Allora & Calzadilla. BLACKOUT
An exhibition that opens with the dramatic situation of Puerto Rico and moves on to reflect the possibilities of artistic form within the current social- political situation of the globalized world
16 th February – 30 th May 2018 www.maxxi.art | #BlackoutExhibit #AlloraCalzadilla
Rome, 15 February 2018 . An exploded electrical transformer that becomes a sculpture, a petrol pump sculpted in fossil calcareous stone, a motorcycle with a trumpet welded to the exhaust, an overturned table that becomes a motorboat, great pictures composed of fragments of photovoltaic panels and a chorus singing a composition featuring the words of Benjamin Franklin “…how many pretty systems do we build, which we soon find ourselves oblig’d to destroy! If there is no other Use discover’d of Electricity, this, however, is something considerable, that it may help to make a vain Man humble .”
The provocative works of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla , one of the most thoughtful and innovative artists on the contemporary international artistic scene, are featured in the BLACKOUT exhibition, curated by Hou Hanru and Anne Palopoli and hosted at MAXXI from 16 th February to 30 th May 2018.
For this exhibition, the artists have responded to the unique architectural characteristics of Gallery 5, creating a close relationship between the exhibition layout, the works and the museum.
The exhibited works include Petrified Petrol Pump (2010), an abandoned petrol pump that seems to have turned into stone. This piece alludes to the cyclical exploitation and destruction that characterises Man’s relationship with nature; carved from limestone containing fossils, it carries with it evidence of the geological eras of the Earth and those organisms that contributed to the creation of fossil fuel. Today’s technologies become relics, the object of future archaeology, and what in some way has been an agent of global climatic change has contributed to its own end, being reabsorbed by nature.
Work from the Solar Catastrophe series (2016), in which the artists use broken fragments of polycrystalline silicon solar cells arranged within a geometric grid to create a gestalt pattern, is also featured in this exhibition. The breaks, pauses and gaps created within the figure/ground composition trace a boundary between nothingness and signification alluding to the history of Modernist art, and the energy crises of the contemporary world. The artists consider the photovoltaic panel as a complicated symbol of evolving energy technologies. While photovoltaic’s do not rely on carbon-based fossil fuels- a known source of the dangerous directions of climate change- they are nonetheless implicated in other processes of resource extraction and exploitation that raise other questions of sustainability. In Solar Catastrophe, the photovoltaic panel is deconstructed on a canvas, and becomes a metaphorical element, alluding to the detritus that progress leaves behind.
Working through the complexities of alternative sources of energy, by combining the economic, ideological and aesthetic dimension, is paramount for the artists: indeed, they have included a solar-powered system that supplies power to the exhibited works.
The exhibition layout also includes Blackout (2017), which lends its title to the show. Created with one of the burnt out electrical transformers that caused an island wide blackout in Puerto Rico in September 2016, the sculpture consists of electrically charged copper, ceramic fragments and transformer coils. The work is completed by the mains hum vocal work (2017), created by American composer David Lang (in his third collaboration with the artistic duo) and inspired by a quote from Benjamin Franklin on electrical energy. Lang’s composition, conceived in collaboration with the artists as a fundamental part of the sculpture, is performed by the Rome-based vocal ensemble VoxNova Italia, (in their second collaboration with the artists- the first being the 2015 Venice Biennial exhibition All the World’s Futures with the work ‘In the Midst of Things’)
The exhibition also includes a number of videos such as The Night We Became People Again (2017), set in the Guayanilla-Peñuelas area on the South-West coast of Puerto Rico, where an ancient cave formation, Cueva Vientos, is found and which is also the site of their long-term commission with Dia Art Foundation, “Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos)”. The film blurs the boundaries between the prehistoric narrative of a Taino origin myth, an abandoned petro-chemical plant, a sugar cane plantation, and the short story by Puerto Rican novelist and renowned Marxist José Luis González “ La noche que volvimos a ser gente ”. An off-camera voice emulates the sounds of alternating-current by using it as compositional direction. Thus, the voice becomes a singular musical agent that sutures together a disjunctive flow of narratives. The text the voice sings, no longer tethered to semantic meaning, is now transformed into an affective sonorous collage.
