VALENTINA GIOIA-LEVY

- ART CURATOR & WRITER -  www.valentinagioialevy.weebly.com

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ART & CONNECTOGRAPHY. REMAPPING THE GLOBAL WORLD  THROUGH ART

A collateral event of Manifesta12 curated by Valentina Gioia Levy & Rikke Jorgensen

https://www.scribd.com/document/380378611/ART-CONNECTOGRAPHY-REMAPPING-THE-GLOBAL-WORLD-THROUGH-ART

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Valerie Oka

EXPLORING ABIDJAN’S CONTEMPORARY ART SCENE...

There is a saying in Côte d’Ivoire intriguing to many foreigners. According to local tradition, when someone is ready to leave the home of a friend,  one has to ask for permission to leave, the most common reply from the host being: ‘I can take you home, but only halfway.’ Beneath the lines, this means that while you have permission to leave, your host is only willing to accompany you halfway back, in the hopes that you will one day return.

After a 3-week research trip to Abidjan, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire in Western Africa, I learned about this local tradition through hands-on experience, barely having experienced even half of what the city has to offer.

(Read More on D/RAILED Mag)

http://www.drailedmag.com/2017/10/26/exploring-abidjans-contemporary-art-scene/

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#landartmongolia 

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GER, Romina De Novellis, live performance and video installation, Parco della Caffarella Rome 2016, curator Valentina Gioia Levy, © DE NOVELLIS / MALDONADO 2016

CAN THE MODERN WORLD LEARN HOW TO ADDRESS THE ISSUES OF MIGRATION FROM TRADITIONAL NOMADIC CULTURES?

“The globalization of the modern world has stimulated a steep rise in migration to locations both near and far, supported by many factors. The development of sophisticated modern transportation systems and networks making it much easier, cheaper and faster for people to move than at any time in history has been one such factor. Yet, the social and cultural dimensions of the attitudes towards migrants and relations between locals and newcomers are not always easy and not always harmonious. In many countries around the world, migrants and migration are among the most hotly debated topics and ones that are, indeed, not easy to address. At the same time, there have been societies—such as the traditional Kazakhs—that moved constantly from one place to another and developed a whole cultural universe of social norms and perceptions around migration and movement of people. Can the modern world learn how to address the issues of migration from these nomadic cultures?-”

Abstract from the “Human Development Report 2009. Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development”Published for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2009.

Like traditional Kazakhs, also Mongolian people are pretty familiar with nomadic style of life. Since the end of the ‘80s when the democratization process began, together with the introduction of the market economy, Mongolia is witnessing a remarkable economical growth. Nevertheless, it continues to be among the world's most sparsely populated countries and almost the 30% of its population is still nomadic. When Italian artist Romina De Novellis was invited to send a proposal for the 4th edition of Land Art Mongolia Biennial, she started to think about family’s organization and functioning in traditional nomadic culture, in current time.   

After her research on the small Mongolian community residing in the city of Rome, Romina De Novellis meet the opera singers Ayana Sambuu and Tuvshinjargal Enkhbat, which left Mongolia and emigrated to Italy and Russia, respectively. This encounter has brought the artist to reflect on the journey and migration starting from the idea of ​​home and family unit.

The GER is the portable round tends where Mongolian populations used to live for centuries, a mobile home for nomads living in the cold steppes of the Gobi Desert. De Novellis’s project focused on GER, that she considers as a vehicle to put in context the crisis of globalization and to question the construction of a new identity and the redefinition of new physical spaces in which people can reconcile with their past and their heritage while embracing an another culture.

De Novelli’s GER is a traveling performance, a procession in the Roman countryside in the heart of the Caffarella Park, and a two channel video which represents the metaphorical and a-temporal encounter between East and West. The imaginary backdrop is constituted by the phantoms of two great and powerful empires of ancient history, the Roman and the Mongolian. The Ger never appears, it is just evoked in the work’s title, that is why in Novelli’s work the Ger is considered like a kind of invisible bridge between the past and future, a metaphor of the frontier between what we were and what we will become. 

In the first video, the artist involved the two singers and their daughter on a walk in Caffarella Park, in a promenade between the effigies of the ancient Roman Empire and the natural countryside. The walk is a full immersion in the mental ruins and past’s nostalgia generated by the confrontation between the History and the liquid present that, even in its vulnerability and impermanency, always generates some new traces and debris. The video is filmed entirely in slow motion during a summer sunset so that the characters seem to be suspended in a parallel space-time dimension, somewhere between dream and reality.

