Interview with Simone Monsi by /77 on Artribune.com
☞ This is a translation of the original interview published in Italian on Artribune.com. Dall’Archivio Viafarini. Intervista con Simone Monsi by @progetto77
In his practice, Simone Monsi (born 1988, Fiorenzuola d’Arda) investigates the sensitivity of youth culture and its representation on microblogging platforms, from which he takes viral images and contents. In his practice, blogging becomes a method for indexing dynamic collections of popular melancholic sentences, video stills from Evangelion and porn gifs, while sculpture, installation and social networks are moments of a broader process that brings his works to become memes themselves, once reposted online. He recently graduated from the MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London and his work was exhibited at the 16th Rome Quadriennale. For the 2016 Goldsmiths Degree show, which took place last July, Simone presented an installation composed of three works: the Transparent word banners, a series of the most popular and banal sentimental phrases taken from Tumblr and made of semitransparent plastic little letters hanged on the wall like birthday garlands; I’m tired of being myself! I’m so tired of being young!, two posters of Shinji and Rei, teenage characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion; and CAPITOLO FINALE: Let’s Forget About It Let’s Go Forward – From Meaning To Intensity, il ventiseiesimo episodio di Mani!! I Love Holding Hands – It’s okay for me to be here!, four sculptures covered with pictures of sunsets from which little tentacles come out.
The three works presented at your graduation show seem to interact with each other, suggesting unspoken connections to the viewer’s imagination. Can you tell us more about the whole installation? At the degree show, I wanted to show those elements that had been central for my research of the last two years. I thought it was important to show new works alongside less recent ones, in order to give a sense of continuity to my art practice; talking about the banners, for instance, I had already exhibited some of them in other occasions, but at the degree show I had the chance to show them as a complete and coherent body of works.
What aspects did you take into consideration? The show was also autobiographic. The final chapter of a journey, indeed. I like to think these three works as different stages of my research: to me the banners represent the beginning of my interest for collecting fragments of texts from the Tumblr dashboard; while the big hands are a visual representation of the point I had reached at that time in my investigation on the role of the hands in the “post-slide to unlock” era; the posters, instead, were a sort of seed that I thought it could sprout in my future works – or a point from where I could depart to introduce new ideas into my practice: Shinji and Rei talking through the words of Bifo Berardi is a metaphor for becoming aware of the current state of the debate around “post-workerism”, and also a look towards possible alternatives to our post-global present time of digital capital. But, in the very end, it was also a way to say bye to Goldsmiths, literally: BYE BYE!
Part of your work originates from being part of online communities like Tumblr, in order to investigate techno-social accelerationism and its implications. During the studio visit we had, you told us about the correspondence between the collective awareness of Tumblr users and Franco Berardi’s theories. Could you say a bit more about it? Yes, big question! Well, it’s a primary issue in the current academic debate. What I can tell you is how the debate around accelerationism vs Bifo has affected my own research. While I was working on my thesis, I was reading Heroes by Bifo and I got intrigued by the fact that, in the book, he included some phrases which were similar, or sometimes even identical, to some melancholic quotes that have been very popular memes on social media in the last few years. I had the impression that the frustration originated from the speed with which new technologies are imposed by the market and the consequent hybridization of online and offline life, had reached the academic debate – and in doing so, it hasn’t got mediated, but, instead, has been contextualized as it is into a wider social-historical discourse, or something like that. In Heroes, Bifo looks at things from an interesting point of view, taking into consideration the effects of techno-social evolution on teenagers, with a focus on those who has been involved in mass murders.
You run five blogs: Congratulations!, Peacocks Inside My Head Forever, Alone is the new together, #wildsimo e Stills from Evangelion. How are they related to your practice? Yes, to be honest at the moment I have 14 blogs, not all of them are active though, a couple of them still have to be started. Of course, the ones you mentioned are those blogs that have been influencing my art practice the most over the last few years. I love collecting. But more than that, I love making archives. I like collections because collecting to me means running an archive. I see the blog as a dynamic platform where I can store, through hashtags, all those images and other files that may become relevant in the process of developing ideas for new works, or for a new text, or even become the cover pictures on my Facebook… Sometimes, some blogs that have been very active in the past became works themselves. Some other time, instead, it happened to have a work transformed into a blog, in order to keep track of its spreading online: Yesterday my Flight was Pretty Boring is an example. Also, when I’m doing some brainstorming for new works, I find helpful to print out images or even whole posts from my blogs. I hang them on the wall, they get mixed up, a sad quote gets close to a picture of a balloon, the balloon close to an emoji, add a pinch of Rei Ayanami and the next monster is ready!
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