained in dance from early childhood, my interest in still images might seem at first contradictory. Looking closer though, it expresses a desire for the containment of fleeting energy as much as the longing for it to be shared. The transformative character of art provides the opportunity for me to create this oxymoron. In the evolution of your career we can see a sort of return to painting (after dance, photography and sculpture). If you had to define your painting work with one word, what would you choose between gesture, matter, conceptuality, abstraction? Painting provides me with the opportunity to capture a corporeal energy in a visceral way. Regarding this aim, I presume the work must be seen in a rather conceptual context. In this sense the aim includes the matter of course. To me ‘gesture’ describes more the technique, while abstract painting happened

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to be the most challenging medium in this case. I never originally wanted to be an abstract painter and coming from sculpture based performance photography I was expected to obey a lot of rules and avoid taboos in that field at the beginning (happily ignoring them again very quickly). Doing that at a time when painting was declared dead again wasn’t very popular, but to me it was a new gateway offering an extended area to my topics. Could you tell us about your process? The process regarding the execution of the work can be divided into three steps. Preparing the canvases often includes building up many translucent layers, resulting in light and colour gradients. It is an intense procedure aimed at only one thing: to prepare the ground for something else. I then go through a lot of physical preparation, in order to reach a point where I am able to move in a highly concentrated way. Surrounded with a couple of often quite beautiful canvasses, I then use all sorts of tools to record traces. The marks on the canvasses left from that stage are either combined directly with Polyethylene film (PE film) or covered with more layers of paint, in a very painterly manner.

140201 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, spray paint, PE film on canvas 240 x 160 cm Courtesy FOLD Gallery, London 2014

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170802 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, spray paint, PE film on canvas 158 x 185 cm 2017

170803 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, spray paint, PE film on canvas 147 x 185 cm 2017

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CMYK installation view FOLD Gallery, London 2016

In a traditional way, sculpture seems to be related to an idea already present in the mind of the artist, who then works on the material to extricate it. Since your paintings are composed of different layers and materials, I was wondering if it is the same to you: while working on theme are you thriving towards a preconceived idea or it is something that just happens in the process? Rather than having a preconceived idea in my mind, I strive for keeping my perception as open as possible at any time for whatever happens in the process. I always know when a piece of art requires something else, but sometimes it takes a long time to realise what the “missing link” is. Usually the hints are evolving directly in the process. The challenge is to be alert enough to embrace them and adopt appropriate measures.

Is time an essential element in your work? And what about the speed of your gestures? Terms like energy and movement in general are usually associated with speed. Some of the gestures executed in my paintings are indeed performed quickly. They are based on a high level of physical concentration and completed in one go. If this is to happen on a purely white primed-only canvas it can easily go wrong without a chance of correction. The scale of those canvases is rather

large, with their measurement aligned to my physical reach in order not to restrict the movement in any direction. I refer to these paintings as my “fast” paintings. Almost contrary to them are the multi-layered paintings that take months to make. They relate to surfaces conveying traces of usage over time. A concrete wall in urban space, a work bench… Still the surface of my paintings always appears quite smooth and even. It takes time for the viewer to discover all sorts of different traces layer by layer. In that respect they can be called “slow” paintings.

Could we say that the process, the genesis, is the subject matter itself to you? I’d rather say the act of making the work, as much as the act of viewing it, is essential to my subject matter. Gesture to me is foremost associated with mere physicality. Regarding the range of physical activities a body can perform from basic movements of the lungs when breathing to high performancesports I am interested in the various levels of energy that are generated. The human body is in constant motion. Even on the lowest energy level it is still in transition. And despite also happening in the brain as a biological process, physical movement interacts with and strongly influences the psychological system. Performance shows these processes directly, while

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160906 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, spray paint, PE film on canvas 240 x 160 cm Courtesy FOLD Gallery, London 2016

150502 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, spray paint, PE film on canvas 185 x 132 cm Courtesy FOLD Gallery, London 2015

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160602, 160603,160604 Paintings Acrylic, lacquer, spray-paint, PE film on canvas 240 x 160 cm each Installation view Perpetual Movement at The Lowry, Manchester 2016

131103 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, spray paint, PE film on canvas Private collection 120 x 80 cm 2013

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180102 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, PE film, polymesh on canvas 185 x 130 cm Courtesy FOLD Gallery 2018

170312 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, spray paint, PE film on canvas 200 x 135 cm Private Collection 2017

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Labo(rat)ori Performance PMAM, 2017 Dancer: Jacob Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connell Photography: Deborah Jaffe

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my concept of painting is a translation of it. In that sense “physical thinking” is the source of my paintings.