In the second video, also shot in slow motion, the artist interviews the two singers letting them talk about their dreams and their expectations towards the new Italian and Russian homeland. Also in this second video, the space-time dimension’s alteration amplifies the viewer’s feeling of being walking in a dream, floating in a metaphysical reality in which the space-time continuum has been manipulated and altered.

Romina de Novellis

Romina de Novellis was born in Naples in 1982. Her works focus on a discourse between life and death, addressing the concept of the body in the public space. Her multidisciplinary approach to bodily gesture and physical vulnerability locates the body within a philosophical, anthropological, and sociological context. Through gesture and exposure the artist explores how state of trance, alienation, and madness can manifest on the body, especially in the precarious human conditions that exist on the margins of society. Between many other international venue she performed at: Muzeum Narodowe (Poznan, Pl) in the context of Mediations Biennale Poznan; Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France);  Museo MADRE and Museo Archeologico di Napoli (Naples, It); Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Paris, France), the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton (Paris, France). She’s also performed during the opening week of: the Venice Biennale (Venice, It, 2011 and 2013);  the Armory Show (New York, US 2016); Something Else OFF Biennial Cairo (Cairo, Egypt, 2015)

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“Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”  (Italo Calvino)

After my invitation to Dakar Biennial, Italian artist Stefano Canto realized the project “Structures” a work that combines visual art and dance. The artist created a series of concrete and steel sculptures that invaded the exhibition space of the IFAN Museum like skeletons from destroyed cities, while during the performance, a group of dancers directed by the Afro-Italian choreographer, Ashai Lombardo Arop, interacted with them using the installation as an original imaginative device. 

In this work, it is the body that defines the architecture. The movements of the dancers complete the structures and architectures draw in the air reminiscent of Le Città Invisibili by Italo Calvino. 

After the performance we asked to the dancers what was the feeling about their experience. 

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Valentina Gioia Levy. Les temoins de l’invisible / The witnesses of the invisible; in “Contours” vol.2 La Cité dans le Jour Bleu, catalogue of Dak’Art 12; Kerber Editions

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On the occasion of Cesar Meneghetti’s solo show at MAXXI Museum, in Rome, I met the artist and we had a nice conversation about his work. This video, that has been realized by Luisa Galdo, is the result of our encounter and is part of a new special section of the magazine Lux Flux Prototype.

The conversation was focused on 3 concepts, which I suggested to him after having visited his show: “the other”; “the difference” and “the idea of community”. 

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Art Against the Trivial

"We believe the function of the artists is to subvert culture, since our culture is trivial" by the founding artits of Judson Gallery Publication (NY, 1967)

Disappointed by the lack of resonance to demonstrations of the open alliance Art Workers Coalition (AWC), in 1969 Jon Hendricks and Jean Toche founded their own initiative within the New York art scene: the Guerrilla Art Action Group (GAAG). The artists’ critique focused on the U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, domestic policies that suppressed minorities, and the art establishment, which was controlled by political and economic interests. GAAG’s goal was to force institutions, politicians, and celebrities to take a moral stand on U.S. politics, through provocative actions, interventions, letters, posters, and theater projects.

During my residency at Art Speaks for Itself, in Paris, I wanted to continue a conversation with Jon Hendricks, that we started in Venice, 2 years ago. Jon Hendricks is an artist and Curator of Fluxus Collection at the Museum of Modern Art of New York. From 1966 to 1968, he was the director of the Judson Gallery at Judson Memorial Church in New York City.

Art Speaks for Itself is a foundation without a legal status. In fact it is a project led by French artist Arnaud Cohen that consider it like an artwork bridging different fields. “Paris was a haven for the arts until 1940. Now Paris can function as a hub” Arnaud Cohen said “You pass through and interconnect. It can contribute to the emergence of creative forms that differ from what is dictated by large firms trying to control human desires. It is with this objective in mind that the first artist-run residential hub for international curators is launched in Paris”

Curators  from different countries are regularly welcome in residence at ASFI with the intent of opening a free discussion and to stimulate a critical thinking on issues that matter today and that can not found any support by private foundations and art market. During the dinner at the end of my residency, I discussed with my guests about art and activism also trying to explore the role of art activism today, especially in difficult social and political contexts, where activists are regularly tortured and killed.

