Where Is My Mind

I have been away.
And I don't mean away from town, or the country. Well, of course I had been pretty busy in the last two months, with the end of the MA Curating, the last co-curated show, the last bits, the last moment of blissful ignorance of the aftermath, when you have to ask yourself: "And now what?"

My mind has been kidnapped by old dreams that I thought were forgotten.
Well, more than forgotten, I would say archived. Transformed. Grown into grown-up dreams. But no.
In your head, you always have this idea of "growing up".
What it really means, still is a mystery to me. A friend who lately passed away once advised me not to wallow in fantasy, but keep my feet on the ground. This was because, if you'd known me a good fifteen years ago, you could tell my head was up in the clouds. Way up.
They called it the Peter Pan Syndrome.
They called me the eternal child and casted me aside, sometimes.
Because a child can't really think straight: he - or she - is all instincts. It's all black or all white, everything is beautiful or the whole thing is ugly.
A child loves or hates completely; sees the world, the beauty in it, with different eyes.
I have never understood why people force you to forget that kind of beauty by advising you to keep it real.

Well, after a sort of daydreaming I am not entirely sure I have awoken from, I think I know.
Dreams can seduce you and take you away. And when you're there, it can happen that you don't want to come back. It can happen that, by pursuing that beauty, you touch the bottom of this longing, and forget what is really around you.
Your dreams can consume you, especially if you don't dream of cars, homes or the perfect family.
These things are feasible, with a little luck.
Other dreams are different. Coming back to the real world, I would call them ideas.
Like when you say, for example, 'I want to be a pop star'. You know it's not going to happen. Well, someone succeeds of course, but only a few. And then it is not what it seemed.
So, you decide on principle that you will never become a pop star, but that idea is always there, teasing you. A dismissed dream.
All you can do is dancing in front of the mirror when you're home alone. Right?

Now, this is not my case (although I did want to become a pop star at some point. Ouch), but if there was something that I ever wanted to do, is writing. Although I have never been constant at it.
It is not like the fire of art, making people filling up entire painting books, canvases, or walls to quench their thirst. I write when I feel like it, otherwise I don't.
And now I have discovered English, this amazing language. A whole world enclosed in just one sentence. An unexplored potential laying before me, despite the limits of not being a native.
There are stories in my head, embryonic characters shouting at me to let them come to life.
So forceful they are, I am almost afraid they are going to destroy me. Will they make me loose my way, my other purposes?
Shall I answer their call, or let them float in the limbo for another good fifteen years, before I find the courage to, at least, try?

Courage. That's all it takes. Courage of one's ideas.
Why don't you listen to your dreams?
I thought I had plenty of courage, but I was wrong.

My friend, I think your advice of keeping the feet on the ground was good...but you, yourself, didn't buy it.

You haven't learned anything

> Organising decent shows with the lowest budget possible: Curator's Stuff

So far, The Bay Window Project relied on a generous lender for a projector. But when the lender takes the projector back and says "that's it", all you have to do is thank him very much and find another -cheap- solution. Having discarded the possibility of other projector lenders (because the item always has to go back at a certain point, not to mention the consumption of the expensive lamp), the most plausible solution is only one: buy it.

And, seen the budget issue, you already know where: eBay.
This virtual auction website doesn't really need any further introduction: a receptacle of hidden treasures and desirable junk, it can really save your finances in the hour of need. But you need to be prepared: like you, hundreds of other buyers are glued to the computer screen, waiting silently to place the best bid and get the item they want. Perusing eBay can be turned from a pleasant and even funny experience to pure war, furiously fought through the beat of mouse clicks.

Let's get an example. There is this am-az-ing projector, right? Brand new, new lamp, thousands of ansi lumen, everything. Nine people are bidding for it but the price is still reasonable. No problem: with a grin on your face, you place the unbeatable bid, thinking no one will have the time to beat it at the last minute. In actual auction rooms, where real and expensive artworks are for sale to the best offer, there is what is recognised as the "aggressive" bidder: he or she who keeps the paddle up all the time, to show the others that the artwork already has an owner. Same attitude applies on-line, in the virtual world of html codes and numbers.

