No Title Gallery
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PASSENGERS MARCO CECOTTO MARCO CILIGOT ROBERTA FEOLI GASTROVISIONE KINDERGARTEN CHRISTIAN PALAZZO ANDREA VALLE special guest SON ENSEMBLE
promoted by No Title Gallery In collaboration with Infart Passengers is an event curated by Francesco Liggieri
Graphic project by Carla Daniela Pepa Text by Francesco Liggieri, Elisabetta Vanzelli Assistant Curator: Paola Natalia Pepa Press Office: Ester Baruffaldi Exhibition planning and set up: Elena Picchiolutto Technical Set Up Advisor: Cosimo Patisso Photo courtesy: Christian Palazzo, Kindergarten This catalogue is an experiment. Therefore, we invite and recommend you to share it with anybody. Special thanks to: Infart Collective, in particular Diego Knore and Claudio Pelusio, whose professionalism allowed the realization of the exhibition Passengers.
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Info and contacts: www.notitlegallery.com info@notitlegallery.com press@notitlegallery.com
No Title Gallery presents Passengers, a collective exhibition on the occasion of Infart VI, the most awaited urban art festival of the year, taking place from 30th August to 2nd September 2012 at the CSC San Bonaventura in Bassano del Grappa (VI). Passengers aims to be an experiment of both sharing and contact between art and the observer. How much does the public interact with an artwork, making it alive, during an artistic event? The artists try to answer this question through sounds, images, installations, in which the visitors get involved. Using very different artistic techniques, from the most traditional to the most innovative one, the artists Marco Cecotto, Marco Ciligot, Roberta Feoli, Gastrovisione, Kindergarten, Christian Palazzo and Andrea Valle show works which stimulate the interaction with the auction, with the final aim of smashing the cultural wall between artwork and observer. During the opening event (30th August 2012, 6.30 p.m.) a contemporary music ensemble, Son Ensemble, will pay homage to the composer John Cage, performing a revisited version of his work Speech.
The images contained in this catalogue cannot be modified or reproduced for any purpose (commercial purposes included)
INTRO
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Passengers was an experiment in sharing and meeting between art and audience. How much does the public interact with an artwork, making it alive, during an art event? This is the question the artists tried to answer presenting sounds, images and installations, in which the visitors got involved. Using very different artistic techniques, from the most traditional to the most innovative ones, Marco Cecotto, Marco Ciligot, Roberta Feoli, Gastrovisione, Kindergarten, Christian Palazzo and Andrea Valle presented artworks, whose aim is to smash the cultural wall between art and public, by stimulating the interaction between them. Passengers was realized as part of the Art, Culture and Music Festival Infart 6 in Bassano del Grappa (Italy) and allowed the public to merge with the exhibited artworks. This experimental event took place in a very unusual location, the San Bonaventura Church, where past and present blended together completely, making the event itself an unforgettable experience. The public had a crucial role in the fulfillment of the main purpose: involvement and sharing in fact didn’t last just for the opening night. During the following days this unique experience went on, by a huge word of mouth in the internet, through blogs and art magazines. The catalogue you have just downloaded is unusual and experimental, like the event itself. It’s a little treasure. Enjoy! Francesco Liggieri
One is taught to oppose the real to the imaginary, as though the first were always at hand and the second distant, far away. This opposition is false. Events are always to hand. But the coherence of these events – which is what one means by reality – in an 1 imaginative construction.
CRITICAL ESSAY ELISABETTA VANZELLI
John Berger 1
John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, New York, Pantheon Books, 1984
Among the most pressing questions of the contemporary artistic activity, emerges the one about the ability of building up connections with the social environment. Of course, the question is not about those connections on the cognitive level, but about those able to generate alternative zones of collective communication in very different and miscellaneous ways. Since the 90s, as logic deduction to the first huge installations/actions by internationally known artists as Beecroft, Parreno, Cattelan, Holler and others, the critics focused with urgency on the artwork’s relational feature, which was analyzed in an historical perspective from the second half of the 20th century onwards, when Fluxus began to present happenings and performances. It happens, that art, which is susceptible to social related experimentations, bases itself on a practicality not only working on a symbolic level, but also producing uncommon correspondences and relationships with the audience and new ways of assimilation: these are more intimate, complex, active and able to supply a relationship with reality – read interpersonal relationships – outside accepted socialization places. The essential shape, both process related and behavioral, doesn’t reject aesthetic coherence and enjoyment. First of all, it complies with its symbolic essence, which is completely effective, when it meets the audience (playing a more or less active role in this encounter). Therefore it is possible to gather an artistic value, originated from a non – independence basis, a sort
of subordination to the contact with the audience, to the exhibition space, to other artworks presented in the same place. It’ s not just (or better, not only) about the way an artwork appears to the public: it deals also with its exchanging inclination, its ability of creating unexpected pluralities, which are ruled by a kind of balance divergent from the standard one, peculiar to the common experience. Passengers arises as moment of sharing between art and observer, as intended by curator Francesco Liggieri: the exhibition deals with the contents mentioned above and carries out their base concepts. Moreover, Passengers fulfills the theory affirming that the artwork makes itself immediate intersubjective experience, transforming activity and example of social sharing, becoming free from institutionalized structures and historical and artistic boundaries. The possibilities of comprehension and sharing increase through the multiplicity of artistic techniques and strengthen in the choice of the exhibition site, originally and for its own nature used for a sensorial kind of communion. The presented issues, moving from very small perceptual details to mystical consideration, essential in human life, suggest who confronts the artwork a completely unordinary approach. Its final goal emerges, as stated beforehand, in the conjunction form-container-collective behavior. Elisabetta Vanzelli
MARCO CECOTTO 1 9 8 2 T R I E S T E
Questo non è un oggetto / This is not an object (found object) 2011 Antenna, microphone stand, contact microphone, computer, amplifier Filled-space installation
The installation is divided in three sections (FOUND OBJECT – SOUND OBJECT – ART OBJECT) whose mutual aim is to allow the audience to inquire the resistance of the experiential and perceptual aspects of different types of objects, using sound as medium and interaction as strategy.