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Owari No Bigaku: Aesthetic of Farewell - Reflections on Tadanori Yokoo and Yukio Mishima

In the 70 years since the end of the war, a period of time defined as 'Gendai' – that is, the contemporary era - Japan has undergone several phases of political, economic and social change, which have radically transformed the country and its representation in the global imaginary. The evolution of artistic practices in Japan, as well as the work of Japanese artists based outside the country, have been inevitably affected by such social changes. In the first part of my talk at White Rainbow Gallery (London) I introduced the topic of the book I’m currently working on, which focuses on the evolution of artistic practices in Japan from the end of the Second World War until now. 

After that I considered the curious friendship between controversial writer Yukio Mishima and the enfant terrible of the Japanese art scene, Tadanori Yokoo. Globally considered one of the most talented writers of the 20th century, unfortunately, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) is particularly remembered for his shocking ritual suicide by seppuku, after a failed attempt of golpe in November 1970. All his literary production is haunted by the spectre of death and characterised by a blending of modern and traditional influences from the west and east, from bushido philosophy to George Bataille.

Tadanori Yokoo (b. 1936) Is one of the most important Japanese artists working today. Since the 1960s, Yokoo has produced posters, album covers and LP inserts, postcards and graphic works. Yokoo is known for an original pop psychedelic style that mixes Japanese traditional print art, from ukyo-e to modern manga, mixing western pop and Indian icons with old-fashioned Japanese motifs such as the rasing sun and stylised waves. Yokoo gained international success early in his career, which led to a solo show at MOMA, New York in 1972 and selected exhibitions around the world.

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THE ENCOUNTER OF 2 RAINBOWS 

“Today, Istanbul has become one of the most important hubs in the network of global cities. And it’s a particularly intense and inspiring one because, once more, it’s been put on the front lines of confrontations and negotiations between different economic, cultural and geopolitical systems. It is, of course, situated between Europe and Asia, or between the “West” and the “East” at a time when these terms continue to be destabilized and deconstructed, replaced by others such as the “North” and the “South.” One should define the meaning of its location in a more complex manner in this time of global wars. These geographically complicated wars take place in every area, from more conventional military conflicts to more “invisible” economic, cultural, political and religious terrains... And they are reshaping the world”. - Hou Haru, director of MAXXI Museum and curator of this exhibition said. 

HALİL ALTINDERE, “Carpet Land”, 2012. C-print mounted on aluminium, 100x170 cm Courtesy of the artist and PILOT Gallery, Istanbul

According with the curators, the exhibition - presents the work of 45 artists, architects and intellectuals - resulted from a long-term research inspired by conversations with the local creative community of Istanbul. Starting out with reflections on key issues spotlighted in the Gezi Park protests in 2013, the exhibition focuses the current mutations of the urban, cultural and social reality in Istanbul and their impacts on creative practices. Specifically, it highlights questions about gentrification, ecological crisis and informal and self-organization initiatives which seem to be crucial in the country today.  Last but not least, the exhibition also pays a strong attention to  urgent geopolitical issues such as those of minorities and refugees. 

ZEYNO PEKÜNLÜ, “At the Edge of All Possibles”, 2014 Lecture Performance, 50 min. Foto Mustafa Hazneci

Are we ready for change? Is it right to fight? Is it really necessary to work so hard? Is it possible for people to live together in peace? And above all, can we still hope for a better tomorrow? These are some of the questions that the exhibition raised. The show doesn’t give any answers but proposes new solutions, joyous and proactive petitions and strategies for reconstruction because it is vital that we never lose hope.

SERKAN TAYCAN, “Shell”, 2012 – 2013. Archival pigment print on aluminum Courtesy the artist

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COMPUTER GARDEN

“The world want to watch and be watched at the same time” said the Italian writer Italo Calvino in his novel, Palomar.

In the last 10 years, we have moved from simple passive use of static hypertext documents, to a very easy way of managing contents, typical of online applications such as blogs, youtube, facebook, myspace, twitter, which have given to everyone the possibility of communicate to the whole world, adding data in real time, almost without space limitations.

The global communication’s revolution has reshaped space-time, individual, collective and socio-political geographies.

