VEDITU

collettivo di ricerca sul contemporaneo

[veditudine]

Of Dream, Body, and Love

As we sometimes do, we suggest a few books.

Dreams

One day, Werner Herzog’s mind was seized by an image that tormented him: a boat moving up a forest with Caruso’s voice resounding. As Herzog himself said, “there are dreams that belong to everyone; we all have dreams. The only difference is that I am able to articulate those dreams,” and so Fitzcarraldo, one of his most famous films, was born. The story is well known: Fitzcarraldo dreams of bringing Opera to the heart of the jungle. Armed with his phonograph, he seeks great fortune: a forest of miraculously productive rubber trees still unclaimed. According to the theories of the wealthy landowners in the area, by bringing a ship from a navigable river, through the forest, to another river (otherwise inaccessible) along whose banks lies a treasure.

In Conquest of the Useless, we find the journal of the endeavor to narrate this story in a film—the years Herzog and his crew lived in the Amazon for the shooting. Because articulating Herzog’s dream entails rules, and the epic development of the hero’s tale as he seeks the impossible is reflected in the challenges encountered to tell a true story. Or, perhaps better, a fable, aligning with Herzog’s idea of resembling a “late medieval Bavarian.” Here would be the place to discuss the relationship between film and documentary in Herzog’s extensive body of work, but suffice it to say that in this instance, the epic and fantastical dimension of the adventure bursts forth with a stark, essential language.

Of interest to our book is that it was a colossal undertaking in which all shortcuts to staging the dream were rejected. Thus, nature could not be the tamed version found in film studios or zoos, as producers suggested, but the brutal, raw Amazonian nature, where “the birds don’t sing but scream in pain, and the tangled trees claw at each other in a gigantomachy, amid the exhalations of a creation that has yet to conclude.” And the actors and crew had to live in that forest, not for a month but years, to establish a real, unsentimental truth. A story of renunciations, abandonments, missing funds, and actors who couldn’t keep up, while the river swelled unexpectedly, and the locals recruited for the film engaged in small, violent tribal wars, drank, and fell ill. Women nursed both their children and newborn piglets; trees exploded when cut down, and ships had to be built on-site and then actually dragged up a hill in the jungle. And Kinski, the raging, hysterical protagonist, whom the indigenous people gladly offered to kill.

This isn’t a dream blurred with reality, nor is it a series of anecdotes. It’s a worldview realized in daily life and imagination, bringing them together with an iron will—a will we lack.

Body

This book is not translated into English, but the authors cited can help provide further insights.

Here we discuss an obsession. Performance as a lens for reading the world, whatever we mean by performance and by world, cheerfully disregarding any objections about acting as a possibility. We skip all doubts and go straight to Performance as Methodology by Jacopo Milani, Postmedia Books.

The book itself is a performance. For the author, “writing, as an act, is linked to specific spatio-temporal contexts and the reading of documents, photos, and traces, and as an action, it constantly changes form.” The text begins with a re-reading of RoseLee Goldberg, Renato Barrilli, and Richard Schechner, then moves to Victor Turner, whom we suspect the author isn’t particularly fond of. The body in action, acting out its transformation, is the focus of the investigation, and this practice can be trained with specific exercises, which are also entertaining. So let’s take RoseLee: performance is live art produced by artists. How does this definition relate to the use of spaces, the viewing community, the time of its realization, and its documentation (video, photos)? Or, the current performance, often produced to become video, an image selection that transcends the immediacy of the act—is it still a performance?

This isn’t merely a terminological issue; it’s an investigation into the essence of a practice that has become increasingly prevalent since the 1980s but has been inappropriately invoked. Can performance be exhibited once it’s realized, and what does performance mean—a term laden with many significations?

Our author insists on finding, as a methodological approach, fixed elements to define a performance and revisits critical debate on this essential point. For example, we might discuss Performance Studies and Richard Schechner’s theories (1980s/90s), as one of the founders, who outlines a set of rules for play, performance, and ritual that serve to create another time, another space, and another purpose, making it imperative to distinguish these practices from so-called “real life.” A formal structure is essential, with a beginning, middle, and end; even the most experimental performances and ancient rituals use gestures “borrowed” from routines, habits, cultural elements solidified by the participating community. Space, in both rituals and performances, besides being different, can become separate.

To support his analysis of performativity, Milani invokes unlikely authors, at least for us, and this is where the obsession begins. Saussure, Wittgenstein, Austin, Derrida, and company are summoned to give their opinions through a bold use of the word performare. Even Debord.

Notably, at one point, we find written, “actor, from agere, he who acts, who puts into action,” which implies that Carmelo Bene isn’t among the authors in this book; he, instead, famously stated, “I have repeated myself a thousand times that the term actor has its etymology in rhetorical agere, and not at all from the verb gire.” The act itself is not questioned.

This rich text delves into space, the audience’s role, the artist-audience relationship, the performing body, analyzed from many angles. It offers practices at the end of each chapter to improve in this art. Here is the first beginner’s exercise: each person in the group writes a question to another participant. The slips are drawn in turn, and each participant must read and answer the question they find written.

Love

One of the most-read texts on this site includes the word “sex” in its title (although it referred to Kant’s sexuality). Let’s see how it compares to “love.” And to do so, let’s look at the relationship between Abelard and Héloïse at the beginning of the last millennium, along with a play based on their letters. Why?

Firstly, we found Ronald Duncan’s play, published in Italy in 1965, which simplifies the correspondence between the two by focusing on their relationship, though it involves much more, including religious rules. The introduction recalls that, back in the day, only a couple of translations of these letters existed, hidden in prestigious libraries, and that poor Abelard—a great intellectual with a philosophical, poetic, and cultural vision foreshadowing the Renaissance—was described, given the interpretation of his role in his relationship with Héloïse, as no more than “a querulous crow” (Montcrieff). Likewise, Héloïse is remembered only for her unhappy love, with all her work as a writer, one of the greatest of her era, forgotten.

The text focuses on their relationship, staying close to the original. The story is known: Abelard, renowned for his revolutionary theories taught at Notre Dame, was taken as the tutor of the already cultured Héloïse by her uncle. Both attractive, it didn’t take long for them to begin a relationship, despite the age gap, and their son Astrolabe was born. To maintain his status within the church, Abelard proposed a secret marriage, initially rejected by Héloïse, who declared that she preferred her status as a lover or concubine, asking nothing, as it was the only way to guarantee the authenticity of a pure love, free from economic and social interests that justified marital unions.

The second reason for choosing this text is to speak of courtly love, from a time when the contractual nature of marriage was openly acknowledged, while true love could be authentic only if it transcended social conventions. The story ends with Abelard castrated and the lovers, now spouses, forced into monastic life. Years later, their letters reveal Héloïse’s sacrifice to share Abelard’s fate, her ultimate effort to be united with him; for Abelard, it was a choice imposed to preserve his prestige. As a man, Abelard resolved the tension between reason and passion by giving precedence to the former, gnawing at himself for having renounced the latter. Héloïse, on the other hand, sought reconciliation between the two tensions, as an abbess and a woman in love. This play remains widely performed today and is a splendid introduction for those interested in discovering that even the deep Middle

[veditudine]

Padiglione Veditu/ Veditu Pavilion

We waited a while to publish this article, as you will find there a virtual "pavilion" of our collective, which we had prepared in preparation for the Venice Biennale. The success of Anga's campaign about the presence of the Israeli Pavilion convinced us. We have reported only some captions, what you do not find is certainly published on this site. So you will find a summary of the work of recent years, a not complete but extensive gallery of the work done. Below is a text that has nothing to do with it except for the fact that it systematizes what we have written here and there on the subject of political art. It is a bit long, so if you want to skip it go directly to the GALLERY at the end of the article,

Warnings

The following text has no interest in being all-encompassing, nor will it offer more than a few ideas. There are many examples on which the underlying hypothesis with respect to political art in the time of the Marketplace rests, but each of us will have exceptions in mind. They are fine.