Very well, the end of the projector auction is approaching and of course you are in front of the computer, looking smug, because your bidding trick always worked before. You also have a fresher to impress: your husband never bid on eBay before and is still confused about how it works and, moreover, about your questionable plan.
15 seconds left and the figure doesn't increase.
10 seconds left: overexcited, you start the countdown, like it was New Years Eve.
4...3...2...1...and... you don't win the projector.

O_O"

Wait a minute. How come you didn't win the projector? What happened? What the...
Let's rewind, shall we? While you were acting like an idiot, the bidders on the other side of the screen just overcame your offer, and that happened in the space of three seconds, making a counter-bid humanly impossible.
They knew how to do it. The aggressive bidder got distracted: game over. Your husband looks at your gutted face shaking his head and offers to help.

The research continues, this time on Gumtree, because you just can't take all this pressure (nor another shameful defeat) and your husband insists it is "safer": you start to be surprised about the quantity of people who wants to get rid of a projector. You make contact with a guy, an appointment is set the day after at 3.30 pm to see the item. The guy lives light years away from you, but nonetheless you make the journey. When you call him to know where exactly his flat is, reminding him that you are coming for the projector, the answer is: "Sorry, it's sold." WHAT??

Then, you remember. It's 3.27 pm and you are in London, the native land of the first-come-first-served basis with the addition of I-don't-have-to-give-you-any-explanation-nor-send-you-any-text-to-let-you-know. You have been living here for two years now.
You haven't learned anything.

And, sadly, you still don't have a projector.
Back on eBay, where you were monitoring some more of them, you find another suitable candidate... and win it this time! Although there was no count-down and your fingers were ready on the keyboard with an higher offer, you were the only bidder (hum...)
Collection: successful.
Computer connection: after a few curses and a pathetic phone call to the previous owner, successful.
Then you remember something about the ansi lumens, and discover that this projector has a brand new lamp bulb, yes, but it has less than half of the power of the previous one.

Perfect in a dark room, a bit poor with street lights on. Doh.

> Not knowing a rat's ass about technology: Curator's Stuff.

There must be a reason

With every preparation of a show, here comes the moment every young curator dreads the most: sending the Press Release.

If you don't have the luck (or funds) of having a proper Press Office doing it for you, then be prepared for a good deal of stress which will probably end up in calling the computer every name under the sun or, more politely, putting your hands in your hair not exactly to pull them out, but to prevent them from falling off.

Too melodramatic? In the end it's not a big deal, is it? It's just about sending some emails... well, there must be a reason why people study hard to become Press Officers.

First of all, dealing with the press means tight deadlines, well in advance of the event, which can't be ignored; therefore you need to squeeze your brain out and get the press release done before that date. If you have the writer's block or suffer from chronic perfectionism, you're screwed.

Once everything is nicely ready, the image is in place in the email's body, the writings make sense - not too boring, not too long - and the timing is right, you suddenly realise that you can't send it at once to all your contacts. Most of the on-line email servers now have anti-spam filters activating themselves as soon as you try to go over, say, two-hundred emails per day - Two Hundred! Wow, you have a hell of a mailing list! - OK, people don't like spam and that's a fact, but there is a difference between selling Viagra and informing about an upcoming show... I am sure these spam filters, which must have been devised from the CIA's greatest geeks, are aware of the email's content.

How do you solve this? By splitting your contacts in not too large groups. Ype, but this takes half of your day. Moreover, you can be the most organised and precise person in the world... there will always be a skipped, forgotten or even added twice contact ending up in the wrong group. Like That Gallery Director getting, together with the show invitation, a personal message saying: "Hello dude! Hope to see ya there!" Face it: you're not Superman.