Computer Garden is a never realized project of Abbiatici_Levy that is re-reading of the idea of ‘collection’ after internet. The project’s title has been inspired from Nam June Paik’s installation ‘TV Garden’ (1974). Paik’s installation was composed of thirty televisions, which were displaced between live plants, creating a weird fusion of natural and technological elements. In a similar way, Abbiatici_Levy’s project is going to reconstruct a greenhouse in which to display about a hundred computers with a web connection.  On each computer, visitors will be able to see a video or a net-based installation by a selection of worldwide artists, while trying to reply to the question made by artist Liu Wei: “Can our memory resists this indifferent world?”    

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Dismantling the Strategy of Oblivion

 «In February 1948, the Communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out the balcony of a Boroque palace in Prague to harangue hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in Old Town Square. Gottwald was flanked by his comrades, with Clementis standing close to him. It was snowing and cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded. Bursting with solicitude, Clementis took off his fur hat and set it on Gottwald’s head. The propaganda section made a hundred of thousands of copies of the photograph… every child knew that photograph from seeing it on a posters and in schoolbooks and museums. Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately made him vanish from history and, of course, from all photographs. Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only the bare palace wall. Nothing remains of Clementis but the fur hat on Gottwald’s head».

In the famous incipit of his novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera told the story of the Slovak minister Vladimir Clementis that was a prominent member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party during the first part of the XX century. Kundera’s novel focused on topics connected with oblivion and social amnesia and more specifically, with what can be defined as the politic of memories. In the same text the Czech writer also pointed that «the struggle of men against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting», which implies a close relationship between mechanism of power and mechanism of oblivion.  

During the Soviet period in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, memories and forgetting had been strategically used to give rise to a univocal interpretation of facts and History. These repressive practices affected also art and its History.

Some Reflections on the exhibition" Beyond the Line" - Azerbaijan Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2015

The Azerbaijan was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1920 as the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. After the 1950s, the Soviet Government started to promote a policy of Russification, (sblizheniye or rapprochement) whose purpose was to merge all the peoples of the USSR into a new monolithic Soviet nation. This policy involved all aspects of human life, economy, society and culture.

If in the 1930s the Soviet Government used to arrest and deport to Siberia the artists who deviated from the Communist Party line, after the 1960s different repression methods were put in place. What can be defined as a ‘strategy of oblivion’ is not exclusively a systemic forcible repression of collective memories, but also a meticulous process of selection of individual and collective remembrances which was based on the conscious will of ignoring facts, ideas and persons which were not conform to the regime’s vision. It implied a number of practices whose purpose was to reshape collective memories and identities. 

On the occasion of its second participation to the Venice Biennale, the Azerbaijan presents two exhibitions, between which Beyond the Line a group show in Palazzo Lezze that is featuring a selection of almost unknown Azeri artists, which were working in Baku, during the Soviet time.

Javad Mirjavadov (Baku 1923), Ashraf Murad (Baku, 1925 - 1979), Tofik Javadov (Baku 1925), Rasim Babayev (Baku 1927) – and in a second phase Huseyn Hagverdi and Fazil Najafov whose works are also part of the show – were the pioneers that gave birth to the put into question of the official art of the regime in Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani avant-garde developed clandestinely, at the end of the 1950s in the Absheron peninsula. The works of the founder members of the ‘Absheron School’ turned the back to the prevailing Socialist Realism and openly contradicted the Soviet art ideology according to which art was supposed to serve the cause of the regime.

Influenced by post-impressionism and European Avant-guard that he had the chance to know during his working period at the Hermitage, Javad Mirjavadov developed a primitive painting style whose intense, jarring palette generated immediate repulsion-attraction reactions. While Mirjavadov used to depict objective reality and portray common people such as men sitting on their chariots, vendors in street markets, firemen (and so on); Rasim Babayev’s paintings mainly focused on the metaphorical aspects of life. By way of different mediums, Babayev used to create monstrous figures, which represented the anthropomorphisation of strong emotions and states of mind such as love and passion, aggression, fight and protest. He also used to alternate grotesque portraits with abstraction and cubistic compositions. If Mirjavadov and Babayev chose an expressive artistic language dominated by violent brush strokes, strident color palette and chaotic scenes, Tofik Javadov employed the easily understandable language of Soviet Avant-guard in order to denounce the awful life-conditions of workers during the Soviet period and therefore subvert the propagandistic purpose of official art itself. Dominated by a precise rhythm of composition and a dark palette, Tofik Javadov’s big-scale flat paintings depicted industrial landscapes and labor scenes in which Soviet industrial achievements – as for example the development of the oil-extracting platforms all over the country – were often presented as oppressive menacing forces, which governed the human life. Javadov’s neo-realistic aptitude essentially manifested from his conceptual contents rather then an esthetic obedience to the real’s representation.