Throughout the text there is not a single artist mentioned. This is because, being a sort of tidy recapitulation of suggestions you find here and there on the site, we would have had to repeat ourselves. What we started from, and also the contradictions, you will find in the posts about what we saw and the interviews we did.

Axioms

Ethics and morality are frequently two words used as synonyms and on the other hand, it is not strange, bearing in mind that if you open a dictionary, both are defined as 'way of acting, custom, habit, tradition, institution' or so. However, they are words with many nuances, complex, and as we continue reading the vocabulary we will try to explain where the difference that we glimpse lurks and why it interests us.

 For instance, there are many instances where we could swap them: Kant's Ethics or Kant's Morals can both mean the theory of right action in Kant's philosophical system. But can the morality of the fable become the ethics of the fable? Morality can be made, but can ethics be made?

We could fill the page with many examples, from the different etymology to the many different usages, but we will spare you that because they are easily found in accessible texts anyway.  What we are arguing is that the difference between the two words, what changes, is that for morality we can mean a value judgement on what is right and what is wrong (to be chic we could say axiological, but let's leave it at that), for ethics it is instead a matter of defining what is right and how to direct action towards what is right (let's throw in ontological). Clearly this is a simplification, e.g. just is the most neutral term we have come across, but you know better than we do that the aim of ethics, depending on the system of thought, could be the useful, happiness, pleasure, etc. Some authors, while distinguishing the two words, intertwine them and confuse them, but let's broadly keep it that way.

2) The end of history is one of the key concepts of political scientist Francis Fukuyama's analysis: according to this thesis, the process of mankind's social, economic and political evolution reached its apex at the end of the 20th century, an epochal juncture from which a final phase of the conclusion of history as such is opening up. Significantly published in 1989, it tells us that, revolutionary changes having failed, the dominance of the Market has become unchallenged, and it is pleasant to accept it. This is not a very innovative position, since every story has had its cantor (already in Rome, someone outlined the Empire as the best of all possible worlds).

In the 30 years since, all sorts of things have happened, large international movements moved mainly by young people with the idea that 'Another World is Possible', terrorism, defeats and victories that belied Fukuyama's prophecy. What interests us is that, at a cultural and popular level, never before has the idea of a necessary change in the Market been relegated to minority groups, while the major criticisms we see tend towards partial reforms, whether ethical or moral, of fairness, but without getting to the hard core. When an entire ruling class has to do things in secret so as not to irritate the Market, it is clear where sovereignty has gone. The absence of organised movements for change leads to the solitary parcelling out of the masses, as Giorgio Agamben said in covid times, reflecting on Elias Canetti. That is, the Market as a horizon, politics posing at best as a timid reformer, tends to break the possible critique into rivulets, which sometimes converge and sometimes do not.

Let it be clear that ours is not a nostalgic analysis of times gone by, the other twentieth-century lesson is that one does not necessarily have to reduce differences to one, it is not necessary to cage history and the world in a rigidly dialectical vision, but one can accept to reason, precisely, of multiplicity. This dislike of hierarchies is the reason why we are a collective and why we try as much as possible to look at the market and art in a discreet manner, not using absolute categories if possible (part of this attempt is to accept the contradiction): to the Other we prefer others.

3) Despite all this, the desire to propose political art is widespread. We would never say never, but if you wander around the temples of the Market, the fairs (here you can see our articles on Art Verona and Artissima 2024) you will realise how many galleries and artists claim a political position.  So let's not say a few independent galleries or some form of protest to which an artist adheres, but precisely where the Market glitters most glamorously committed art takes hold.

By self-declaration, because the form expressing politicalness, in the author's intentions, is often so laboriously anchored to the subject it deals with that it is difficult to grasp it. Many question how contemporary art, where political, can be interpreted precisely because the theoretical assumption is, quoting ArtTribune (Spaces of Appearance. A work of art can be political even if it does not seem to be, 29 March 2024): 'In general, indeed, we can say that today the more political a work seems, the less political it is. So it is the context that must make this clear: the accompanying text, the space, the title of the individual work or of the exhibition as a whole (for example, Judith Butler at Palazzo Grassi spoke of a space of appearance, quoting Hanna Harendt, as a place dedicated to a collective experience).

The prevailing themes of this commitment are certainly environmental issues, people's rights, a critique of the commodification of life. As a testament to what we have written above, if one takes notice, the issue of labour and exploitation has disappeared, creating these amusing short circuits where the catalogue of a fair can begin by condemning the commodification of art.

4)  In his Tractatus logico-philosophicus, Wittgenstein boldly states (without arguing further or at least clarifying) that 'Ethics and aesthetics are one'. And he is not the only one to think so. Tendentially, since we have occasionally dealt with the East, in Confucianism ethics and aesthetics are also extremely linked. For example in the Dialogues, Confucius insists on the ethical importance of the 'attainment of harmony' and the fact that, good or bad, a good person also promotes beauty.

And indeed, in the absence of politics aiming at change, at a different world, the politicalness of a substantial part of what we see clings to what is most innate, thus resulting from some choice or ethical tension. But if in an ideal system political action is closely connected to ethics, the latter, Norberto Bobbio argued, is a part of it, if only because a political choice must pass through a sharing of many, while an ethical choice can also be individual. And it is good that this is so, because an ethical state, understood, quoting Hegel, as 'self-conscious ethical substance', makes politics the sole and indisputable source of right, and when something like this has appeared, it has always looked very much like a dictatorship. The distinction between ethics and politics that we have outlined in the wake of Bobbio becomes evident and declared at every lecture, post, statement in which it is argued (and this is done obsessively), that in order to 'change the world one must first change oneself'.