A video review accompanies the exhibition, lending it a historical dimension, with works that testify to the artists’ enduring commitment to the analysis of key concepts of contemporaneity such national identity, democracy, power, freedom, participation and social change.
The videos shot in Puerto Rico, China, Japan, Iran, the USA, Turkey, Italy and France allow us to better understand the centrality of sound in their work: voices, words, noises and music render the violence in political, economic and social relations explicit. Allora & Calzadilla underline the worldwide nature of the circulation of sounds and create a system of resonance. In their works, the artists assemble a constellation of meanings and connections, hybrid situations capable of creating images that embody the complexity of reality.
Through a critical and visionary approach, which overcomes the boundaries between the diverse categories of artistic, social and philosophical thought, they reread the present to offer ever-new points of view.
BLACKOUT confirms Allora & Calzadilla's vocation for reflection on events and circumstances associated with historical-political reality; in this exhibition, the issue that almost inevitably comes to the fore is that of energy in relation to capitalism, power and the specific political situation of Puerto Rico , where the artists live and work. The exhibition sheds light on the forces playing a role in the island’s geopolitics, an “unincorporated territory" of the United States, currently burdened by uncontrolled public debt and a serious energy crisis, which have revealed the legacy of US colonialism and its complicity with global financial capitalism.
Allora & Calzadilla are among the most thoughtful, progressive and innovative artists working in contemporary art today. They have exhibited their provocative sculptures, videos, installations, and performance works in solo and group exhibitions internationally. Some of their personal exhibitions where hosted by the most important museums in the world – such as the Museum of Modern Art of New York and the Stedeliijk Museum in Amsterdam – and they have taken part in the major international festivals, such as Documenta 13 in Kassel, the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial in New York, as well as those in Gwangju, Sydney, Sao Paulo, Sharjah, Istanbul and Lion. In 2011, the duo was selected as the American representative at the Venice Biennale.
BLACKOUT is part of a series of MAXXI projects focusing on artistic creation as a commitment to changing the world, an exhibition strand that has presented issues associated with the globalized economy, the circulation of goods, the movement of people, as in Utopia for sale, or the movement of ideas, the links between public interest and that of capital as in Please come back or the NATURE FOREVER exhibition. Piero Gilardi.
The press kit and images of the exhibition can be downloaded from the Reserved Area of the Fondazione MAXXI’s website at http://www.maxxi.art/en/area-stampa/ by typing in the password areariservatamaxxi
MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts www.maxxi.art - info: 06.320.19.54; [email protected] opening hours: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM (Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri, Sun) | 11.00 AM - 10.00 PM (Saturday) | closed Mondays. Admittance free for students of art and architecture from Tuesday to Friday
MAXXI PRESS OFFICE +39 06 324861 [email protected]
Allora & Calzadilla. BLACKOUT
Giovanna Melandri, President Fondazione MAXXI
“Telltale” footsteps drawn in the sand. Petrol pumps that have become monuments to waste. A trumpet mounted on the exhaust pipe of a motorcycle. A desk turned upside down and transformed into a boat with an outboard motor. In the exhibition entitled Blackout, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla confirm their expressive power and the clarity of their intellectual provocation. Present for the first time ever in our spaces with a “solo show” specially made for the museum, the two artists have already been protagonists here of forays that have left their mark on our way of seeing things. I’m thinking in particular of the video installation The Great Silence, made together with the science fiction writer Ted Chiang, for the exhibition Gravity. Imagining the Universe after Einstein. Levity and complexity have always appealed to the artistic and human partnership between this couple, a partnership that first blossomed in Florence. The duo later settled in Puerto Rico, and Blackout—a collection of poetic as well as scathing works—is dedicated to the Caribbean island, ravaged by two devastating hurricanes in September 2017. The artists’ work is a denunciation of the suffering that is the direct result of the inhabitants’ colonial exploitation, of marginalization accentuated by the fact that Puerto Rico is a United States territory that is not fully a part of the country it belongs to, of the population’s subjugation to military servitude and to endemic poverty, which have compounded, to an extreme degree, the damage caused by the climate-related disaster. The sculptures, the vocal performances, the videos and photographs made by Allora & Calzadilla once again portray a geography of the periphery neglected by the globalized economy: a raw, impassioned tale, an alternative to the dominant information circuit, in the form of artistic creation. Cultural identities, the power, lacking in democratic corroboration, of supranational organs, the destruction of the world’s poorest peoples’ freedom: what we need to do, in this part of the West that is still burdened by the crisis and ethically confused, is direct our antennas to observe experiences, dramas, solitudes that are different and far away. The answers and the solutions will have to be common and shared by all. By portraying a Puerto Rico forced to survive without electricity, Allora & Calzadilla seem to suggest that we ourselves are without a guiding light, without plans for a sustainable future, especially in our own latitudes.
