The idea behind Cartoneros, which came to him whilst travelling to Argentina in 2006 to implement the project on the Fasinpat ceramic factory (Fabrica sin patrones), an example of corporate self-management among the most significant of the country. Mele had been following the labor movement since 2000, after attending a demonstration staged by local workers, until he decided to return to Argentina in 2006. On this occasion he noticed the reality of the “cartoneros”. The economic crisis of 2001 caused the foreclosure of thousands of industrial plants and shops in Argentina, with a subsequent dramatic increase of 3,500 improvised workers for the collection of waste paper and cardboard around the cities. These workers seamlessly blended in with the blind frenzy of the metropolis, rummaging through the trash or dragging stacks of cartons. The project was supposed to include a large installation made of cardboard, stacked from and compressed between the floor to the ceiling, along with some paintings that the artist had painted during his stay in Argentina’s capital as well as an extensive photographic documentation of the workers’ lives, often carried out in secret among the city's neighborhoods.
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Environmental dimensions. Light, water, photography, sound.
A) Outside: A semi-submerged photographic image of 60x20m. occupies the stretch of water of one of two ancient covered basins of the Arsenale. The image represents simultaneously two circles of water and the symbol of Infinity. A stone thrown in water has created the splitting of the first cell, giving rise to a multiplicative process. The photographic act freezes the action and renders eternal the instant and the becoming of time, Past and present, stasis and change, finite and infinite are simultaneously present: the place is real and virtual at the same time.
B) Inside: 12 light-boxes placed in the niches of the left wall of the Theater of the Virgin transform the wall in a great self-illuminating façade. Light and architecture are welded into a single radiating structure that transmits light within the building. On the floor in front, a water tank of about 16×16 m. reflects the architecture of light, generating the virtual image space. The still surface of the water is perturbed by the undulatory motion of concentric waves that propagate rhythmically from the center of the tank. The vibration of this liquid surface corresponds with the intangible sounds diffused into the great emptiness of the room: visual and sound waves interact, creating the vibrating movement of the water.
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Installation in 2 parts, 2009. Venice, Basin of the Arsenale, Gaggiandre, and Tese delle Vergini, Italian Pavilion.
Environmental dimensions. Light, water, photography, sound.
A) Outside: A semi-submerged photographic image of 60x20m. occupies the stretch of water of one of two ancient covered basins of the Arsenale. The image represents simultaneously two circles of water and the symbol of Infinity. A stone thrown in water has created the splitting of the first cell, giving rise to a multiplicative process. The photographic act freezes the action and renders eternal the instant and the becoming of time, Past and present, stasis and change, finite and infinite are simultaneously present: the place is real and virtual at the same time.
B) Inside: 12 light-boxes placed in the niches of the left wall of the Theater of the Virgin transform the wall in a great self-illuminating façade. Light and architecture are welded into a single radiating structure that transmits light within the building. On the floor in front, a water tank of about 16×16 m. reflects the architecture of light, generating the virtual image space. The still surface of the water is perturbed by the undulatory motion of concentric waves that propagate rhythmically from the center of the tank. The vibration of this liquid surface corresponds with the intangible sounds diffused into the great emptiness of the room: visual and sound waves interact, creating the vibrating movement of the water.
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The title refers to the Atlas Palace, a myth that appears in the Boiardo and Ariosto Orlando, and that here acquires a personal value for Tosatti as a place to deal with, but also in a relationship with the visitors, though the symbols of the labyrinth and the mirror, a central theme in the artist's research between 2011 and 2012. Through a practice divided between art and architecture, often described by Tosatti himself with an analogy with the room in the middle of the "zone" in the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker, a model of superimposition of identity and desire, here the artist tries to make the apparition of “castles and monuments” true, introducing in the project the themes of electricity and illusion:
“The culmination of the work will consist precisely in a large switch that visitors could turn off, letting darkness and silence fall over the entire building. It will therefore be necessary - also from the visual point of view – to rely on certain image of technology, related to electricity. Obviously the kind of technology that should be used is not be the most modern one, but the one that is present in a shared imaginary, consequently machines and tools form several decades ago, which aren’t used anymore”.
Studying the construction diary and the preparatory drawings we can also highlight the particular attention dedicated to the façade, upon which two “mirror flags” should have been installed to make "the invisible building" recognizable, and the structuring of a path through the different floors. A room should have contained, upon one of the tables that are already present inside the building, a glass of water and a bottle of Novalgina, a painkiller, together with an hidden mechanism that would have created a light and steady vibration to shake the water surface when placed upon the table. Another room was designed to provide the optical illusion of a rhino freely moving inside the space, so to anticipate the top floor switch, where the machinery would have been placed. Classical statues - originals or copies - should also have been present alongside the path, as an archetype of man and as a mirror for the visitor, while at the ground floor, currently occupied by an archaeological excavation, an artist intervention would have been necessary to turn it into a sculptural space.