150108 Painting Acrylic, lacquer, spray paint, PE film on canvas 240 x 160 cm 2015

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Is the relationship between your work and the public a key element? If yes, what’s the difference between the performative act executed in private, in your studio, and the one fulfilled in public? Here I’m also referring to the Liverpool Museum project, in which the public was not involved in the performative act. I am mainly interested in physical acts that are performed for the sake of their energy and no other immediate purpose. When I am working with others, whether dancers or people with no background in professional physical disciplines, the biggest challenge is usually to get rid of the deliberate gestures, to achieve a state of ease and play in their movement. During my residency at Liverpool Museum my work was focused on exploring borders between our perception of „inside“ and „outside“ via performance photography. The camera enabled me to capture the moment when bodies and objects would merge through movement and become single sculptural entities. Although I experimented a lot by performing myself, leaving the camera on a timer, I also invited other people quite often to work with me. I would provide a protected space and setting for them to get into a state of playfulness. They chose the fabric for a dress and an object they wanted to perform with and once I had built them, we met for the actual performance. The fact that this happened in the protected space of a studio allowed for undisturbed playfulness which benefited the results largely. Speaking of results: here it were photos showing sculptures that only existed a few seconds and were generated through movement. Sharing such a result publicly is a next step. To me a successful artwork needs to be both: convincingly finished in form and open enough to invite an audience in at the same time. Only once it is talking it’s very own language it can trigger curiosity at the least or really any other emotion. This is the gateway through which the creative process opens up to others. To which degree further creative processes are generated and nurtured then, depends of course largely on how much the audience is willing to engage with it on an active level.

With recent performances we created a tension by crossing the borders between mingling with an audience and presenting results at the same time. As for me personally I would say that I love working with others as opposed to in front of others. Can you tell us something more about Labo(rat)ori? Labo(rat)ori is a good example for what I described before. Labo(ratori as a title refers to experimenting, improvising, responding. It is a collaboration between choreographer Miguel Altunaga and myself, but also a collaboration with dancers Jacob O’Connell, Liam Francis and Stephen Quildan and composer David Preston. The piece is in constant flux, it develops each time we show it in different spaces. Miguel and I have a deep mutual understanding of art which builds the basis of our joint venture. The mere trust in each other’s work prevents us from “illustrating”: I am not creating the stage setting for a dance performance, nor are the movements of the dancers directly related to the gestures in the paintings to talk straight. We have a basic structure on which we improvise, both in dance and

painting. Our offer to the audience is to share the experience of our common space and energy. What are you working on now? With three solo shows coming up in the first half of this year I am of course very busy in the studio. Since I always prefer to show new work this phase is extremely tense. Hardly anyone else is allowed to enter the space while it turns into a real laboratory. I am permitting all sorts to happen and I leave the studio with disgust and panic more than once a week. But I also know that nothing new would happen if I wasn’t brave enough to go through this and start all over again the next day. After a while lots of work starts to pile up and I realize that there’s something in every single piece that is important and leads to a next step, even though for a long while I don’t have a clue what the next step might look like. Then, all of a sudden, everything falls into place. I am simply doing something, and it turns out to be right. No, I am not going to tell you in which stage I am right now while we do the interview, but the next show ahead is at my London gallery FOLD and will open on the 2nd of February.

Chair 01_2 Performance stills with object c-print, performance photography Edition: 3 2000 MADE IN MIND | 37

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180105 Painting acrylic, lacquer, PE film on canvas 185 x 130 cm Courtesy FOLD Gallery, London 2018

painter

with choreographer and dancer Miguel Altunaga was

Konstanz, Kunstverein Weiden, Germany and the

physi-

shown at PMAM, London and as part of Perpetual

Centre Pompidou Paris, France.

cal movement, and energy. Her background in

Movement at The Lowry Manchester in co-operation

CMYK, her last solo show at FOLD London, her

performance is strongly present in her current

with Rambert, UK last year.

representing gallery was in 2016.

practice as a painter.

A 2 years residency at Liverpool Museum 2002 had

She holds an MFA form UAL, Chelsea College of

laid an early foundation for her sculptural approach

Michaela

Zimmer

exploring

the

Berlin-based

momentarily

nature

Arts, London.

emphasizing on the performative. Shows following

In the first half of 2018 FOLD, London, Kernel,

included

Spain and fv, Berlin will show solos of her work

France, Royal Society of British Sculptors Gallery,

that focuses on physical awareness of spatial

London, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, Mies van der

conditions and the images evolving in this context.