Allora & Calzadilla. BLACKOUT
Hou Hanru and Anne Palopoli, curators of the exhibition
The exhibition Blackout by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla centers on the theme of the energy of the void. As described by modern-day physics, empty space is never really empty: the incessant creation and destruction of particles and other entities takes place at very short intervals of time, so short they cannot be detected. In quantum physics the void is filled with force fields and energy, both latent and potential: this potential energy is transformed, with no observable cause or triggering event, into the kinetic energy of real particles. Something is born out of the void. The space that the artists create, which seems minimal, is also pervaded by continuous energetic, luminous, emotional, and sonorous fluctuations: their works become full- fledged activators of energy. The suspension, the blackout, absence, become the ideal condition for the creation of something new: new forms, unprecedented imaginaries, uncommon associations emerge from what appears to be a void. This exhibition confirms Allora & Calzadilla’s vocation for works that ponder the actions and circumstances linked to political-historical events. Hence, the theme that almost naturally imposes itself for the exhibition is that of energy, a topic previously analyzed in some of the duo’s most recent works, and one that they have for some time now been emphasizing in relation to capitalism and to the power and current political situation in Puerto Rico, the place where Allora & Calzadilla live and work. Puerto Rico, akin to American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the island of Guam, is an unincorporated U.S. territory. This signifies that, at least for the time being, although it is to all effects a part of the United States, it is inassimilable to the other states of the Union, and does not enjoy its own sovereignty: Puerto Ricans do not enjoy the same rights as other U.S. citizens, nor do they have a proper delegation in the U.S. Congress; they cannot vote during presidential elections. In a certain sense, they are much like a “modern colony.” The second moment of stringent actuality, which this exhibition clearly portrays, are the two powerful hurricanes that over the course of two weeks, in September 2017, devastated Puerto Rico. The first one caused the death of four people, leaving about one million inhabitants without electricity; the second one passed over the archipelago on September 20, killing 1,300 people, and taking 3.5 million residents back to a state of “archaic” society. It was a huge blow for a territory that was already reeling from the economic crisis, having built up a public debt of over 70 billion dollars over the past three decades, thus forcing hundreds of thousands of people to leave the island. The current situation of Puerto Rico is linked to the history of this territory, but it is also emblematic of the contemporary global reality. This is one of the reasons why we believe it is important to host an exhibition by Allora & Calzadilla at MAXXI: the condition of this commonwealth in the Caribbean can be viewed as a “typical” case due to the spread of capitalism, imperialism—with its disguised forms— free trade, the only free thing about it being its name. At the same time, it is possible to interpret the contemporary reality as if it crossed by a phase of recession, a moment when the state of crisis is latent and certain circumstances cause it to come to the surface, as if the world were affected by a chronic pathology that becomes acute and made evident by certain specific occurrences. Inequality is growing, and half of the world’s wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population: in Italy alone, since the mid-1980s, economic inequality has risen by more than 30%. Globalization is bringing changes to the balance between countries, but the power unquestionably still remains in the hands of a minority. In today’s economic conflict, artistic activity can be redefined outside the traditional picture: Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla are among those artists who manage to supersede the limits between the different categories of thinking—artistic, social, and philosophical; hence Fault Lines, to use an expression borrowed by the artists, i.e. those fractures in the ground caused by rock-mass movement, become a metaphorical place from which it is possible to offer a new perspective of reality. The work of this artistic duo has been analyzed by scholars from the standpoint of its relevance to geopolitical themes, always at the limit between the use of art as a part of activism and of activism as a part of art.1 And the language that Allora & Calzadilla have developed over the years is indeed unique. For Blackout Allora & Calzadilla worked on space, creating a connection between the path of the exhibition and the works on display, in an absolutely untraditional way: the use of the site-specific technique rethinks the spaces of the museum’s Gallery 5, modifying them so that they take on new meanings. The work is not imagined for that specific place, rather, it is the place itself that becomes the protagonist; hence, the presence of the works in that space breathes life into a veritable act of metaphorical expropriation. Viewers are thus forced to venture down a predefined path, as if they had no other possible choice. The exhibition is not just “a