After having tried to pull your eyes, that have started twitching, together, you are ready to press the 'Send' button. Read it again.
Adjust that double space.
Add something.
Delete something.
Wait! Don't forget to add the Bcc otherwise every contact will see everyone else's email and they are going to hate you.
Ah! Add the disclaimer, too. Explain to people why they are getting this email, that you are blah blah, rules about privacy, blah blah blah and that, if they don't want to receive such information anymore, they can unsubscribe.
Put your email in the "To" field, so you can monitor everything.
Done. Take a breath... Send.

Aaaaah, first batch gone, you start to relax and even to feel smug. Piece of cake! You receive the email that you have just sent to yourself and...instead of the image, there is a nice blue square with a question mark in it. What the hell? Simple: the image has jumped. That's when you start to loose it because you just have informed a group of people of a show about a work that they can't see. And it's not just any group, like "Friends" who will definitely understand: it's "Press". This doesn't really help.

To avoid repeating the embarrassing mistake, you start all over again, create a new fresh email, re-add the image, and avoid the "Forward" button like the plague. This, for five or six times minimum, depending on how many "Groups" you have. In the mean time, is 1.59 am and you have been at it all day. Well, at least it's done. Life is beautiful!

The day after, you open your email account to finish sending the invite to the rest of your contacts - you were clever enough to keep the ones not subject to deadlines for the day after because the spam filters have indeed blocked you. - Among the many "Out of Office" auto-reply and failure notices because you typed 'hitmail' instead of 'hotmail', what do you find?
A couple of "Unsubscribe". Like this. No reason given.

Well now, after all you have been through!

Mario (a post for connoisseurs)

22 July 2010.

The Bay Window is officially turned into a light projection box. Meaning: if you happen to stroll by Cleveland street, you will bump into Luana Perilli's magnificent video.


No picture can give it justice (especially if made by me and my antediluvian camera), therefore you will need to wait that my confidence in using Final Cut increases just that tiny little bit in order to edit another video, possibly in a better way than this.

The second Bay Window Project taught me a couple of important things that other budding curators might find useful:

The first: if you are projecting a video outdoor, in London, in the month of July, check the sunset's precise time before sending the press release out. This will avoid you panicking because at 7:30 pm you can't see anything and start hoping, wishing and praying that people will arrive the usual late. Which, in fact, for once doesn't happen.

The second: no matter how big the problem is, there is always a Plan B concealed as an ingenious idea. In our case, a little monitor with the video on in the lower part of the window solved the trouble of the poor visibility and became quite performative.

Finally, the third is Mario.
Mario is the famous art critic you must know and have to have at your openings. As reserved and uncatchable as Charles Saatchi, this eminent intellectual rounds on exhibitions undisturbed and has the power to launch or demolish whoever at glance. From where his words will fall upon you, is not for you to know. If he reviews a show, no one who attended is really sure they have seen him there. Most of all, Mario is so ineffable and so incredibly famous at the same time, that there is the tendency to forget his name.

A - You know, I know that famous art critic...
B - Do you?
A - Yes, you know...he's a very famous one...you must know him! Oh God, what was his name again?
B - (encouraging) Mario?

That's it! Mario.
Mario is everywhere, and there is always a Mario for every opening. In the end, aren't we all waiting for Mario?

I would like to thank the artist, G2, my G, curator Francesca Cavallo from cosmicmegabrain, Alessia, Tati and all the others who attended the opening, making it a very nice and funny evening.

The Stories Behind the Opening

Wednesday morning, 9:30 am at the University.

In Unit 2, Will is squatted on the floor, manoeuvring cables and plugs next to a black hand painted plinth, under Sophie's gaze: the loop of the video Dancing on Kelkule' (B-END) isn't working because of a missing remote, and she's just back from Argos where she bought a new DVD player with a remote; now it's just the case to understand which cable goes in which plug. Meanwhile, Francesca is standing on the ladder, cleaning the dusty and so far neglected surface of the spotlights. We've spent the previous days scraping the floor, then polished by the cleaners, sanding the wall and re-painting it: the long, rectangular gallery looks fresh and new.