MARCO CILIGOT 1 9 8 2 P O R D E N O N E T R I E S T E
Fragile 2012 Pre-printed ‘FRAGILE’ adhesive tape moulds Variable dimension
The installation consists in three moulds of the artist’s body, made of adhesive tape with “fragile” written on it. The scenic arrangement of the three apparently farcical figures supports a provocative attitude, a clear metaphor of the contemporary human condition.
ROBERTA FEOLI 1 9 8 7 B E N E V E N T O
“Il re è morto, viva il re” 2012 Mixed media Variable dimension
“Il Re è morto, viva il re” (The King is dead, hail the King) is a saying, which tells a lot despite knowing. When the King, as element, dies, a new one is already in charge, the new King. Therefore, this figure never actually dies. Only the people embodying it. Starting from an autobiographical fact, Feoli moves towards universally sharable axioms. She modifies the photographic image, using a language between Expressionism and decoration and balancing her own traditional iconography with that of extra-European countries.
GASTROVISIONE 2 0 1 0 V E N I C E
Iconofagia 2012 Edible artwork Filled-space installation
The performance stress the value of food not only as primary need, but also as mark of the cultural and spiritual dimension of the human being. The act of nourishment is an opportunity to recover our own origins and, at the same time, becomes a chance for social integration, retrieving, in this particular case, the establishing values of Eucharistic.
KINDERGARTEN 2 0 0 8 B E R L I N
Un angolo di paradiso 2012 Installation: 28 paddling pools, 800 l water, 28 goldfishes 900x600x30 cm This work is based on codified elements of Christian tradition: water, symbol of purification, and the fish, one the most ancient marks of affiliation to Christian religion. The arrangement of the little paddling pools plays with a framework of ambivalent relationships: it can be interpreted as the place in Paradise people strive for (achievable by encountering the Church) or as badge of the human condition, trapped in religious ideology.
CHRISTIAN PALAZZO 1 9 8 0 V E N I C E
Non è mai come sembra 2012 Attacus Atlas cocoons, resin, enamel Variable dimension
This highly impressive artwork is composed of 200 butterfly cocoons, hanging at different heights from the ground. Each hull, seen by the artist as fetus and grave at the same time, embodies philosophical questions, which can be traced back to Heiddeger ontological existentialist theory. The chromatic modification has no aesthetic value and defines the human overwhelming on nature.
ANDREA VALLE 1 9 7 4 T U R I N
Organo fonatorio 2012 Installation: radio, intercom, PVC tubes, speakers, computer, Variable dimension Interactive installation consisting in 14 PVC tubes with speakers, a vinyl record, an intercom and a software application. The artwork , whose structure evokes the typical church instrument, plays a background sound, generated by the vinyl record. The musical action needs the active participation of the visitor, whose voice, passing through the intercom, is changed by the background noise and the tubes set.
SON ENSEMBLE Speech
The 50s in Europe featured a particular musical turmoil, which however seemed to wait for a strong signal. It arrived as a crucial shake in 1958 in the occasion of the first European performance of the Concert for Piano and Orchestra by John Cage. Both the audience and the insiders were upset and amazed at the same time by a new idea of music, based on composing techniques deducted by non-musical components. Since Cage got into oriental philosophies and Zen Buddhism, he took a long road to achieve spiritual enlightment. This is the ultimate aim to be reached by complete surrendering of the individual and personal dimension to the need of leading our own spirit to a sort of universal harmony. The search for this kind of spiritual balance is realized through a careful way of listening, leading to a specific awareness: each object is able to generate a sound. This experience went beyond the individual sphere and entered the artistic one, influencing Cage’s composition technique. For the first time the two crucial features of the whole cagean work, the absence of deliberateness and the silence, entered the field of music. The composer’s creative process is very close to meditation: the lack of intention is fundamental for the composition effectiveness and erases any other subjective aspect from it. That’s the reasoning forming the cornerstone of Concert for Piano and Orchestra, where the contribution of the solo instrument in the whole orchestra isn’t set by the score. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of John Cage’s birth, Infart Collective pays him homage. In this context Son Ensemble presents Speech, written in 1955 for an ensemble consisting in five radio players and one news reader. This piece’s score is all but traditional: a series of numbers indicating each ensemble member’s participation in the composition. Each player has to follow the score in some cases, while in others he is asked to give his personal contribution, for instance, in volume variations. As a
consequence the whole radio interventions assume the form of counterpoint, the musical fabric of the composition. The randomness in Speech is represented by the individual choice of radio station, which is up to the player. As the score points out, the news reader sustains the performance, reading undisturbed two different magazines: this support to the composition is very similar to that of figured bass (or basso continuo) in baroque concerts. The result is a composition able to get the audience involved on both acoustic and visual levels, making it a happening more than a performance as it can be started in the middle of any other activity. That’s why Speech represents a milestone in the break with the musical past: even if traditional musical techniques are still used, they are reassessed and reorganized in the light of a new idea of art, as meeting point of all artistic disciplines. The reduced version of the piece presented by Son Ensemble goes along with the extemporaneous spirit of the composition, by assimilating completely John Cage’s aesthetic theory. Alberto Massarotto
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