container for the works”: like in other projects by the duo, these works as well confirm a reflection on the mechanisms of economic and geopolitical power. With a critical and visionary approach, the works of Allora & Calzadilla reinterpret the present, offering ever new points of view of contemporary reality. Not surprisingly, part of this exhibition project is the creation of a solar energy system, in which the technology and the lighting are powered by solar panels. The project rethinks the relationship between the cultural institution and the environment, and ponders the meaning of the artwork poised between public engagement and creativity. The artists have worked on the theme of solar energy before: they powered Puerto Rican Light , a work by Dan Flavin, with a solar energy supply that came from Puerto Rico,2 to then reinstall the work in Cueva Vientos, grottoes located between the municipalities of Guayanilla and Peñuelas, using solar panels to power it.3 The search for alternative types of energy for the artists is a real solution, a commitment that becomes concrete, combining economics, ideology, and aesthetics. At the entrance to the exhibition the visitor is welcomed by Petrified Petrol Pump (2012), an abandoned petrol pump that looks like it has turned to stone. The work evokes a dystopian vision of the future in which today’s technologies have become a series of fossilized relics. The artists seem to suggest that it was precisely that object, as an agent of global climate change, that caused its own demise, and that nature has ended up absorbing all the waste created by the archaeology of the future. The alliteration in the title alludes to the cyclical aspect of the exploitation and destruction that characterizes the relationship between humans and nature. The sculpture, made from limestone containing fossils, bears the signs of the Earth’s geological eras: the life forms present, via their own decomposition, have contributed to creating the fossil fuels used, in recent times, to produce energy. In the series Solar Catastrophe , the artists use broken solar panels to create densely modeled geometric abstractions, at the same time alluding to the history of modernist art, to the reality of environmental concerns, and to the energy crisis of today’s world. The interruptions, pauses, and spaces created around the composition point to abstraction, just as the use of panels alludes to some of the processes embraced by the avant-garde artists. The solar panel, an apparently omnipresent symbol of environmental progress, is deconstructed on a canvas to become a metaphorical element: it alludes to the debris that progress leaves in its wake. Objects, situations, and places are used in an anti-conventional manner to create works that unhinge the status quo of a situation, a space, a type of communication. In their use of a vocabulary linked to abstraction and the mimetic representation of real objects, Allora & Calzadilla create a complexity of meanings, a stratification of connections, producing hybrid situations that explore both physicality and abstraction. By way of metaphor and irony the artists analyze the complex semantic and semiotic associations between an object and its potential meanings, thus creating an image that encompasses the complexity and articulation of reality. Blackout (2017) was made from an element that comes from the explosion of an electric transformer (the cause of a blackout in Puerto Rico in 2016), fragments of ceramic insulators and transformer coils joined with a tangled mass of electrically charged copper. Working once again with the American composer David Lang, the artists conceived a soundtrack to accompany the exhibition. In the case of Blackout , the sculptural assemblage produces a constant sound that becomes a full-fledged voice joined by that of a chorus. Akin to many other sculptural works by Allora & Calzadilla, which might be referred to as “living sculptures,” Blackout can also be considered an object in transition between movement and stillness, material and immaterial, presence and representation. The performance creates an extraordinary