Rohe Haus and autocenter Berlin. More recently

“labo(rat)ori”, an ongoing performance project

her work was included in exhibitions at Kunstverein

Trolley Performance stills with object c-print, performance photography Edition: 3 each 2001

Forum

d’Art,

Chateaux

d’Vaudremont,

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CLIO CASADEI _________ Giulia Gelmini

The creation of a portfolio is a practice at this point stabilized for the artists. A display that collects in a schematic order all the works that the artist has done from the beginning of the artistic experimentation until the present. Presenting the entire career of artists with highlights of their work can be limiting and it doesn’t really explain the way the artists think, the processes and methods behind their creation. A portfolio is a chronological presentation of some works and it’s composed of images and texts. The images give a visual rendering of how the works look like and the texts briefly explain the concepts and materials. In this way, artists are easily associated with the photographs of their works of art and they have to express their identity, respecting the limitation of an association of images and texts. It’s difficult then to pass certain concepts, ideas and the result is a sequence of mute pages. It crosses the timeline focusing only on determined points – the products of the artist’s activity – that don’t call into question the daily life, even if they’re connected to it, and excludes what has not an artistic result from the pages of this memory archive. The archival structure not by chance presents the same characteristics; a set of documents, depositions of the past that in some way survive to the time, are the winners of a battle against the inexorable oblivion that consumes what doesn’t distinguish itself from the amorphous mass of the events. In this way, the past will be remembered for some fragments and the narration will proceed by skips, with an equilibrium of empty and full spaces due to the presence of documented moments or lapses of memory. In the same way, the portfolio presents a set of works that the artist, behaving as a clever collector, picks up from his/her production and consigns them to the almost sacred sphere of the portfolio pages. A private album composed of declarations. Stars that form a constellation. Coordinates of a wider drawing that constitute the artist’s identity. In the total entirety of single experiences, the unit cedes its power in favor of a collectivity. As a sculpture positions the rèpere to sculpt the figure, the artist underlines the key points that will

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be used to draw his/her entire figure. An exercise of synthesis that helps the definition of a classifiable identity, the portfolio can be artistic practice to be questioned. Clio Casadei decided to solve this problem and pushed the limit of a traditional portfolio, creating a book that embodies her artistic vocation. Texts and images are still part of her work, but they neither don’t follow a chronological order nor they juxtapose certain pictures with their explanation. Clio worked as a storyteller and the result of her experiment is a new work of art. This new portfolio remarks her working methodology and affirms her creative identity. She treated her works as raw material to be used as words, in order to create a discourse that doesn’t only present her career but that narrates a new history. Atlas is a book that lives continuous changes: from a version to another and sometimes even from the different copies there are alterations made by the artist. As for the archives, variable structures where nothing is immobile for the eternity, Atlas lives integration and relocations. Theories, memories, anecdotes are interlaced. The readers can go through the pages, skip certain parts, start from the end, look just at the images. They are free to approach Clio’s unconventional portfolio as they prefer or listen to it thanks to a recent experiment Clio did during a residency. Hosted by Standards, a place for sound and music experimentation in Milan, Clio sonorized her portfolio, translating the words as they were notes. With Attila Faravelli, Nicola Ratti, Roberta Pagani e Gaia Martino, Clio explored the writing dimension, the diversity of the listening devices, the voice and the different temperatures of the recording tools. The text translation has taken place in the recording studio of Frequente and the sounds have been projected in the main room, where Cavo, a wood installation, has embraced the new polyphony as a maternal womb. From a physical product to a musical composition, Atlas, has lost its substance, becoming an ethereal concept. In this conversation with Clio, I’ve tried to track the reasons behind this experimentation and the principles of this encyclopedic work.

Tu nello spazio sei il parametro, il limite massimo, la fine della mia corsa Audiobook Limited edition Self-published 2012

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Tu nello spazio sei il parametro, il limite massimo, la fine della mia corsa Audiobook Limited edition Self-published 2012