All the works are up and ready but three: Habda is gone to Charlotte's studio to collect two and is due to come in at 12-ish. We are adding a new piece, Night Gown, that the artist has just finished, because the left hand side wall next to Dylan's installation looks a bit empty. For a moment, setting up a show looks like furnishing a home. You notice an empty space above the sofa: you buy a mirror or something in a frame. For a great collector, that would be a painting.

The other missing work is THE Odyssey. Not ready yet.

The day before, I had my very first long face when I discovered that the MDF panel was painted at 4.30 pm and was going to take all night to dry up. Moreover, the switches' plates didn't have their gloss yet. That meant finishing the work on Wednesday, the opening day, by 6 pm. Hah.

9:35 am.

My long face and I are at the spray workshop in order to beg Andy, who's swamped with other work, to spray finish the plates, which will dry in two hours (two hours!) We exchange pleasantries, and then Andy makes my morning by saying that he did the job at 8:30 am and we can collect the plates in half an hour or so. I jump back downstairs to meet D.V., who is now officially helping Silvia and has been nominated our guardian angel: a skilled technician, practical and direct person, he will reveal himself to be an essential add. We go in search of a gun...for hot melt glue, not to shoot anyone of course.

11:30 am.

The panel is dried and ready on trestles in the workshop in front of the spray finishing room. Silvia and D.V. are inserting switches in the holes, which click perfectly in place. The gun is not warming up. It takes 10 minutes before realising that the plug isn't working. New plug. The gun works. At 11:46, we have our first test of gluing a plate to a table, to see if it holds. It does. More or less.

12:07 pm.

Back in Unit 2. The video loop works, but there are problems with the plinth crashing the cable and stopping the connection. A big, black, heavy TV sits atop of the plinth and has to be removed every time a new arrangement is made. Nonetheless, Will doesn't loose his high spirit. I get a text from Habda: all well, she is on her way with the works. If we need anything just let her know. Same text from Clementina, who will come in the afternoon. Fran is adjusting the projector's position for Gusztav and Katja's video Transposed Bodies, which in the meantime has been kept playing: although none of us speaks German, I think we now know the lines by heart.

12:33 pm.

I go back to the workshop room, which is 5-7 minutes walk from Unit 2, to see how the plates gluing is going. One line is done. The lines are 21. The switches 160. One line per hour makes...I suddenly realise that the work is proceeding very slowly because of the accuracy Silvia is putting in choosing the right colour combination among the six selected. I make her promise to speed up, then I regret saying that: beautiful things are always slow. From the back of my mind, I hear a voice shrieking: No.Time.For.Cheap.Poetry.Damnit!

2:30 pm.

I bring the guys something to eat and have my sandwich along the way. Two lines done. But, most of the plates have been arranged, it's just a matter of gluing them. 

3:05 pm.

Back in Unit 2. Charlotte's works are up and look amazing, I may make some more considerations in a minute. On D.V.'s suggestion, I am putting the screws in the wall for Odyssey in advance so, if they really finish last minute, at least we will save time on the hanging. Will, who in the end managed to fix the video but isn't quite done yet, and I diligently take all the measurements according to D.V.'s instructions, and mark the four holes for the screws. 

4:16 pm.

I spend at least half an hour to check that the holes are on the same line: not easy when you have a 224 cm long work and a spirit level measuring only one meter.

I need a string. And blue tack. There was plenty of it but I can't find it anymore (I will find it two months later, in the back pocket of my shopping trolley. And I have the suspect it was actually me who put it there). While the others start to clean up the space from tools and additional dust, I go to buy some more tack justincase and to see what the situation is with the work.

4:30 pm.

Still gluing. Some of the plates have started being temperamental and refuse to stick. The three bottom lines are all done. Plus the first two and some other random plates. I receive a phone call from Fran saying if I wanted to go home with her and relax a bit. I thank her and decline.

5:05 pm.

The corridor outside the workshop bears the marks of my pacing back and forth. Inside, the guys are pitching on.

5:23 pm.