situation where the distance between the work and its viewers is eliminated, so that they themselves become a part of the work. The work shifts the terms of the representation to make them coincide with those of the activation of the viewers, as though the acquisition/knowledge could be obtained via the action: the audience’s participation through its senses thus becomes essential. Thanks to the performance, to the association between the bodies and sculpture, the artists bestow a new dimension on the exhibition space, that of relation: the site becomes the expression of a reality that is very closely linked to the museum’s everyday side. It is not just a question of the extension of life, but of its articulation, which brings with it the sharing of ideals, imaginaries, and visions. The Night We Became People Again (2017) is a video set in the area of Guayanilla-Peñuelas on the southwestern coast of the commonwealth, where there is an antique formation of grottoes, the Cueva Vientos, a place of reference for the indigenous culture and precolonial mythology. Located close by are an abandoned petrochemical plant that belonged to the Commonwealth Oil Refining Company, Inc. (corco) and several sugar cane plantations, clearly alluding to the pre-industrial state and the exploitation of the slaves. In the video, the meditative humming of the voice—an extinct language or perhaps a language of the future— along with the images seems to suggest “a reflection on the flow of migration, the accumulation of wealth, the transnational cultural identities, the colonial past, the relationships of power, the national systems, the failing
economic policies, the debts, and the blackout.”4 The images seem to juxtapose, on the one hand, a world where culture and nature become the vestige of a past reality, to be absorbed into and made a part of one’s existence, and, on the other, a violent world that preserves nothing of its own historical development, consisting solely of ruins. The debris consolidates the interruption of a path, where conflict and destruction wipe out time: places where humans can no longer be the interpreters of their own reality.5 In José Luis González’s short story La noche que volvimos a ser gente , which the title of Allora & Calzadilla’s The Night We Became People Again is based on, the characters share a moment of joy and transcendence when they rediscover the starry sky. In the story, like in the artists’ work, the blackout does not just determine a return to nature, but its reinvention as well. When electric lighting, the emblem of modernity, is lost, its meaning also disappears; the suspension of the symbol makes it possible to reinvent a new world so that we can reconnect with the surrounding reality. At the same time as the exhibition, a series of videos will be shown in the museum’s video gallery, thus affording the project a more historical dimension, a perspective on the long-standing commitment on the part of the artists to analyze the key concepts of the contemporary age, such as national identity, democracy, power, freedom, participation, and social change. This medium plays a very important role in their production thanks to the presence of sound, an element that is pivotal to their work. Through the use of voices, words, noises, and music, the artists make explicit the violence underlying the political, economic, and social relations that are imposed and that perpetuate a state of things. By means of videos made in Puerto Rico, China, Japan, Iran, the United States, Turkey, Italy, and France, the artists travel around the globe emphasizing the world dimension of the circulation of sounds and creating a system of resonance and thus resistance. Blackout is part of a group of projects the museum has been working on for several years, focusing on artistic creation as commitment to changing the world: suffice to recall Utopia for Sale , at the core of which were the themes of commoditization and free trade, Please Come Back , which dealt with control as part of our lives, and the Piero Gilardi exhibition, whose social and artistic activities have always been closely linked. A mission that has presented themes related to the globalized economy, the circulation of goods, the migration of people, the movement of ideas, the conflictual relationships between personal interests and money.
Notes 1. Cf. Yates McKee, The Ends of Art and the Right to Survival, in the Hugo Boss Prize exhibition catalogue (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2006), 19-23. 2. The artists made this installation in 2003. 3. Puerto Rican Light (Cueva Vientos), 2015, commissioned by the Dia Art Foundation. 4. The words are by the artists. 5. Cf. Marc Augé, Rovine e macerie.Il senso del tempo (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2004).