Also the works of Ashraf Murad seems to respond to the same purpose: to denounce the machine of Soviet totalitarianism that oppressed population by way of not-mimetic and disturbing looking art. Murad mainly painted human figures, which stood rigidly on dark backgrounds and appeared as deprived of any facial expressions and harmonious fluidity. In his painting Voting (1971), Murad depicted an armed soldier who watched at a citizen at the polling station sitting close by him while in Lenin in Smolny (1970), he portrayed a white-dressed woman typing a decrees, with her back to the viewer, while the dictator stands near her menacingly. In his canvases all attempts to seduce the viewers were suffocated by the harshness of the lines and the rigidity of the subjects. Even the undressed women that he used to portray as sexual desires symbols appeared displeasing austere and un-attractive. Mirjavadov, Javadov, Murad and Babayev shared a somber fate dominated by isolation and incomprehension. Completely ignored by the political and cultural establishment, their works were not featured in official exhibitions and found no space in art galleries and museums. The artists themselves were not allowed to travel abroad and sometimes they had been also the victims of violence and reprisal. The Government just acted as if they didn’t exist.

Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence in October 1991, before the official dissolution of the USSR. Since then, the country started a process of redefinition of its cultural identity by which has been finally possible to recollect a number of missing parts of its History. To bring out of the oblivion the artists of the Absheron School and to celebrate them as the precursors of the contemporaneity in Azerbaijan is an important step in this process. It is first of all a political act, and a declaration of rupture with the soviet policy that also means to recognize the value of the past in constructing future.

  Ashraf Murad Voting, (1971), oil on canvas, 133x153 cm. Image courtesy of Heydar Aliyev Foundation

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SIRENS SONGS AND BEYOND

“Sirens Songs and Beyond”… is a one-day group show curated by me and Elena Abbiatici in collaboration with not-for-profit art space Label201, as a part of international project 6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME. The show includes a performance of Abinadi Meza, a new stage of Stefano Canto’s project “Geography in Contraction” and Matteo Nasini’s work “Mediterranean Sonata”.

According to the Odyssey, the Greek hero Ulysses tied himself to the mast of his ship in order to resist to the charm of Sirens’ songs. The Homer’s epic poem also stated that Ulysses stopped the ears of his crew with wax so that they were unable to hear Mermaids’ enchanting music and voices. Thanks to his cautions, the Greek hero escaped the death and continued his travel. “Dangerous and amazingly beautiful creatures of the Greek Mitology, the Sirens are mantic creatures like the Sphinx with whom they have much in common, knowing both the past and the future” - the British classical scholar, Jane Ellen Harrison wrote. Despite its mortal dangerousness, if approached with caution, Mermaids seductive melody was considered as a unique tool for increasing human wisdom. That is why, according to the myth, after listening the Sirens’ voices Ulysses emerged wiser and aware, with a new understanding of what was happened on the “fertile ground” of the gods will.

Coming back to XXI century and trying to re-actualize the Ulysses myth, we could compare the travel of the Greek hero, to our daily web surfing. The Internet is an infinite ocean and while crossing it, we are constantly attracted by a number of charming sirens songs, which delight us and distract us, therefore leading us to lose our own way. As a matter of fact, like Ulysses did, we should focus on the tree of our black ship and tied us to it, so that we could enjoy the space-time illusion, which the web generates, without being irreversibly captured by it.

Like the illusions that they created, Sirens live somewhere beyond the space and time. We do not know where their honey melodies come from and where they will go. The phenomenon of llusion shows the limitations of our perceptual apparatus and it also reveals that reality is a very fluid concept that has been subjected to several interpretations. As a matter of fact, the human brain’s priority is not to perfectly understand the reality but just to make sense, even though the meaning it found is not true. Actually, meaning is not true or correct in any absolute or theoretical sense.  Meaning is always related to something else (for exemple a previouse experience or a social convention or a religious dogma and so on).