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Il palazzo di Atlante is a project for an environmental scale intervention, designed for the Ufficio Geologico building located at largo Santa Susanna, Rome. The place is currently abandoned, and was designed between 1873 and 1879 by the engineer Raffaele Canevari: this space is the starting point for a research that Tosatti documents in the attached file donated to MoRE, through a project and several diary entries corresponding to the different stages of the design process. It is possible to consider this artwork within a path that includes several works the artist dedicated to abandoned spaces - in particular we can mention Tetralogia della polvere (Novara, Casa Bossi, 2012) and also the recent cycle realized in Naples, Sette Stagioni dello Spirito (2013 - 2016) -: this ambitious work is considered by Gian Maria Tosatti as an arrival point he can face only after a series of experience, where he "started building rooms, larger or smaller, then dedicating myself to buildings and then finally building larger and larger artworks, sometimes even bigger than myself, and therefore requiring every time an evolution, a development of myself as an artist. "
The title refers to the Atlas Palace, a myth that appears in the Boiardo and Ariosto Orlando, and that here acquires a personal value for Tosatti as a place to deal with, but also in a relationship with the visitors, though the symbols of the labyrinth and the mirror, a central theme in the artist's research between 2011 and 2012. Through a practice divided between art and architecture, often described by Tosatti himself with an analogy with the room in the middle of the "zone" in the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker, a model of superimposition of identity and desire, here the artist tries to make the apparition of “castles and monuments” true, introducing in the project the themes of electricity and illusion:
“The culmination of the work will consist precisely in a large switch that visitors could turn off, letting darkness and silence fall over the entire building. It will therefore be necessary - also from the visual point of view – to rely on certain image of technology, related to electricity. Obviously the kind of technology that should be used is not be the most modern one, but the one that is present in a shared imaginary, consequently machines and tools form several decades ago, which aren’t used anymore”.
Studying the construction diary and the preparatory drawings we can also highlight the particular attention dedicated to the façade, upon which two “mirror flags” should have been installed to make "the invisible building" recognizable, and the structuring of a path through the different floors. A room should have contained, upon one of the tables that are already present inside the building, a glass of water and a bottle of Novalgina, a painkiller, together with an hidden mechanism that would have created a light and steady vibration to shake the water surface when placed upon the table. Another room was designed to provide the optical illusion of a rhino freely moving inside the space, so to anticipate the top floor switch, where the machinery would have been placed. Classical statues - originals or copies - should also have been present alongside the path, as an archetype of man and as a mirror for the visitor, while at the ground floor, currently occupied by an archaeological excavation, an artist intervention would have been necessary to turn it into a sculptural space.
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The project involved the creation of a huge sign – La vera rivoluzione è non cambiare il mondo(?) – in every way equal to a claim launched by ENEL, but lacking the question mark and immediately withdrawn due to Greenpeace's denunciation. At least fifteen meters long and composed of green-painted aluminium box letters about eighty centimeters high and six hundred incandescent light bulbs, the lighted work would have involved an energy consumption of three kilowatt-hours, equal to that supplied for the utility of any Italian home. Designed by the artist to denounce the company's false ecological message, the work would remain off until ENEL produced more than 60% clean energy from renewable sources. In 2007, Favini proposed its creation for the Greenwashing exhibition, which was to be held at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo the following year. It was not realized for budget reasons.
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Lilium Bosniacum is a project that was thought to be realized in collaboration with scientists (e.g. botanist). It would include experiments in order to see if the Bosnian constitution - based upon the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995 - could be translated, one way or another, into “natural law”.
Dayton Peace Agreement was reached in November 1995 at USA Air Force Base near Dayton (Ohio), and formally signed on 14th December 1995 in Paris. It brought peace to the country torn up by war which started on 6th of April 1992. Today, this peace agreement which also serves as the Bosnian constitution has become a political nightmare. Its complex structure makes any kind of progress in Bosnia seem impossible.
Lilium Bosniacum (a.k.a. golden lily or Bosnian lily) is a lily native to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian Lily is also a symbol that has been used in Bosnia since Middle Ages and it became especially popular during the rule of Bosnian king Tvrtko I Kotromanić. With the invasion of Ottomans into the region and the fall of Kotromanić Dynasty, the symbol went out of use. On 1st of March 1992, when Bosnia and Herzegovina gained independence from Yugoslavia, lilies were brought back onto the Bosnian flag. In 1998, after the protests of political representatives of the former Herceg-Bosna and Republika Srpska, the flag of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was replaced. The idea of the project is to try and create a set of rules and genetically modify Bosnian Lily in order that it complies with the complex structure of Dayton Peace Agreement. In collaboration with scientists (e.g. botanist), the project includes experiments in order to see if this specific “constitutional law” can be translated, one way or another, into “natural law”. All of the process would be photographically and video documented, in order to produce a book/herbarium and a short video documentary. Finally the goal would be to register this “hybrid lily”, if successfully created, to the EU database of registered plant varieties.