Allora & Calzadilla. BLACKOUT
ARTWORKS
Petrified Petrol Pump , 2012 Limestone Private Collection, Belgium
An abandoned petrol pump looks like it has turned to stone. The work evokes a dystopian vision of the future in which today’s technologies have become a series of fossilized relics. The sculpture, made from limestone that contains fossils, bears the signs of the Earth’s geological eras: the life forms present, via their own decomposition, have contributed to creating the fossil fuels that have been used, in recent times, to produce energy. The alliteration in the title alludes to the cyclical aspect of the exploitation and destruction that characterizes the relationship between humans and nature.
Blackout , 2017 Electrical transformer core coil, ceramic insulators, steel, iron, oscillator, speaker Performance mains hum composed by David Lang and performed by Voxnova Italia Thyssen -Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
A relic from a power transformer explosion that led to an island-wide blackout in 2016 is reimagined as a tuning device. Fragments of ceramic insulators and transformer coils from the Puerto Rico Electrical Authority come together in an amorphous mass of electrically charged copper, assembled into a monstrous power station of sorts. This sculptural assemblage becomes the location for a vocal performance whose composition is directed by the occurrence of an electrical blackout. Working with renowned American composer David Lang, the artists conceived of a sonorous matrix whose full expression unfolds over the course of the entire exhibition and spans both human and mechanical sources.
Contract (AOC L) , 2014 Silkscreen on linen Courtesy the artists and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
The Contract series reproduces images of sites in Vieques, Puerto Rico, where palm trees were used as natural markers to designate sites of hazardous waste disposal. These trees were planted by the US Military to demarcate areas where munitions and other industrial toxic waste was dumped during their 60 year occupation of the island. The characters in the parenthesis are the military acronyms for the disposal sites: AOC stands for “Area of Concern” and SWMU stands for “Solid Waste Management Unit.”
Contract (SWMU 4-2) , 2015 Silkscreen on linen Courtesy the artists and kurimanzutto, Mexico City
In order to realize this series, the artists used a screen printing method in which ink is forced through a woven mesh that has some areas blocked by an impermeable substance. The resulting image is created in the areas where the ink passes through. The image is exposed to additional passes of ink that cover it either entirely or partly. A counterpoint to the landscape’s apparent vitality, the final images depict a dividing, breaking and partitioning of idyllic harmony. Ultimately, these images function as documents, but also as contracts. The blocks of black ink overlaid on top of the representational image become a type of signature that at once bears witness to and nullifies what is represented within.
Solar Catastrophe , 2016 Broken solar cells on canvas Courtesy the artists and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Solar Catastrophe , 2016 Broken solar cells on canvas Courtesy the artists and kurimanzutto, Mexico City
Solar Catastrophe , 2016 Broken solar cells on canvas Courtesy the artists and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
In Solar Catastrophe , the artists use broken fragments of polycrystalline silicon solar cells arranged within a geometric grid to create a gestalt pattern. The breaks, pauses and gaps created within the figure/ground composition trace a boundary between nothingness and signification, alluding contemporaneously to the history of Modernist art and the energy crises of the contemporary world. The photovoltaic panel, a symbol of environmental progress, deconstructed on a canvas, becomes a metaphorical element, an allusion to the detritus that progress leaves behind.
The Night We Became People Again , 2017 Digital HD color video with sound 15’ Courtesy of the artists and Lisson Gallery
This video blurs the boundaries between a prehistoric Taino creation myth, an abandoned petrochemical plant, a sugar cane plantation, and Puerto Rican novelist and renowned Marxist José Luis González’s short story “La noche que volvimos a ser gente” (“The Night We Became People Again”). An off-camera voice emulates the sound of an alternating-current electrical power supply that sutures together a disjunctive flow of narratives. Through highly formalized camera takes, the shape-shifting imagery of the film invokes a hallucinatory state. The off-camera voice streams over the images in an excessive outpouring of sonic energy, enacting a ritualistic itinerary through the night. The voice’s meditative hum participates in and intersects the flow of migrations, profit accumulations, transnational cultural identifications, indigenous cosmologies, colonial fantasies and aggressions, geophysical systems, failed economic policies, debt and blackouts.