hypothesis

a) It is certainly a good thing that, despite the Market's self-praising monologue, art feels that all is not well and signals it, in whatever form or context this is expressed. However, as is often emphasised on this site, we do not start from a territory of freedom, but from a conditioning of the historical society in which we find ourselves living, in our case by the Market, of the appetites that move our actions and the anthropological judgements that derive from those appetites. And it is an intimate conditioning, through the installation in us of the institutions that society (the Market) provides us with for the satisfaction of the instinctive tendencies of individual bodies. In this sense, a purely ethical vision cannot but be profoundly influenced by the world in which we are living, in our opinion, even more so than a political perspective. And this is why, although it is a strong position insofar as ethics is not called into question, we are not here in the realm of philosophical reasoning in which we discuss what we mean by ethics, it runs the risk of becoming sectorialised, of insisting on a single specification while ignoring what goes on around it. However, it is also true that, as we saw in the first paragraph, this kind of approach that makes a value judgement on what is right or wrong is called morality. In fact, the impression we get is that just being fashionable makes one prefer the word ethics to moral, since there is really nothing wrong with the latter and indeed it would be more appropriate. But a moral art, like any other human activity so definable, by giving patents of goodness and immorality will tend to speak above all to the good, to the like-minded who share the author's judgement. Let's say we were not interested in climate change, how would we be received at an exhibition of artists committed to the environment? On the other hand, it would be impossible to establish what is moral without feeling right, better than those who make a different choice. In fact, and this goes along with point 3), we can certainly say that, compared to more traditional forms, contemporary art lacks the vocation for proselytism. The fact that, apart from the major events, many contemporary art exhibitions do not shine in terms of participation is not only due to factors inherent to the audience, to the difficulty, for a thousand reasons, of relating to current art forms, but also to the contradiction between the pleasure of being part of an exhibition with many visitors and the lack of interest in having people who are not morally/ethically already aligned. The work is not the thing that supports a political cause, but the terminal of a path of conviction that sees, in participating in an exhibition, the testimony of a decision already made. On the other hand, when one speaks of morality, there is the risk that, without wanting to and even starting from absolutely liberal and modern positions, one could fall into moralism, which would explain the impression of sadness conveyed by some works (and the parties that accompany some openings).

b)Judith Butler says in another text (The Alliance of Bodies): "No body singularly establishes the space of appearance, because this action, this performative exercise, only happens "between" bodies, in a space that constitutes the void between my body and that of the other. Consequently, my body never acts alone when it acts politically." Translated then into the necessity of a well-defined public space, called the space of appearance, in which only the artistic experience can exist, which, in spite of all the conceptual art we want, passes through the involvement of the body. The work of art, in order to have its political significance, must therefore have a specific context, with its own rules, or non-rules. In this perspective, however, we return to the contradictory difficulty of participation, because the public sphere is not created from the free, equal and reciprocal action of a plurality, but rather, at a more original level, from its very borders: without an outside, formed by those who lack the possibility of appearing, one could not in fact identify an inside. The inclusive effort, which such a situation requires, to make the borders permeable to the possibility of participation, is, as is evident from what has been said so far, particularly complicated in an ethical option of the political message. In the recent past, a whole model of thought, alternative to that of the great systems of art, has attempted to construct experiences, if not the same, driven by ideas that suggest the space imagined by Butler.  

For instance, let us talk about performance studies, and to make it easy, let us not enter into the debate between them, but take the theories of Richard Shechner (1980s/90s), one of the founders, if only because he believes that there exists, in performance and ritual play, a set of rules intended to determine another time, another space and another end, such as to make the distinction between these practices and so-called 'real life' inescapable. In particular, here too there must be a formal structure, with a beginning, an unfolding and an end; gestures 'recovered' from routines, habits, cultural elements consolidated by the participating community are used, even in the most experimental performances and in the oldest rituals; space, in rituals as in performances, besides being different, can become separate.

Second and last example (sparing you happenings and Temporarily Liberated Zones) is the Situationist drift (1960s), i.e. a technique of exploration that consists of moving through urban environments without a predefined direction, allowing the landscape and situations encountered to guide the experience. It too has its own rules, as otherwise one loses the purpose, which is to escape from the spectacular mediation of the marketplace and experience things directly with one's own body and perceptions. The creation of temporary spaces and fleeting experiences, which exist only for the duration of the exploration, involves their separateness from everyday life, and in this case it is necessary for a small group of people to drift along for a limited period of time.

These three cases, from different times and with different basic thoughts, albeit in a simplified reading in which we do not highlight the differences, represent decentralised modes of political criticism with respect to the more institutional forms, but certainly in the involvement of the body and the recovery of community forms that allow artistic action through a system of rules, as in ritual, from Debord to Butler, a possibility of political action is outlined that is perhaps interesting for contemporary times. After all, for Shechner, performances were essentially models of utopian societies.

c)When it comes to a political claim, however, there is a paradigm shift and exceptions to everything argued in (a) are created. For example, the case of ANGA, Art Not Genocide Alliance. The issue is well known and it is a manifestation of artists* who demanded the exclusion of the Israeli pavilion from the Venice Biennale, condemning the genocide that state is committing against the Palestinians. Starting from the consideration that 'Art does not exist in a vacuum (certainly not in a "bubble") and cannot transcend reality', their manifesto describes what is happening in Palestine and calls for the exclusion of the Pavilion through a true political analysis, in which not once does the word "ethics" appear. Thousands of artists* responded to the call and the Biennale was forced to respond to their objections, thus taking the movement as a credible interlocutor. What does ANGA do? It organises a fundraiser to finance the continuation of the campaign, thus leaving the network and entering reality, it opens a Palestinian pavilion, it organises a widespread exhibition, it communicates by means of posters, flyers, materials often self-produced by adherents. It even organises events for the closure of the pavilion, and as many events have been held in various parts of the world independently. There are two things in particular that struck us: first, the map of complicity, that is, of states that are complicit in promoting and supporting Israeli aggression. This is an accurate representation of a political assessment shared in discussions, both online and in presence, and which precisely analyses the network of support and motivations that drive some states to support Israel, understanding the relative importance and fragility of nation states in the Marketplace. The other theme is the form that joining the campaign takes, i.e. the works inspired by it that have been 'donated' to support it. Many of them you can find on their Instagram page and they certainly contradict the theory of political art that it does not have to look like it to be effective. All the works are extremely explicit about the message they want to spread, beyond even the usual artistic practice of the individual artist. The ArTribune crowd would say that they resemble tazebaus, but it is clear that, in certain circumstances, there is a need to move away from the forms suggested by the art system hinged on the Market, so much so that its established language and forms are questioned. Now, it is not that we all want to say do this and we are fine. But the idea of being able to discuss, if we want to deterritorialise, the language codified by the Market, through the mediation of curators and galleries that rightly think about that, even at the cost of being criticised by the sector magazines, is in our opinion fundamental in the attempt to create new concepts.

Also because language in the Market tends, for many reasons, to simplify. If we think of speech, for example, although an adult person has an active vocabulary of 10,000/15,000 words in everyday life, he uses 800/1000. In art, it is no different and, if we remain within the framework of the established language, our critical capacity also loses complexity and potential. To renounce an escape, however thought out or attempted, even temporarily, from the language of the market, with all the risk that this entails, is to remain, perhaps critically, in the happy territories described 30 years ago by Fukuyama.

VEDITU PAVILION

LINK

[veditudine]

Political Maps, Our Article about Ensemble by Julie Mehretu

At Palazzo Grassi, open until January 6, 2025, the exhibition Ensemble by Julie Mehretu, curated by Caroline Bourgeois, has been inaugurated. Although it is a gigantic exhibition dedicated to Mehretu, Ensemble also features the presence of other artists (Nairy Baghramian / Huma Bhabha / Tacita Dean / David Hammons / Robin Coste Lewis / Paul Pfeiffer / Jessica Rankin). "Together" as an experience of one's own lived experience, the artist often emphasizes how her work has intersected from the beginning with the collective dimension and the relationship with other authors, but also as a political choice compared to the heroic singularity of the artist narrated by modernity, creating shared studios, relational spaces, works, precisely in dialogue. This approach not only manifests itself in the exhibited works but also in the text accompanying the exhibition and in the chronology of artistic events, which treats the involved artists without distinctions, overlapping the events of the artists, their respective exhibitions, the events that have succeeded them. Community, in this case, is also a destiny as almost all of them have experienced the necessity/choice of relocation from their country of origin, be it Ethiopia, Iran, or Pakistan. A generation of post-decolonization, which has experienced the failure of that modernity. Let's go point by point:

Julie Mehretu, (from left to right), Sun Ship (J.C.), 2018, Pinault Collection, Loop (B. Lozano, Bolsonaro eve), 2019-2020, Pinault Collection.