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Petar Dabac began by tackling the issue of conserving photographic heritage to protect the legacy of Tošo Dabac, his uncle. He proposed the establishment of a Museum of Photography in Zagreb to collect, store and copy photographic documents. The Museum would also have exhibitions, a library and a permanent display. Read more.
This project, commissioned by the Narvik City Council and Artscape Nordland, proposed to realise a star in the pavement for every child born in during the next 5-7 years in Narvik. This Norwegian city threatened to become vacated, with this work the harborfront would have been covered in stars, made by the same company that provides those for Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and every year a ceremony would have been held to reveal the new ones. The goal of the project is to turn the exclusive into the popular through a local recycling of the "star culture", where every newborn baby will become a star in its own life. Simultaneously the project represented a local mobilization to increase the population of Narvik. Due to budget cuts, the project was cancelled in 2006.
Drawing realized to design a children's playground. The elements of the game park are inspired by drawings of biologist, zoologist, philosopher and also German artist Ernst Haeckel, who designed more than 100 polychromatic illustrations of animals and sea creatures. Some elements of the drawings, in three-dimensional transposition, are designed to be modified with the aim of making movable some parts, recreate circular movements, extension and elastic.
The elements are designed with an internal steel frame to resist several requests, while the exterior is covered by colored rubber, resin, wood, concrete, to recreate different texture to the touch. The project is designed to be installed in a public place, park, square, museum or school.
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The project was commissioned by Roberto Daolio as part of a series of art works to be placed on the top floor of the Department of Pediatric Oncology of the Sant’Orsola Hospital in Bologna, in collaboration with the Association AGEOP. Cini was invited to be part of the project together with artists Emilio Fantin, Eva Marisaldi, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Sabrina Torelli and Marco Vaglieri.
For the department Cini thinks the project PlasticOplalà 1, 2, 3, a series of site-specific interventions whose idea is to create a small botanical garden outside of the pavilion, in the semi-abandoned garden of the pediatrics department. The project was not realized as a result of a number of economical, technical and logistic reasons.
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The project consists of an Artist’s book structured on several levels of interpretation which, through images and texts, outlines the moments in which the combination of signs reveal the "forms of the content."
The artist's book designed by Maria Adele Del Vecchio is a “personal and abnormal semiology", a product of culture which reveals the contradictory nature of signs and the message they express using a poetic approach, rather than a scientific one. The hypothesis proposed by the artist has been enriched by readings related to semiotics and structuralism, and is nurtured by the belief that reality is entirely composed of signs and that deciphering these signs, composes a more complete picture of reality.
The photographs taken are stumbles, glimpses beyond which the artist sees the grids on which life is structured: educated moments that reveal a karst essence along with underlying coordinates.
In a brief pastiche, the artist juxtaposes parts of texts by Witold Gombrowicz and James G. Ballard, tracking down a common vision. Well matched and mutually interpenetrating, photographs and texts compose a set of parallel references woven so as to form a large subtext.
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The themes of fragility, uncertainty, sadness, the interest in the act of travelling and in the condition of the traveller, the focus on female protagonists, these are just a few hints we can grasp from the brief description of the artist showed here, that can also easily be found inside Annika Ström film production.
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The Travel Agency is the title of a film Annika Ström started working at in 2006. As the artist recalls in the report donated to the MoRE museum, it went through several phases and two productors, without never being realised: the script ”was about two women, one of which, wants to die, and one who wants to live. They contact an agency, which assists suicide. It is a Special Agency”. After a first financial failure, the project was sent to a new producer, who met the artist in 2014 and showed interest: unfortunately, as the artist recalls, nine months after the meeting, a director in the producer’s company announced in a radio interview her next film, with “thesame pitch as in Ström’s script”. The producer produce the new film. Annika Ström also states that “the producer and the director deny any plagiarism”.
The themes of fragility, uncertainty, sadness, the interest in the act of travelling and in the condition of the traveller, the focus on female protagonists, these are just a few hints we can grasp from the brief description of the artist showed here, that can also easily be found inside Annika Ström film production.
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Two sentences, “Everything that happens” and “Always all around”, are printed on both sides of two banners, carried by two planes while performing some basic aerobatics manoeuvres. The two sentences are perceived as emotional quotes, auspicious signs, appearances in the sky of mind. An air show and an environmental, ephemeral art installation at the same time.
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The Yugoslav Pavilion designed for the Paris Exposition in 1950 reflected the social and cultural climate following the Second World War, when the country was distancing itself from Stalinism and embracing the ideology of real socialism. There was a strong cultural revival, and the abstract and concrete historical avant-gardes were being reclaimed and analysed, especially Constructivism and the Bauhaus method. The search for a synthesis in the visual arts and architecture characterised the EXAT 51 programme and related 1951 Manifesto, signed by the Pavilion’s authors.
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