Under Discussion , 2005 Single channel video, sound 6’ 14’’ Courtesy the artists and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris ; Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; kurimanzutto, Mexico City; Lisson Gallery
This video addresses the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, which for sixty years was used as a training ground for the U.S. Navy, leaving its landscape scarred and its ecosystem severely contaminated. In 2003, a civil disobedience campaign was successful in forcing the military out, the land has been designated as a Federal wildlife refuge but not decontaminated. In the video a conference table has been overturned, becoming a small boat. A local activist uses the motorized table to lead viewers around the restricted area of the island, re-marking the antagonisms that haunt the picturesque costal landscape and bearing witness to the memory of the Fisherman’s Movement, which initiated the first acts of civil disobedience in response to the ecological fall-out of the bombing.
The Bell The Digger, and the Tropical Pharmacy , 2013 HD video, color, sound 20’ 40’’ Courtesy the artists and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; kurimanzutto, Mexico City; Lisson Gallery
This video was shot in a US-owned pharmaceutical plant in Cidra, Puerto Rico. It records the sounds and movements of a “sonic digger,” whose bucket has been replaced by a large cast-iron bell that destroys the interior of the building. The modified machine is thus transformed into a counter-memorial instrument that marks the occasion of the closure of this significant workplace, a site associated with progress and health. Through music, it excavates the historical connection between medicine, sickness and cure, and the neocolonial framework of US-Puerto Rico relations embedded in the very fabric of the building.
Returning a Sound , 2004 Single channel video ,sound 5’ 42’’ Courtesy the artists and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris ; Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; kurimanzutto, Mexico City; Lisson Gallery
This video addresses the soundscape of Vieques, which for residents of the island remains marked by the memory of the sonic violence of the bombing. It follows Homar, a civil-disobedient and activist, as he traverses the demilitarized island on a moped that has a trumpet welded to the muffler. The noise-reducing device is diverted from its original purpose and instead produces a resounding call to attention. It becomes a counter-instrument whose emissions follow not from a preconceived score but from the jolts of the road and the discontinuous acceleration of the bike’s engine, as Homar acoustically reterritorializes areas of the island formerly exposed to ear-splitting detonations.
Sweat Glands, Sweat Lands , 2006 Single channel video ,sound 2’ 21’’ Courtesy the artists and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris ; Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; kurimanzutto, Mexico City; Lisson Gallery
A pig is roasted over an open fire, the spit attached to the back wheel of a car. When the car accelerates the pig turns at different speeds, while the voice of Residente Calle 13, a young reggaetón singer from Puerto Rico, addresses the viewer in Spanish. He draws on examples of non-human social organizations, such as those among bats, termites, and ants, for possible alternative modes of being-in-common and describes a possible path through contemporary experience. The world he describes is an antagonistic state of order and disorder, heat and excess, civility and barbarity, in an age of armed globalization.
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Enel’s participation as first private founding member in the Fondazione MAXXI will see the company offer it a membership contribution over the next three years, while also partnering the foundation in an ambitious energy efficiency plan for the MAXXI museum in Rome that will highlight sustainability and energy savings.
Culture, value and accountability are the guiding principles that have prompted Enel to forge partnerships with leading national and international institutions in order to implement innovative projects that give the public a vision of energy that is orientated towards the future. More specifically, Enel is committed to promoting art and music, putting its emphasis on young artists: in 2003 the Group became both a founding member of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and of the Teatro alla Scala and in 2015 of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.
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ART AND KNOWLEDGE ARE THE HEART OF TTHEHE PLATFORM
SKY ARTE HD it’s the first Italian TV channel dedicated to art in all its forms and it’s now available to all Sky subscribers (who have HD in their subscription) on channels 110110, 130 and 400 of the platform. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, theater, design and all forms of artistic expression are found within a single schedule dedicated not only to the fans who have the opportunity to deepen their interests, but also to the curious ones than can get closer to art in a brand new way, through both the major international productions (Sky Arts, BBC, Channel 4, Arte, PBS, Sundance Channel) and the original ones of the channel. Sky Arte HD tells the infinite resources of the world's artistic heritage, with a special consideration for the Italian extraordinary tradition and our artists’ talent and it uses a contemporary and never didactic language, characterized by the contamination of genres.