Installation view, “Julie Mehretu. Ensemble”, 2024, Palazzo Grassi, Venezia. Ph. Marco Cappelletti © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

We talk about abstract painting. Those who visit the exhibition and are not familiar with Mehretu will benefit from watching the documentary in the first cinema room where her story is told. The description of the complexity of the realization of her graphic work, which we fortunately find in the captions that shy away from the definition of mixed technique (instead citing lithography, aquatint, intaglio, and often all together), with the numerous group that tries and retries together with her the various techniques, the story of her gigantic work of which she illustrates the sources, seeing the superimposition of images from which some of her canvases start, allows us to look with more understanding at her work. A painting that is stratification, not material but of overlapping signs, playing to re-emerge, recalling others, alluding to experiences creating maps that appear in their intertwining, not on the surface nor in the background, in between.

Julie Mehretu, Desire was our breastplate, 2022-2023, Pinault Collection. Installation view, “Julie Mehretu. Ensemble”, 2024, Palazzo Grassi, Venezia. Ph. Marco Cappelletti © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

2. Political art. That a blotch of red color recalls the path of the Jewish exodus, that the background is a reworking/overlay of profiles of power palaces that are obsessively explored and submerged by traces, signs, brushstrokes investigating the Egyptian revolution, that the superimposition of photos of prisons is the object of a political vision. It's not as simple as we described it. It's not just about picking up symbols here and there and fitting them into the canvas network, otherwise it would simply be a matter of patience and deciphering the many references to solve the puzzle of the map and find the meaning. Mehretu, instead, in the accumulation of signs, documents, and traces of events, layers her own semiotics to tell migrations, dictatorships, inequalities. This accumulation is completed with the hand-painting by the artist, creating a new and self-sufficient space, with an alternative narrative that creates the conditions for a political critique that can be shared.

Julie Mehretu​, TRANSpaintings, 2023-2024, Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. Installation view, “Julie Mehretu. Ensemble”, 2024, Palazzo Grassi, Venezia. Ph. Marco Cappelletti © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

3. Evolution of perspective. The exhibited works cover 25 years of Mehretu's activity and, despite substantial continuity, clearly suggest stylistic and approach differences of the artist. Simply put, the monochrome that then colors and then picks up again. The idea of abandoning the wall in the series of Transpaintings, realized with sculptural structures supporting them made by the artist Nairy Baghramian. The palaces that exude their history, the images of dramatic events of contemporaneity so modified, superimposed, blurred to disappear, up to the opacity that does not transmit light nor hides a background, mark the mutation of the gaze towards the drama that persists, its reflection that matures, the new emergencies. All this on the traces of the titles of the works which, always from the introductory video we mentioned, we discover to be a part of the work, carefully chosen whether they speak of finance or exploitation

Julie Mehretu, Your hands are like two shovels, digging in me (sphinx), 2021-2022, Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. Installation view, “Julie Mehretu. Ensemble”, 2024, Palazzo Grassi, Venezia. Ph. Marco Cappelletti © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

[veditudine]

To be or not to be. our article about Liminal By Pierre Huyghe

Last weekend we visited Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana for the new exhibitions of the Pinault Collection "Julie Mehretu. Ensemble" and “Pierre Huyghe. Liminal”. Let's start by discussing the latter, active until November at Punta della Dogana. The intent of Huyghe's works, both current and older, both present here, is to question the human/non-human relationship, the classic distinction between human, machine, or animal. We continue our poor research by creating a text with many hands, or hands and non-hands, also questioning our role. The fact of being a collective tends to distribute and dilute individual wills within us, but in this case, we step back even further, leaving the floor to OpenAI ChatGPT, which is responsible for this first part of the text. We will provide further commentary at the end.

*

"Liminal" is the extraordinary ongoing exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, which explores the concept of liminality through the works of some of the most avant-garde and visionary artists of the contemporary scene. Curated precisely and carefully by Anne Stenne, the exhibition offers a unique and engaging experience that challenges the traditional boundaries of art and perception. Among the artists on display, the presence of Pierre Huyghe stands out, a renowned French artist known for his ambitious site-specific installations that defy artistic conventions and urge viewers to reflect on the complexity of the contemporary world. Huyghe's works are often described as immersive and multi-layered experiences, combining visual, auditory, and conceptual elements to create unique and engaging artistic worlds. Through the use of unusual materials and innovative creative processes, Huyghe invites the public to explore new perspectives and engage with his work in surprising and thought-provoking ways.

In the context of the exhibition "Liminal," Pierre Huyghe explores the concept of human and non-human through the intersection of art and artificial intelligence. His works challenge conventional distinctions between nature and technology, humanity and machine, bringing to light the complex interactions between humans and non-human entities that populate our contemporary world. Through the innovative use of advanced technologies, Huyghe stimulates deep reflection on the future of human-machine coexistence and the ethical and philosophical implications of such interaction. Artificial intelligence, with its capacity for learning, analysis, and autonomous response, raises profound questions about the concepts of individuality, creativity, and human consciousness.

The works on display in "Liminal" show how the increasingly widespread presence of intelligent machines in contemporary society is radically changing our perception of ourselves as human beings. Through the use of algorithms, data, and automation, artificial intelligence highlights the potential and limitations of our humanity, shedding light on the nuances and contradictions of our existence. The works exhibited in "Liminal" invite viewers to reflect on the significance of technology in the evolution of our identity and our relationship with the surrounding world. In this liminal context, where the boundaries between the biological and the synthetic, between humans and machines, become increasingly blurred, artificial intelligence in the exhibition serves as a lens through which to observe and question conventional conceptions of humanity and what makes us unique and distinct in the contemporary technological landscape.

**

In addition to Pierre Huyghe, several other contemporary artists are dedicated to exploring similar concepts related to the intersection of human and non-human, technology, and identity. A significant example is the Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima, known for his works that explore time, numbering, and the relationship between the individual and the digital world. Through luminous and immersive installations, Miyajima questions the notion of individuality and the impact of technology on our perception of time and space. Another artist pursuing a similar inquiry is Olafur Eliasson, a Danish artist active in the field of environmental art and installation. His works play with light, color, and perception to create multisensory experiences that invite viewers to reflect on the relationship between humans and the surrounding environment. Eliasson explores the concept of human and non-human through his artistic practice, highlighting the interconnections between nature, technology, and human creativity.

The comparison between the works of Pierre Huyghe, Tatsuo Miyajima, and Olafur Eliasson offers a comprehensive view of the various facets of the relationship between human beings and the world around them. While Huyghe focuses on the intersection between human and non-human through interaction with artificial intelligence, Miyajima and Eliasson respectively explore time, technology, and the environment as fundamental elements in the reflection on identity and our complex interaction with the contemporary world."