The works of Canto, Meza and Nasini deal with the question of reality’s perception and interpretation, through the sound. Playing with the acoustic ambiguity, which always generates between reality and environmental recorded sounds, the artists explore the possibility to create soundscapes and mental places, which correspond to meta-subjective realities. Even though they came from reality these acoustic soundscapes are not real. Paradoxically, every recorded sound is a form of illusion because it generates a plurality of temporally displaced realities. Every recorded sound is in someway like a Siren’s song. They merely exist in a parallel space-time dimension that is a virtual reality in which you can only enter by pushing the play-button.

ABINADI MEZA

Abinadi Meza (1976) is a sound artist, writer and architect whose work engages technological, environmental and political systems. By using natural tools, such as shells, stones, seaweed and seagulls feathers that he collected on the beach of Fregene (Rome) he created a melody which can be considered in some way as a perfect  synthesis of nature and nurture.

STEFANO CANTO

“Geography in Contraction” is a project of Stefano Canto, that is going to be presented in different cities with a high density of building development. In the preparatory phase, the artist used to explore the territory, recording environmental sounds and picking up natural elements such as leaves, sand, pieces of wood, plumes. After that, during a short performance, while a speaker projects the pre-recorded sound throughout the venue space, he puts all the collected elements and a portable recording device into a cubic formwork. Finally the artist pours the concrete inside the formwork covering everything inside. The sound of the concret which fall into the wood box is perfectly audible in the final sound produced by this performative action. The concrete cube that Canto creates is a kind of territorial data archive. Every block of cement and its corresponding audio constitute a geographical sampling, a fossil testifying the changing of natural spaces and urban zones, laying the foundation of a possible futuristic archaeology.

In Fregene, Canto uses the sound previously created by Abinadi Meza during his performance.

MATTEO NASINI

“Mediterranean Sonata” of Matteo Nasini is an ambient sonorization that originated from a study of the Mediterranean’s maps. Nasini created a score by identifying musical notes in some specific points along the coasts. More than as a sound landscape the melody that he created can be considered as an attempt of visual redefinition of the Mediterranean geography through the lens of a listening mind.

ABOUT  6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME (6PM YLT)

6PM YOUR LOCAL TIME (6PM YLT) is a networked, distributed, one night contemporary art event, that has taken place simultaneously in different locations, coordinated from one central venue and documented online via a web application. After a beta test successfully organized in the United Kingdom in October 2014, the format show its full potential on July 22, when 200+ participants from 4 different time zones opened their exhibit at the same time, documenting them in real time on the web platform 6pmyourlocaltime.com, the event’s primary venue. Curated by Fabio Paris, the event has been orchestrated by a team of collaborators from a temporary office installed in the fascinating location provided by the Castle of Brescia, where the flow of images and videos from all over Europe have been displayed in front of the audience of the MusicalZOO Festival the local partner of the event. https://www.facebook.com/musicalzoo?fref=ts

6PM Your Local Time is a format by the Link Art Center, developed in collaboration with Abandon Normal Devices (AND), Manchester and Gummy Industries, Brescia. The project is part of Masters & Servers. Networked Culture in the Post-Digital Age, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), Abandon Normal Devices (UK), Link Art Center (IT) and d-i-n-a / The Influencers (ES) that was recently awarded with a Creative Europe 2014 – 2020 grant. For 24 months from now, Masters & Servers will explore networked culture in the post-digital age.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

The event 6PM Your Local Time Europe is done in collaboration with Gummy Industries and the festival MusicalZOO, and with the support of Comune di Brescia, Fondazione Brescia Musei, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Brescia and Fondazione ASM.

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NEW SOCIAL ANIMALS 

http://www.villaada.org/art.html

“Crossing borders or the ends of man I come or surrender to the animal-to the animal in itself, to the animal in me and the animal at unease with itself, to the man about which Nietzsche said (I no longer remember where) something to the effect that it was an as yet undetermined animal, an animal lacking in itself. Nietzsche also said, at the very beginning of the second treatise of The Genealogy of Morals, that man is a promising animal, by which he meant, underlining those words, an animal that is permitted to make promises (das versprechen darf). Nature is said to have given itself the task of raising, bringing up, domesticating and "disciplining" (heranzuchten) this animal that promises”. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida wrote in his book The Animal Therefore I Am.  

This year, the Art Program of Villa Ada Festival in Rome presents environmental installations, talks, performances and workshops which are exploring the relationship between human – animals – society and territory, while trying to reply to the question: ‘what is at the base of social interaction?’