The channel hosts all the languages of art. On the one hand, the Sistine Chapel, which was presented on Sky Arte HD in all its expressive power thanks to the original production Michelangelo ––– The heart and the stone , broadcast on Sky 3D with an exclusive documentary on the Sistine Chapel, on 1 st November. On the other hand, the channel tells the provocations of Marina Abramovic and the charm of conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, or rock legends as Jim Morrison, eclectic talents as Tom Ford and the queen of photography Annie Leibovitz.
Among the original productionsproductions, there are programs especially created for children, such as Art explained to kidskids,,,, which uses cheerfulness to help children and parents to discover art as an element that can be part of everyone's life; furthermore, there are travels in the contemporary world, as Potevo farlo ananch’ioch’io hosted by Alessandro Cattelan and Francesco Bonami , who travel with us among the wonders and the paradoxes of the greatest masterpieces of contemporary life, with an ironic approach. Local events have a great relevance on the channel: exhibitions, shows and retrospectives will be told in the report Great ExhibitionsExhibitions,,,, which describes step by step the complex mechanism of an exhibition, from the transport of works to the vernissage. On the occasion of the Salone and Fuorisalone 2013, Sky Arte HD realized the original production De.signDe.sign,,,, which led the audience in the heart of Milan design week with daily capsules dedicated to the FuorisaloneFuorisalone, with a final report on the whole 2013 edition and an important doc series on the history of design. Another Sky Arte HD original production is BookshowBookshow, a show entirely dedicated to books that tells their story through a simple but in-depth tripartite structure: aaa book, aaa place, aaa guestguest. TheTheThe crossed destinies hotel is a carefree colorful cartoon which talks about particular meetings that have changed history; the set is a hotel where the room doors open and close on the fate of the protagonists. In June, Sky Arte HD presented ContactContact,Contact another original production that takes an extraordinary and fascinating journey in the forbidden city of photo proofs, near the famous photographers of Magnum Photos, the legendary agency founded in 1947. In October, Sky Arte presents Unveiled MasterpiecesMasterpieces:: Greta Scacchi will explain how a great artist, as well as an extraordinary artistic interpreter, can also be a real storyteller ofofof herherher timetime. In November a new season of Contact and Street ArtArtArt,Art ,,, an original production dedicated to the world of street art, will be broadcast on Sky Arte.
Sky Arte HD relies on the contributions of Enel, main sponsor of the channel and of its flagship shows, as Michelangelo – Il cuore e la pietra. Enel participates actively in the creation of ad-hoc productions, such as Corti di luce and the specials dedicated to Enel Contemporanea, the contemporary art project sponsored by the company, now in its 6th edition.
Sky Arts HD has also signed some important partnership with the Istituto Luce-Cinecittà and with festivals, exhibitions and fairs to tell the main Italian cultural events, such as the Festivaletteratura of Mantova, the RomaEuropa Festival and Artissima. Sky Arte HD will be a media partner of the MAXXIMAXXI: starting from the month of October, there will be some original productions which will describe the main exhibitions of the season of the National Museum of the Arts of the XXI century (MAXXI).
In line with modern language of programming, the channel has a strong presence on the web and on social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), thanks to the website www.skyarte.it and Sky Go, the streaming service program that allows youyouyou tototo watch SkySkySky ononon PCPCPC andandand smartphones. TheTheThe main contents ofofof SkySkySky Arte HDHDHD areareare also available ononon thethethe SkySkySky ononon DeDeDemandDe mand service.
«We are making a big commitment – says Roberto Pisoni, head of of Sky Arte HD – beacuse talking about arts on television, with all its facets and in a brand-new and original way is a great bet. Art, in its various expressions, both ancient and contemporary, both cultured and popular, is a life-changing experience, that offers an infinite source of exciting stories. We are proud to offer it to the Sky audience.»
Sky Arte HD Press Office MN – Cristiana Zoni – [email protected] Marilena D’Asdia – MN [email protected] Tel 06.853763 Sky Press Office – Elena Basso [email protected] Tel 02.308015837