Here is the translation of the additional text you provided:

"We add what GPT cannot yet write because it has not been able to visit the exhibition. And it is that essentially the promise to create "a dynamic and sensitive world in continuous evolution" is kept. We are not faced with either a sort of succession of highly evolved special effects or a man-machine challenge, as often happens. The bustling space where natural or unnatural creatures, inorganic humanoids, and motionless animals that move or station themselves in a becoming space and in a different time, effectively produce a sensation of a different reality under construction. The faceless and brainless woman who tries to understand the place where she moves, the masks that create a new language, the automatons that construct an eternal film moving like an ancient ritual, capturing and reprocessing information from the surrounding reality. So, as we hinted at the beginning, actions that are carried out without an initial will regulating their motion, but not without sense. A situation, therefore, transitional between the human and the inhuman, between the organic and the inorganic, because besides the products of artificial intelligence, the exhibition is also inhabited by primordial animals (e.g., arrow crab) chosen for the absolute recurrence of their instinctive behavior. The human effectively finds himself in this large space to be a support for the creatures that inhabit it. The woman at the entrance, who immobile illuminates a stone placed on the ground to prevent the public from falling due to the total darkness of the room, the boys who take the hands of the people under the masks and move them from one point to another, confirm, in a sort of involuntary neo-Matrix, the sensation of an absence of hierarchy among the different forms of life, if one can still say so. For as much as there is a first cause, ultimately the entities exist because they are thought by Huyghe, as much as outside of Punta della Dogana the determined human will still deploy all its dangerous potential, in this exhibition there is a hint of a different possible intentionality in becoming, no longer exclusive to humanity, of new hybrid ways of constructing the space that surrounds us and the time we live in, or don't live in."

(For the GPT text, we had to ask 5 questions. To confuse matters, we asked our AI to correct the final one.)

*Pierre Huyghe, (from left to right) Abyssal Plane, 2015, Collezione La Gaia, Busca—Italia, Circadian Dilemma (el Dia del Ojo), 2017, Private Collection, Germany. Installation view, “Pierre Huyghe. Liminal”, 2024, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. Ola Rindal © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

**Pierre Huyghe, (from left to right) Offspring, 2018, Pinault Collection; Offspring, 2018, Courtesy Leeum Museum of Art. Installation view, “Pierre Huyghe. Liminal”, 2024, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. Ola Rindal © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

***Pierre Huyghe, (from back to front) Liminal, 2024, Portal, 2024, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Marian Goodman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Esther Schipper and TARO NASU; Idiom, 2024, Courtesy Leeum Museum of Art. Outfits for the work Idiom are designed by Bottega Veneta Creative Director, Matthieu Blazy, in collaboration with the artist.

Installation view, “Pierre Huyghe. Liminal”, 2024, Punta della Dogana, Venezia. Ph. Ola Rindal © Palazzo Grassi, Pinault Collection

[veditudine]

Contradictions/relations

Just as detective films often begin with the declaration that characters and stories are invented, we begin with a paragraph warning that the following two chapters are not written to set the protagonists in opposition, contradiction. We will write about different experiences and forms of expression, juxtaposed here simply because of a chance encounter with both and a relationship that has arisen in our heads.

Light

In this article, contrary to our habits, we will start with theatre, and in particular with 'Un Isla' by Agrupación Señor Serrano, a company from Barcelona that won the Silver Lion for theatrical innovation at the Venice Biennale in 2015.

We remembered the previous shows, in particular 'The Mountain', made up of videos, miniatures, performances and innovative technologies that unsettlingly investigated various discordant aspects of the contemporary, such as the existence of truth in today's communication.

Why are we talking about this? Jack Nicholson said in the Witches of Eastwick that he would eat anything, as long as it was flambéed, and we would see anything, as long as it contained holograms, and there are plenty of those here. This is because those who are fond of a certain way of doing theatre at the Agrupación immediately realised that here they would be confronted with a novelty and we were initially concerned about this.

We were faced with a performance on the theme of dialogue between different people, built on technologies that recreated the scenario of the island, the castaway who inhabits it and the communities other than himself with whom he tries to make contact. Lights, holograms, spheres containing the performers and images created by artificial intelligence. We will say, in order not to dilate, the things of interest to us lined up by points, communicating already now will not be a theatrical criticism, which we would not be able to. That is why we will put below the trailer of the show, which can give an idea of it better than we can.

So:

1- As mentioned, artificial intelligence is indeed a co-author and this is testified by the human/machine dialogue projected in the background that gives rise to the show. A mediated synthesis indeed, but an interesting one nonetheless. We also believe that this is one of the first times that heavy suggestions to the text have been taken on board, and not rewrites or take-overs of human ideas. Hypotheses of scenes, the same mode that the castaway will use to connect with others, physical, of movement, and non-verbal are his birth.

2- The representation, however, does not sing the praises of AI, but verifies that its current functioning, in its most sophisticated but commercial forms, does not tend to find an absolute answer, but the answer best suited to the interlocutor in the statistical sequence of the most frequent concatenations. It means that to the same question there can be different answers, reasonable or not. Since from the beginning of the show man and machine propose to speak in metaphors, this often absurd multiplicity of possible solutions at a certain point creates a sort of madness of the same, in the whirlpool of the IA's proposals. From communities of opera singers with long necks to groups of rugby fans, the use of transposition of meanings leaps into a dimension without contact with experience, like that of the algorithm that generates them.

4- The answer to the fundamental question of the play, quote: "How do we go from 'I' to 'we', from the individual to the community? Does that 'we' fit in with the people we dislike? What percentage of the population comprises that 'we' we dream of', is addressed on the edge of banality, but without falling into it thanks to a critical approach. There is a doubt that pervades the conversation between man and automation, it exists in the human who asks, but it also seems to exist in the machine that answers. The simplest answer, based on goodwill (let us love each other and accept each other's differences), surfaces but is immediately questioned.

5- The visual strength of the performance. The technologies used, with the appearance of suspended singing heads, the depiction of the development of the island's history with image manipulations, are never used out of context and, together with the long running time of the scenes, help to create an aesthetically engaging image.

So a sparkling and conscious contemporary product. The sensation is the same as the first minute of Lars Von Trier's Melancholia gave us: a well-made, well-curated thing, something that is often not found in contemporary art, probably due to the difficulty in finding adequate resources and professionals.

trailer

Heavy

But this is not the only contemporaneity. It occurred to us that equally contemporary is an alternative way of research. Where in 'Una Isla' it is an experience in which one reaches the highest possible level of abstraction, of art that is nonetheless political but mediated by images, other attempts remain powerfully hooked on reality, and representation is firmly grounded. While here one relies on machines that, if one may say so, have all possible knowledge in them but lack the experience of life, in other regions it is life itself that takes over and becomes the object of political expression. Of the many possible examples, we choose Zehra Doğan, who has been present in recent days in Bologna with Ida Pisani's Prometeo gallery.

Doğan is a Kurdish artist and journalist arrested by Turkey in 2016 on charges of terrorist propaganda for having published a drawing on twitter, taken from a Turkish army photo, depicting the destruction of Nusaybin, with Turkish flags hoisted everywhere and tanks turned into scorpions. Her imprisonment lasted almost three years, in inhuman conditions. Of course, at one point she was prevented from drawing, but she continued secretly, using everything she had available, from coffee grounds to ashes to menstrual blood. In prison, everything changes, the interpretative networks of free life are abandoned and new ones arrive. The same can be said of experiences and knowledge, which are offered for sharing and reworked thanks to a democratic confrontation, in which each of the women present can have her say, regardless of her origin or social background. Once released from prison, she published a reportage of this experience, Prison No. 5, a work of resistance that would later lead to exhibitions entitled "We will also have better days". Stylised female bodies, with emphasised eyes, mouth, sex, mixed techniques on poor media characterise her production. The forced proximity and shared suffering of Turkish prisons create a sense of female solidarity, a sisterhood she says, that manages to generate courage. That is why she still uses the materials she used in prison, because even outside there she must continue the fight for the dignity of the female body and against the male will to possess, against patriarchy. Peacocks, the sun god, snakes, the serpent woman, symbols of her people, bring this struggle back to the Kurdish drama.