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- I’M A BAD DANCER TOO!!! -  

A new research, which was recently published in the magazine ‘Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences’, claims that if the most bad dancers have nothing but their own awkwardness and self-consciousness to blame, for a few of them, a complete lack of rhythm could have a biological explanation, a  ‘beat-deafness’. According to the study, the so call ‘beat-deafness’ is supposed to be a sensory deficit analogous to ‘tone-deaf’, or ‘color-blind’. 

So basically, if you are a bad dancer today you can blame biology, but, is this a good reason for refusing to dance? Yoko Ono seems to disagree. When your heart is dancing. Your mind is bouncing. She says in her freshly released song ‘Bad Dancer’.

Ono 's artistic career began with music. In an interview with the critic and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in 2001, the artist claims that in the 30s, even before starting elementary school, her mother enrolled her in the Jiyu Gakuen - an institute specializing in teaching music for children in preschool. One of the exercises assigned to students consisted in listening to the sounds of real life and translating them into musical notes. This game became a habit for Ono and many years later, while living in New York and attending the Sarah Lawrence College, while trying to turn a chorus of chirping birds into a score she understood that the methodology used to write music in the West was incapable of translating the complexity of those natural sounds. Therefore she decided to replace notes with instructions, thus starting the procedure that would become a fundamental character of her artistic practice.[1]

In 1961, in New York, at the AG gallery of the Lithuanian artist George Maciunas ( 1931-1978 ), who in that year founded the Fluxus movement, Ono presented for the first time her Instructions, or 13 clues, which explained to visitors how to take part and contribute to the realization of the work itself. The Instructions are relational devices which aim to stimulate the psycho-emotional involvement of the visitor called to participate through their actions, which are never identical, because no individual is the same as another, and differs even from him or herself in different times and places. Often it is impossible to carry out these actions materially as they are only to be implemented through one’s own fantasy, mental associations, fantasies, poetic images that speak directly to the imagination of the viewer such as: "turn all the clocks of the world two seconds forward without letting anyone know", or "put the voices of the fishes on the night of a full moon on tape", or "draw a map to lose yourself." Halfway between poetry and paradox, the Instructions of Ono are contemporary koans which aim to get rid of our preconceptions and liberate the mind by pushing it beyond the limits of what is possible.

In the aforementioned interview with Obrist, talking about the interpretation of a song by a musician, Ono found herself fascinated by what she defines as a separation between the score and the performance. An interpreter, as faithful to the original version as he can be, will never be able to repeat a song in the exact manner in which the author had thought. That gap, that discrepancy in the time and manner of execution is the same identified by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) in the “-gramma”, or the written word, as opposed to the “logos”, the spoken word. The written text does not imply the physical presence of the author (but rather his absence) and thanks to its ability to be decontextualized, and consequently to be read and enjoyed in a different place and time, he makes possible what Derrida called the principle of difference.[2] 

With her Instructions, which are unfinished, potential works of art, Ono amplifies this concept of difference in the sense of a multitude of interpretations giving rise to infinite possible outcomes.

[1] OBRIST Hans Ulrich. « ONO, Yoko » in Interviste. Charta Editions, Milano 2003, pp. 649-662. 

[2] DERRIDA Jacques. Della Grammatologia. Edizioni Jaka Book, Milano (Edizione del 2006).

[valentinagioialevy]

What is an egg? Some Considerations Upon Manohar Chiluveru’sEgg-and-Spoon series of works

 “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.”

 Iona and Peter Opie

The Oxford Dictionary ofNursery Rhymes

 Althoughthe best-known “egg” in the whole of European art history is probably the ovoidobject depicted in Piero della Francesca’s Montefeltro Altarpiece, in the Pinacoteca of Brera (Milan, Italy), there is a more famous egg in the history of literature: Humpty Dumpty.

The rhyme of Humpty Dumpty is one of the best known and most popular in the English language. In addition to his appearance in the Lewis Carroll novel Through the Looking-Glass, as a character, Humpty Dumpty has been used in a number of literary works including in Paul Auster's novel City of Glass. In this 1985 novel, two characters defined Humpty Dumpty as the purest embodiment of the human condition.

What is an egg? One of the characters asked to his friend. Is it that which has not yet been born. A paradox, is it not? For how can Humpty Dumpty be alive if he has not been born? Auster also wrote.