In which occasion did you start elaborating your portfolio as a book? What are the reasons? At the origin of this choice there is my aptitude in conceiving the portfolio as a discourse, for this reason the book format and what it’s included in its construction act as a support. The first intentional formalization of my portfolio in this format has been with Tu nello spazio sei il parametro, il limite massimo, la fine della mia corsa, an installation I realized six years ago. In that occasion, the narration about the works I realized the previous two years echoed in a loop inside the space. Two posters, few drawings and a series of photographs were hanged against the walls. So, at the beginning, the elaboration of the portfolio coincided with the development of a text – or hypertext – while the reason that made this operation possible was the will to express the dynamic of my practice more than a series of works. This choice cancels the chronological linearity of your works and leaves the reader free to create its own path. In a certain way, while reading your Atlas we become the curators of an ideal exhibition composed of instincts and arbitrary choices. The essay of Walter Benjamin comes to my mind. He describes the flanêur in the late ‘800 Paris that walks collecting fragments of a city, choosing a personal itinerary. The only

sense he relies on is the sight. He let the pleasure of the images guide him and he constantly proceeds his journey through the time thanks to fortuitous connections. This equally happens to the reader of Atlas. How important are the images for you? How important are they in Atlas? The chronological order of the texts coexists with the possibility of its alteration. Each text is a stratification of images, while the tout-court images work as a punctuation; they are elements of a score whose signs are not always visible. My entire work is influenced by a constant and latent comparison with the concept of image, it’s almost a commitment. Are there any cuts in Atlas editing? Did you take some decisions regarding the material to include and exclude? If so, can you tell us about it? The “cuts” take place during the transposition from the experience to the writing. Each text is realized in different circumstances. Few texts have undergone substantial changes once composed and the integration in Atlas happens, generally, when the writing is completed. Sometimes I change the punctuation or I add fragments of unpublished texts, I found in my notes. These supplements occur when I work on matters that I have already been working on in the past. I use to leave a trace of my last reading before the print. It is part of the work.

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Is there some material that is not included in your book even if it’s part of your production? If so, what are the reasons? Atlas has to do with a multidimensional practice that extends itself in space and time and it gathers materials that come from 2007 up to now. It is the transcription of a composition that is derived from site and time-specific experiences. It is, in its totality, like a code. I have excluded the pure abstractions which means the almost totality of my drawings.

related to my perception of the work as author than to the reader– during the layout. In this phase I literally visualize the single experiences together, developing the awareness of the whole composition. It was at that point that I definitely stopped to consider them as separated spots. This process didn’t affect the originality of the single materials but contributed to the development of a shape that, was enhancing the diversity, works as a system.

Did you meet any difficulties while constructing this atlas-book? Creating Atlas allows me to think and to know as a sculptor does. The material resists to the action and this is why difficulties and amusement constantly interchange. The concept of atlas itself is been a very useful tool, it favored the experimentation and it gave me the chance to identify the file rouge, the hidden connections between the different experiences I was involved in, between the different discourses that emerge from each single experience. This process of articulation of the discourse led me to the game-book format, something that a already inspired me for the creation of Ode.

The constant elaboration of what is narrated in Atlas makes it be an independent work. From your point of view as artist and mind behind this project, should we consider the book itself as an object or the contents that are contained as the work of art? The work of art is the totality of the processes that contribute to the constitution of the product, both as an object and content. From the conditions that determined the contents articulation to their formalization in terms of composition, writing, book.

Among the several editions of Atlas, are there any contents changes? Can you indicate one in particular? A significant change happened – something that is more

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How was the experience at Standards? How was the project carried out? I would be curious to know the daily rituals you followed to translate your book into sounds. I arrived at Standards with a draft, some expectations and an almost total ignorance regarding the tools for the reproduction and amplification of the sounds. I decided to focus on the last

Tu nello spazio sei il parametro, il limite massimo, la fine della mia corsa Audiobook Limited edition Self-published 2012

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Atlas Book Unique copy 2017

text of Atlas, On theme, working on a reduction and adaptation of it in relation to that particular context. I could not work constantly together with Nicola and Attilia and I spent the majority of the time familiarizing with some key aspects of the live actions, as the improvisation and the possibility to intentionally spread the sounds inside an equipped space. I almost completely reviewed my initial idea. I transformed a draft made for a fruition with headphones in a composition for eight outputs and eight inputs that provided improvised or accidental auditory effects, caused by an imprecise group of people – including myself – within an extended action area. The final result was unexpected and I was happily surprised. This last experience led to the reproduction of a book made of images and texts. Would you consider in the future a video animation of your encyclopedic project? I can’t tell about the future, it depends on where my work will lead me.

A special thanks go to Standards and Boîte Editions. Without them, I would have never got to know Clio’s work. Giulia Gelmini

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Atlas Book Unique copy 2017

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On Theme Sound installation Den Haag June 2016

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On Theme Sonic installation and live performance Milan, 2017 Photo credit: G. CutrĂŹ

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