lots of things, out-bursting and spiraling out. Blogging is a pleasure yet a chore in the list, and you find yourself starting documents like this, over and over again, which then (in theory) get copied and pasted online..
Each time is a worthy post, at times more relevant for the italian audience, others (more often then not, incidentally) poured out in this english language one.
You’ve been in the Unidee residency from just over two months now, and at the moment you having a “holiday” back at your mum’s place, back in the farm.
Italy stops in summer. Well, in the week or two around the middle of august.
Even more this time, when lots of factories closed down for the holidays, even the ones who never stopped before, due to the current economic crisis. As one example there is the brick kiln where the duo Caretto/Spagna work, Carena, who have never been turned off… this summer they went in holiday.
So, lots of forced holidays for everyone this year. No many people with money, but hey..
back to you, Unidee.
You have proposed a computer game, a foraging one, and you doing it, with the technical help of a cluster of academics from the University of Genova, the Elios group, and the local knowledge of a wonderful lady, Bianca Rosa Zumaglini, a writer and traditional food expert from these valleys.
Using pocket PCs as interface you will deliver a new version of your tours, with added games in an attempt to amuse a wider audience.
You recently returned to Venice also, to see the Biennale again.. well, what you didn’t managed to see when you were there last, ..revisited some key work, like the Belgian pavilion’s (for obvious reasons) or the Padiglione Italiano (for other reasons)
..and then you saw Mexico..
oh dear, how far can you take it? How much artistic argumentation is needed to frame such works?
You were shocked, moved, disturbed and profoundly affected by the work of Teresa Margolles: What Else Could We Talk About?, where you can see/feel fabrics impregnated with blood of executed people in the northern border of Mexico..
Famously then the performance, everyday of the Biennale, when at 4.30pm an attendant wash the floor of the pavilion with water and blood from murder scenes..
You were so moved by works like What else Can We Talk About? Recovered Blood the artist present a long landscape made of mud-impregnated fabric. The mud was collected from murdered scenes and in the display a sophisticated system of re-hydration made sure the material still is “alive”.
So evocative, gut-punching. What can we learn from this? No corners, no tabu zone. As a matter of fact tabus are exactly what many artists should concern themselves with.
Sure you could present an unthinkable number of well executed ‘pretty pictures’, even with an astounding production value (see Padiglione Italiano) yet does it add anything?
Do we, as artists and cultural practitioners have the right to spend public money and waste public attention for futile ventures in aesthetics values?
Uhmm
post it, let it go