All men are eggs, in a manner of speaking. We exist, but we haven’t yet achieved the form that is our destiny. We are pure potential, an example of the not-yet-arrived. (…) Humpty Dumpty is also a fallen creature. He falls from his wall, and no one can put him back together again—neither his king, nor his horses, nor his men. But that is what we must all now strive to do. It is our duty as human beings to put the egg back together again.

In his works Manohar Chiluveru often refers to the egg. In particular – as in the Untitled painting included in Imago Mundi, the collection of the Italian entrepreneur Luciano Benetton – Chiluveru refers to the popular game of egg and spoon that is a race in which participants each carry an egg on a spoon to the finish line.

During the Kochi Muziris Biennale, the artist features a 12ft tall sculpture representing a walking man with an egg upon a spoon in his mouth. Chiluveru’s site-specific installations and the life-size figurative sculptures generally explore the relationship between individual identity, social relationships and global changes. Like primate cavemen lost on the edge of a transmuting world, the walking men of Chiluveru remind us of the danger of living in a hyper-modernizing world. As we know well today, growth does not necessarily translate into better life satisfaction. The loss of social cohesion is one of the possible effects of  fast social changes, which people are experiencing all over the world in this day in age.

In her book Defining and Measuring Social Cohesion: Social Policies in Small States Series, Jane Jonsen (Professor of Political Science at the University of Montreal) presented a range of indicators that have been used to measure social cohesion and its five dimensions, which she identified as: belonging vs. isolation, inclusion vs. exclusion, participation vs. non-involvement, recognition vs. rejection and, legitimacy vs. illegitimacy. According to the study of sociologists Protap Mukherjee and Lopamudra Ray Saraswati “India’s vast geographical area, huge ethnic and cultural diversity and widespread economic and social inequality make her people less socially cohesive.”

The series of Egg-and-Spoon works originated from Manohar Chiluveru’s concern about this issue. How to create a more socially cohesive society? He simply asked to himself. Actually there are a number of methods to encourage social cohesion but the most popular is probably sport. Quoting the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon “sport has become a world language, a common denominator that breaks down all the walls, all the barriers.” Sport, races and group games for children can all be considered as tools to overcome social differences, gain a collective experience and close contacts to each other. With his series of Egg-and-Spoon works, Chiluveru focuses on a familiar childhood game that can also be considered as one of the simplest methods of social interaction, a way back to youthful innocence and definitely a possible way of ‘putting the egg back together again’

[valentinagioialevy]

The dark side of the transparency

In his book “The Society of Transparency” the Korean philosopher and media theorist Byung-Chul Han (Seoul 1959) explores the dark side of the ‘transparency’ in high-tech societies. Even if transparency has commonly a strong positive connotation, Han argues that a total exposure of privacy leads to a dangerous homogenization of the differences, which has as a consequence to make people and their actions more and more predictable, controllable and calculable. The Korean philosopher defines the rhetoric of openness and transparency as a consumerist ideology that works as a systemic coercion of the natural societal processes.

Therefore, Han say that human beings themselves are not transparent. According to him, transparency is s not in the nature of human beings and only death things are totally transparent. He also claimed that, a transparent relationship is most likely a dead relationship because it is deprived of all appeal and dynamism.

With the multimedia installation Trasparente Studio 2008-2014, the Korean artistic duo Bang & Lee seems to refer to Byung-Chul Han thought. According to Bang & Lee the world ‘transparent’ denotes the artist’s process of research and contestation that leads to the production of an artwork, while the term ‘studio’ refers to the cultural efforts for acquiring knowledge. The artists define their work as ‘a history about communication through images’ and also as a place where visitors can rethink about the idea of communication in digital era. Trasparente Studio 2008-2014 can be also seen as an attempt to reveal the danger of information’s circulation through the web by showing how easily the data and the global shared information might be distorted and manipulated.  

Born in 1959 in Seoul, Byung-Chul Han, is a South Korean-born German philosopher and professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) in Berlin. He is the author of a number of books such as The Fatigue Society, Agony of the Eros, Topology of Violence (etc).

Based in Seoul (Korea) Bang & Lee is an artistic duo comprised of Jayoung Bang (1977) and Yunjun Lee (1971). The artistic practice of Bang & Lee is focused on the relationship between art and social dynamics and interactive media. Their works have been exhibited in a number of museums and art institutions such as the Seoul Museum of Art; the Nam June Paik Art Center; the MMCA, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; the MAXXI, Museum of Art of XXI Century in Rome; the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe; the Seoul Media Biennale.