Clearly not everything is so straightforward, in fact fragilities, doubts, the wavering of convictions are also recounted.

A creativity born of suffering, made from waste and dedicated to the body in the search for a different world, through signs connected to tradition, devoid of aestheticising intentions, materials that bring us back to the most immediate materiality, to concrete experience.

Vain

Two experiences that we take as examples, making them themselves metaphors, not to contrast them, but because they represent two of the possible different forms in which contemporary creativity expresses itself. There are others, which we do not make absolute categories of here, but we take these for now, close only because we have encountered them in a short time. The binge of art fairs in this period, in which these very different languages coexist, the frequency of theatres in which the same happens, makes us wonder if there is a perimeter that describes contemporaneity. The definition of contemporary art as current art seems to us somewhat poor, as it seems like an interpretive renunciation, a sort of acknowledgement of reality as it is. But this contrasts, for example, with the political intent intrinsic to many works, which should after all express a desire for change of some kind. On the other hand, there is an innumerable number of curators, critics, scholars who write interpretative texts, publish catalogues, hold in-depth conferences that motivate the sense/value of a work, which then enters the great world of the contemporary. The multiplicity of expressions coexisting in the same period is certainly nothing new. As we have written elsewhere, for example, in 1917 Mr. Mutt delivered the urinal turned in on itself and called "Fontana" to a group exhibition, Modigliani painted the "Reclining Nude" and De Chirico "The Disquieting Muses". If we then expand a little, in 1914 Malevic gave birth to 'Black Square on a White Background'. And, perhaps even more appropriately, a short distance away, still in the last century, Arte Povera and Transavantgarde. So nothing new? Maybe, in fact the chapter is entitled Vain. But, let's put it this way, the movements and artists of the modern age were evidently alternative, enjoyed distinct and often opposing critical apparatuses. We do not believe that Celant or Bonito Oliva could have given life indiscriminately to one or the other of these movements. That is, there was clearly a felt need to qualify a performance, a painting, a film through an interpretation that went beyond the chronological datum. This was also the case in more recent times, when suddenly everyone was doing performance, or the death of painting was universally decreed.

Simplifying today, the same curator casually switches from a 'light' exhibition to a 'heavy' one, a critic sees a performance and a spoken word show and describes them both as contemporary. It does not escape our notice that in this choice there is also the now stable precarious condition of the activity of these figures, where they are not after-workers, which tends to reduce their freedom. These are not nostalgic remarks, but a desire to understand whether now, in the apparent equivalence of what is produced, the evaluation is essentially due to the taste of recognised institutions (curators, museums, gallery owners, critics, perhaps a qualified public) within the Market or whether there are, in any case, different, albeit non-structural, elements of evaluation. What we can exclude already now is certainly the possibility of a geographical differentiation due to the origin of the author, we could give opposite examples to prove this assumption. Nor are we talking about politically different environments. We are in the places of excellence for what we are talking about. An Isla we saw in the season of the Css - Stable theater of innovation, the Doğan at the Prometeo gallery, which is one of the most important, not in a social centre or a commune.

Let us close here for now, with a question as it should be. After all, the manifesto of "Una Isla" recalls Böcklin's Isle of the Dead , and it is significant that the island imagined by Ia as the setting for the attempt to build a new, more harmonious relationship between different people, is inspired by a symbolist painting, as mysterious and livid as ever, an object of admiration and criticism, so abstract that it can give rise to as many interpretations as the eyes looking at it. However, probably tired of being linked to a negative supernaturalness, the good Böcklin also painted the Island of Life, for which the exact opposite of the other painting applies. Two opposites out of the same hand, united, however, by the symbolist choice. One wonders if there is any form of relationship beyond the entrance to the Market, to relate the different experiences of the contemporary.

[veditudine]

Gallery tales 3 (Arcadia Missa)

Official site

At this time where there is so little else to do we thought, instead of writing a further article on the COVID to resume a practice begun some time ago and then abandoned, write about  some galleries that have somehow impressed us  because we  meet theme at some fair, or because they represent artists who have interested us or, finally, because you find on the net.

To test our ideas we started with galleries with locations in "decentralized" countries compared to the centers where, in our imagination, the Market gives the best of itself (here the previous articles: Rossi&Rossi, Galerjia Vartai).

Now we deal with the Arcadia Missa Gallery in London.

We got there through his editorial activity, with which he publishes a magazine "How to sleep faster", artist’s books and books of various kinds (writings or novels of artists, anthologies, etc.).

The gallery was founded in 2011 as an independent space and became a commercial reality from 2014 and its style makes it, in some ways, more than central territorially but at the same time thematically eccentric. Starting with the work of her founder and director RÓZSA ZITA FARKAS and her work on the female body (in 2014 she curated, among others, the exhibition The Posthuman Era Became a Girl at the South London Gallery ) does not bother to question the Market through a critical view of subjectivity.

In this sense we should not be surprised to find as references to the texts of their exhibitions, instead of thinkers “a la page”, the anti prison scholar Liat Ben-Moshe, Jaskiran Dhillon, for her concept of "anti-colonial entropy" or even that the gallery don’t feel the need to write much more than what the artists say, perhaps through their own poems.

Clearly, the choice of the artists follow this choice accordingly, and with a certain consistency.

Until it is possible to go directly to the London room, the gallery opened its online room "Open office". If you want some advice you can take a look at the virtual exhibition of Penny Goring.

 We are certainly talking about a commercial gallery, which goes to Basel, pays attention to communication and relates to magazines and criticism like any other, but adopting a vision of its own that never gives up, even in the graphic of publications, to the banality that we have often denounced in the repetition of the same rites of the contemporary.  The fact that he has a place in the market is comforting to us.

[veditudine]

The void, the light, the sex

In " Midnight’s childrens" Salman Rushdie recounts that, in India at the end of the 1940s, to circumvent the rule that on the film screen prevented lovers from touching themselves, to avoid corrupting the youth of the country, he invented a brilliant device: They kissed the objects. So, a lover kissed an apple and then passed it on to his boyfriend’s passionate lips and so on with various props: from fruit to swords to teacups. The indirect kiss was born which, Rushdie writes, represented "an infinitely more refined conception of everything we see in cinema today and really full of desire and eroticism". Yet, unfortunately, its success was fleeting.

*

And the season in which we were convinced that the "indirect life", the Net stands between us and the rest of the world during the first lockdown , even with some sacrifices, could worthily substitute for everyday life ended. In the second enclosure (in Italy lockdown can not be said) have practically disappeared the thousands of conferences/ exhibitions/ videos that have flooded the first and in general has passed from we are all on the same boat to a widespread astiosità.