I receive a phone call. What.Is.The.Piece.At? I am not surprised by the hint of impatience in his voice. My calm wears off for a second, but I reassure him that we are almost there, the screws are in the wall already, and all we have to do is to pop the work onto...I don't see any screws in the wall, is the answer.

What?

There are no screws in the wall.

Oh, brilliant. After having pulled myself together, I ask to speak to Will, who explains to me that he prefers to see the work before putting screws, just in case it needs to be moved...I give up for a couple of minutes and report to Silvia and D.V. They urge me to put the screws in the wall.

5:31 pm.

I call Will again. Same conversation. I feel like hot metal between two anvils, and about to be squeezed like a lemon. I run for it, back to Unit 2, and can feel my throat drying off. When I get in breathless, I am not even able to speak: Pu...Scr...heh...Wall...No...W! And I also remember to say Pls.

While GoodWill does that, I quickly fix the video camera that has to film everyone activating the switches in place, on an existing ledge above Russel's work. There is just a plastic string holding it in place, plus loads of blue tack. God bless the Blue Tack. Wish me luck.

5:47 pm.

The screws are in the wall. Will and I are on our way to collect the work. As soon as he and D.V. lift it, a couple of plates fall off.

5:51 pm.

People stare and cars honk while a panel with 160 coloured switches floats about, carried by two rather exhausted guys. Silvia and I waddle behind, hoping not to have to grab other fallen plates. We miss the shortcut to Unit 2 and take a parallel street. It seems to take forever.

5:54 pm.

Artwork approaching! I sprint forward, open Unit 2's door wide and declare: "They're here". There are people in the gallery. Thank God it's just the artists. The others wait in front of the work's spot to finally see it. Great expectations are in the air.

5:55 pm.

Odyssey enters Unit 2. Just one last effort and...pop! It perfectly sits on the screws. It's straight. It holds. A spontaneous though slightly exasperated applause bursts out. Fallen plates still to be fixed.

5:57 pm.

Video camera is on and records my panicked face and waving hands as the first thing. I cross the gallery carrying the ladder and bump in a couple of acquaintances who came to see the show...early. I am not dressed nicely, have no make up, and my cheeks are bright red. But I definitely feel relieved.

6:00 pm.

SORRY, WE'RE OPEN.

Carmen Queasy

When you are not a native speaker, language misunderstandings happen. 

For example, I wanted to start this post with some lyrics from the song Carmen Queasy from Skunk Anansie + Maxim because I thought the words were: Money making this wonderful things. Having not completely understood the lyrics, I have imagined that Skin was listing some nice things you can have because of money, but in a rather pillory way. Quite the opposite, as the correct phrase is: Money making is a wonderful thing. 

I smiled to myself when I thought that it is exactly what doesn't happen to the dark side of the Art World, the side behind the scenes, that of the curators. 

The show is going rather well. We have even written our texts for the catalogue, that, after long consideration, will be a nice constantine (constantine?!? You mean concertina...) instead of a booklet, because the latter was too expensive. We are bringing in some artists from abroad, and this weights considerably on the budget, so we had to cut out a bit on the catalogue. A necessary sacrifice? Who knows, I guess we'll only discovery it after the opening. The concept of the space is finally developed, and each artist's work that we selected seem to get well with it. 

But. 

At this very moment, I think about myself as calm and queasy. Yes, call me Carmen. 

Some of you may remember this post and our encounter with lovely Silvia Iorio. Her interesting work, based on the entanglement theory, is turning out to be rather complicated to do for this particular contest of an MA curating student show. I would say that money is the main problem, but someone would surely retort that you can indeed organize a great show with very little budget.

I would like to reply then thinking about the words of Hans Ulrich Obrist: in this job, mistakes happen, and they are very welcome. I take it this is it, but I am still hoping we can run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. In short: we really want Silvia in the show, but still need to understand how.

I think I have got a twitching eye...

The elusivity of this post is deliberated, as the complete technical description of Silvia Iorio's new work cannot be divulgated. Yet.