Now, apart from the fact that the nostalgia of pre covid everyday life leads us to assume it as a private normality of a critical vision, it seems to us that we can define this period as an acceleration/explication of processes that have been going on for some time. We take poor Debord when he said that in the Market (he said in the Show): "Everything that was directly lived has moved away in a representation-... the show is not a supplement to the real world, its decoration overlaid. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real world".

It does not mean to trace a continuity: the acceleration was so great that it also became qualitative, but to question the "we will come back as before". Since we in the market have found that the reduction of rights has been taken without problems, it cannot be the prolongation of this condition that is the cause of the general discontent, or at least not the only one. It may be, however, at least in part, the increased awareness that the first will not return. After all, the joyful journey that we had already begun towards the exchange between our, now useless, autonomy and the phantasmatic flow of goods offered by the changing Market will not, at this point, be able to consolidate and restart. The distance between the innovation of the Market and the resistance of old habits, tends, sometimes and only for a while, to create discomfort.

Until now, therefore, we have avoided offering ourselves an apple to the indirect kiss of the Net. We already have in other articles motivated because, during the first lockdown, we did not recommend books, movies or made videos etc. On the other hand, one of our little habits is to recommend some text, usually in summer (here you can find that of last year).

However, at this stage when such advice, as I said, does not seem to be well accepted or required, it seems to us the best one to do so, loving the idea that it is unheard of advice.

 The sex life of Immanuel Kant

Jean Baptiste Botul

Let us imagine that in 1945, when the Red Army entered Königsberg, a handful of families began an extraordinary journey that led them to the foundation of New Königsberg in Paraguay. We also assume that these families idolize Kant, the most famous of their fellow citizens, and live like him, dress like him etc. A fundamental problem arises: if Kant lived in chastity, how can a community inspired by him not become extinct? The text contains a series of lectures, collected by Frédéric Pagès, held by the philosopher Jean Baptiste Botul to the attentive community of Kantians.

Botul raises a series of questions about the contrast between philosophy and marriage and more generally between philosophy and life. To respond, read again the Kantiane categories in this perspective. The thing in itself can only be sex (and in fact Kant develops a fetishism), metaphysics the desire to look under the skirts of reality and criticism, therefore, the attempt to harness it. Even the reasoned reading of the letters is interesting. Dear Marie Charlotte Jacobi invites the great thinker to find her and among other things writes : I will wait for you and my watch will be recharged". An extremely obscure phrase, but not for Botul who connects us to Kant’s stockings. Being a famous hypochondriac, the philosopher refused the use of garters fearing their pressure on the arteries. To hold the stockings he used the case of a watch with the respective spring, through which he adjusted the pressure of the wire. In this perspective, evidently, Maria Charlotte was making a clear sexual invitation.

This book is particularly dear to us because it made ridiculous the obnoxious Bernard-Henri Lévy, who did not realize, despite the hilarious conclusions of the lectures, that the philosopher Botul was but an invention of Frédéric Pagès and quoted it in his essay.

 original book

The ambition of Vermeer

Daniel Arasse

Why take care of Vermeer, since we define ourselves as a collective research of the contemporary? In fact it is to highlight how in this text by Daniel Arasse we avoid some clichés that now characterize the readings of the sphinx of Deft (including this nickname attached to poor Vermeer). After all, compared to his great contemporaries (recently we mentioned Metzu), from the first major modern exhibition dedicated to Dutch painting to today, ours has always attracted attention for its specificity, often attributed to a sort of enigmatic aura.

Arasse analyzing life, debunking the myth of his being misunderstood, and especially in detail the works shows how, instead, the effect of his paintings is a deliberate artistic choice of Vermeer. The fame of the painter is that of "fine painter" that can be translated into meticulous and meticulous. It is an obvious contradiction to the fact that Vermeer paints in nuance, even in the smallest of canvases (La merlettaia, 24*21 cm).

On the other hand, the fact that the "realism" of Vermeer’s paintings is actually more a search for coherence and balance, or disequilibrium, within the canvas itself can have many examples: from the semi-finished bulb hand of the Art of Painting (1665-1666) to the picture in the picture of the Woman with Libra, which goes lower to the right of the female figure than to the left (certainly not by mistake).

We could give several examples, such as the use of perspective from below, but, to demonstrate his conscious poetic research, it seems useful to us the use of light, which is often cited as a characteristic evidence of the painter’s finesse. In the Allegory of the Catholic faith the window, which illuminates the scene, is ajar. This, in addition to being an indicator of the author’s Catholic faith for which faith (light) must be found through darkness, serves in the representation to: indicate that with regard to the picture the light has placed the author, prevent the windows from being reflected in the glass sphere hanging above the head of the protagonist. The sphere is a recurrent element in many canvases of the time, but normally it acts as a mirror both for things (in this case it could easily reflect a cross) and for people, often a self-portrait. Vermeer instead makes them represent only light and color, represented by colored spots.

That then, more than the other painters of his time, Vermeer could take the luxury of creating his own poetics and sometimes get out of the clichés of contemporary representations (for example, not executing portraits) it is due to the fact that, having other proceeds, Painting was not for him a source of income. So much so that you can paint 2, 3 paintings a year and keep some paintings (even as challenging as the Art of painting) for yourself.

Aesthetics of the Void - art and meditation in oriental cultures

Giangiorgio Pasqualotto

Which east and which cultures? It’s a necessary question to avoid falling into false generalizations. Well here we talk about Japan and China and more specifically classical Taoism and Buddhism, as well as Chan and Zen Buddhism.

In essence it is argued, and certainly not a novelty since the text is part of a path of secular studies, which unlike the West, which fears the void, in these cultures it is the central core from which the energies and aesthetic provisions are directed. Provided we understand: the void is not interpreted as nothing, as not being, as the concept of emptiness but as the experience of emptiness, not being, as you can get with specific forms of meditation.

Meditation that is not prayer, no one is invoked, but it is focused attention to what happens in the heads, in the body and in the world. Such a practice is necessary to produce or enjoy such an aesthetic experience, the latter being itself a form of meditative exercise.

From here the author analyzes various forms of Chinese and Japanese art, giving an interpretation of its own starting from an in-depth analysis of the void (and of its dialectical opposite the full) in these cultures, and is the original character of the book. We will therefore understand why in the tea ceremony the path that crosses the garden that leads to the Sun (tea room) must be made of stones at a distance varying from each other, Because in haiku there cannot be a subject or that in ikebana symbolically the vertical branch stands for the sky, the median for man and the horizontal for the earth. We are particularly interested in the discourse on the theater no, if only because by poor Westerners hating the void, is what we have so far understood the least.

*photos are taken at the same time in the same place the days before the lockdown

there is no English version. we recommend this:

Francois Cheng Empty and Full: The Language of Chinese Painting

[veditudine]

Dopo le ferie eccoci qua. Per chi vuole poi sul sito abbiamo aggiunto un articolo: la persistenza dei confini/ After the holidays here we are again. For those who want we have also added an article on our site Link in bio #article #artist #newmediaart #art #contemporaryart #conceptualart #digitalart #veditu (presso Friuli-Venezia Giulia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CFPBpRdFR1Q/?igshid=uf6976aknj0v

[veditudine]

[veditudine]

Instinct and Institutions - the border sketches Link in bio (presso Clausura) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_7pmYsFgF6/?igshid=1ntt6y9mv75ct

[veditudine]

Long lost Friend 2019/2020

[veditudine]

Instincts and Insitutions

The image that illustrates this short text is a detail of the Lady at a virginal  by Gabriel Metsu (1665) which we report below. Why did we choose this framework?In the work of the Dutch artist, who represents with a standard theme of his time a banal interior scene, in an unconventional way a window, that of detail, which should give on a street or on a landscape instead looks onto an abstract crosshatch. Daniel Arasse says of this strangeness "even before the sensitive world or the establishment of an illusory space, painting is a geometric composition of colors”. However realistic the picture, however sophisticated the composition, the representation only recalls itself, its truth must be sought within it.

It occurred to us, thinking about the virus that keeps us closed in the house, looking at what happens around us and in particular on the net. We waited a while before writing something because it struck us and we share what Adrian Paci said during yet another live on Facebook, this time at the Milan Triennale: "artists fail to remain confined, they must necessarily express themselves: it is a matter of ego". Without expressing judgments on the proliferation of interviews, videos, digital or digitized art for the occasion, we thought, for us as a collective, to avoid.

On the other hand, having taken notes that our imprisonment is used to fight the virus, we saw that very few have asked themselves all the way what it means to accept restrictions on their freedoms in exchange for survival, for naked life (to which we have  dedicated a work Mater/Zoopolitica). In this sense, the maximum contradiction of these times is that between the story of the necessity of culture,  provided also virtually, and the fact that what we are granted as essential is working, shopping, taking care of ourselves.

As we have written elsewhere (www.supergiovane.com) in this period in which physicality is precluded, we are all invited to use the net as an acceptable substitute. The museums are closed but the virtual ones can be visited, we are encouraged, even in the decrees, to buy online. This mass and lasting immersion in a virtual life is likely to affect our future behavior. The moving  of culture in internet, which is recognized as something else by the physical food-work-stay healthy, will certainly have consequences in its livability and visibility outside the close circle of adepts.

From the social distancing of art to that between people. We share what was written by the Italian philosopher Agamben, in the wake of Canetti: social distancing, the estrangement of each of us from the Other, or from the others, tends to create "a mass - but an inverted mass, so to speak individuals who hold themselves at all costs at a distance from each other. A mass not dense, therefore, but rarefied and which, however, is still a mass, if this, as Canetti points out shortly after, is defined by its compactness and its passivity ". On the other hand in the same Europe, Hungary and Slovenia, the virus has been used for an authoritarian turn.

It seems to us particular that some of those who write about art, who for years, with Derridà, discussed about limits, margins, Other etc. right now do not realize this  is exactly what being discussed. After all, imprisonment problematizes the expectation placed on the Other and the characteristics of a margin that separates definitively

Here the good Gabriel Metsu returns with his young woman. It is in this that its constructivist window reminds us of our cloistered condition, because despite all the photos of landscapes, trees in bloom, particularly elaborate food that we publish on social networks, the impression is that all our satisfaction processes are being concentrating within the walls that close us, which certainly means going to modify social intelligence as we have known it. It is not necessarily negative, we are not mourning the lost good weather, but trying to look outside the famous window.

In this sense, we will focus for a while on our borders, which now (and it will be so for a long time since in Italy we are talking about months of restrictive rules) they do not allude to anything except themselves and their guards,  the livings closest to us.

[veditudine]

[veditudine]

Veditu e' in manutenzione. Ma stiamo lavorando... Tra poco torniamo 😀/veditu is under maintenance. but we are working .... soon we return 😀 (presso Venice, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/B609k7wlC2r/?igshid=jokk3um8y0hh

[veditudine]

The enchanted pilgrim

The writings, divided in travels, the video we made, are inspired by two texts that have much in common: The Tales of a Russian Pilgrim and Leskov's The Enchanted Traveller (together with Benjamin's famous essay dedicated).

The first is an ascetic text, in which the pilgrim travels around Russia and beyond (the text also has a subsequent follow-up) tormented by the actual realization of St. Paul's motto, which inquires to pray incessantly. Given the fortune of the text, from a tale of fantastic journeys and teaching was born a continuous wandering, of the many who wanted to join his research and discover his places. The second is a novel about the wanderings of young Ivan, between fantasies and pieces of reality, between adventures of all kinds told with a simple language. Benjamin, and in this lies the meaning of our work, identifies precisely in this kind of narrative, similar to the fairytale, how much more different from the bourgeois novel, a real possibility to interpret reality.

The protagonist of the video is a friend of ours, who has had the most bizarre experiences in his life: from following a circus to working with travelling merry-go-rounds, from doing  Katanga (service of order of the 1968 students movement) in the 70s to working in Libya with an Italian company that dealt with technology. Always traveling, always looking for unusual forms, closer, according to him, to nature and to a kind of spiritual life. Until, specifically,  he was hitchhiking around the world as the son of flowers, he found himself in India. He kept precise memories of this history, common to many in the 70's, that over time they were transformed fairy-tale, because those experiences were important for him, but at the same time abandoned when he had to "settle down". Gestures now lived with the naive hope of their usefulness regardless, trusting that they will keep their own magic within themselves.

 In the video, then, we see, directly from his memories of India, the position of the snake, that of the spider and others still not better defined. The body and the face poetically bring on theirself, in the many wrinkles, the weight and the cost of that life.

And it is precisely this fairy-tale appearance, this gentle naivety in a person who offers his past to a group of friends, while knowing that a first reaction can be a laugh, a mockery, that made us wonder if there is a place (physical or metaphorical) where we can live out of the pervasive conditioning of the Market. We as a collective have faced, starting from the initial point of our work, the provocation of the drafting and diffusion of the Manifesto for a commercial art, the theme of the Market and the Art Market in particular.

Trying to guess at least, since we are immersed in it as much as anyone else, the mechanisms and the level of the interweaving that in our opinion binds every living person, every man and every woman, in every expression, including the artistic one, to the Market. How our emotions change, our perception of the world, even our body in mutation.

The amazement  for the performance of  that night, because the journey takes place, as natural in a fairy tale, in the deepest night, put us in doubt.  Can these contemporary wanderings  escape from the novel of the Market, can they be, perhaps unconsciously as in the stories of the lives of saints and mystics, but also of the simple Ivan of Leskov, fairy-tale ways to a different life, resistant to the process of our change? Or, if not resisting, escaping from the flow of the Market?

or on vimeo https://vimeo.com/232330560

[veditudine]

Ma nessuno regala più un romanzo? (presso Venice, Italy) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6pzr5Hl5qB/?igshid=1mgychsqp6nhy

[veditudine]

Gabriela Galati, our sketch - She is Professor of Theory and Methodology of Mass Media and Media Art Theory at NABA, New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. In the past she has taught Research Methodology at the University of Buenos Aires, at the University of the Argentine Social Museum, Buenos Aires, and Media Art Theory at Domus Academy, Milan. She published Duchamp Meets Turing: Arte, Modernismo, Postumano (Postmedia Books, 2017), she writes reviews of books on art, philosophy, science and technology for Leonardo Reviews / Leonardo Journal (MIT Press), and regularly collaborates with AdVersus , Acoustic Space Journal and Scenari (Mimesis) with scientific publications. For Scenari she is the editor of the #10 issue dedicated to Posthuman Art. Founder of ECCENTRIC Art & Research, and co-founder of IPERCUBO. She obtained a PhD at the University of Plymouth for which her dissertation addressed the relationship between art theory, digitalisation processes and the posthuman.