New Art Criticism_04_March 2010

New Art Criticism is no longer on-line, therefore I thought to copy and paste my contributions to the former website here. It is mostly exhibitions reviews and I hope you will enjoy the reading!

BERLIN: PHIL COLLINS AT THE TEMPORÄRE KUNSTHALLE

Some say to have fallen in love with the Berlin at the first sight. 

Personally, the grey sky, the hard icy snow pushed to the side of the broad streets and dotted with dog’s dung, and the strong sense of the actual passage of a devastating war, did make an impression, but it wasn’t love. I might call it sympathy.

It takes two strong legs and a good sense of distance to walk from popular Friederichstraße, passing Check Point Charlie, to the boulevard called Unter den Linden, that links the Brandebourg Gate with Alexander Platz. From the middle of this road, both huge monuments lay small and indistinct at each end. You feel very small in Berlin: it takes a long time to take in the buildings, the geography of the city, to recognize its distinctive European flavour, but to fail in trying to classify it in comparison with the other capitals.

The Temporäre Kunsthalle is in Schlossplatz, close to the so called Museum’s Island: it’s a small, square building that seems to be built out of dark mirrors. It stands on its own, not surrounded by anything else, giving, exactly, this sense of temporariness. When I stepped in I found a library, and two people taking bookings: there was a film program called Auto Kino!, devised by the British artist Phil Collins, and it seemed to be very successful because there were just a few places left. I am told that I had car number five, and at first I thought I misunderstood the language; but no, when I walked in the other room I realized that the huge inside was transformed in an old Drive-In, with second hand cars lined randomly in a semicircle. There was even a Volksvagen van equipped with a pop-corn machine, and I happened to be in it. The number was clearly written on the plate, 005. The comfort of the seat and familiarity of the inside of a vehicle made me temporarily forget why I was there and, with the screen still blank, I almost dozed off when someone else stepped in, on the passenger seat. The situation changed: there was an urge to say something, at least to introduce myself, just to be able to mentally justify being inside a van with a total stranger. But then, the projection begun and I occupied myself with eating caramel popcorn, because, I thought, it was part of the performance.

Drive-Ins were very popular in America during the 50s: a place to run away with your sweetheart and forget about morality for at least a couple of hours. Having one in Berlin, where the weather never did allow that kind of outdoor cinema to spread, was a sort of unique experience. The program run from 5th February to 14th March 2010, and on the 24^th of February I could see Ich Deutsche Behorde (22 mins, 1981), by Ezra Gerhardt and Alf Bohmert, and Die Bewerbung (60 mins, 1997), by Berlin-based filmmaker Harun Farocki. The screening was focused on immigration and job interviews issues: the first movie, a documentary, was about the slight racism underlining the first immigration wave in Germany during the eighties. Foreigners were admitted in an office one by one, their footprints and picture taken, like they were mere criminals. They would leave without any certainty of a Visa. Farocki’s movie twisted the argument and unveiled a behind-the-scene workshop about how to be successful at a job interview. I learned that putting the hands on the interviewer’s desk is invading his space, that fidgeting gives a very bad impression, not to mention staying still. My car companion got bored and left before the end; I took the chance to make myself more comfortable, aware of the fact that Farocki’s movies make you unable to leave just until the end. I also couldn’t help but do some other car-spotting: people were enjoying themselves. As a temporary experience in a Drive-In cinema that never existed, they, like me, were having an afternoon out of the ordinary.

New Art Critcism_03_August 2009

New Art Criticism is no longer on-line, therefore I thought to copy and paste my contributions to the former website here. It is mostly exhibitions reviews and I hope you will enjoy the reading!

WATCHING THE FALL

I was surprised when I red on the Guardian Week End an article by Oliver Burkeman, claiming that nowadays we should need “a revival of the artistic genre known as memento mori ” which was, in short, the continuous presence of a skull and a still life to remind us that our time on Earth is precious because we all shall return to ashes, one day or another.

In fact, contemporary art seems to be all about it now, everyone can confirm: from Damien Hirst’s skulls to Rachel Whiteread casts’ of time’s traces, from Polly Morgan’s taxidermy sculptures to Andy Warhol’s own pop skull to culminate in Chinese artist Zahng Huan wearing a meat suit. There is a continuous referral to the inevitability of death and decay by a long list of other living artists.

I won’t be saying that the subject is starting to bore a bit, especially in the hands of a talented young artist as Amelia Whitelaw. A graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design, Whitelaw is certainly bringing Process Art back to its old glory, with a sprinkle of the old beloved vanitas we seem to always be so much in need of. In Whitelaw’s sculptures, art is not a finite product to sell like too many around at this time, but a creative process, a displayed page on which several different paragraphs can be written.

This is about the first time I saw Amelia Whitelaw’s performance: The Courtauld Institute of Art, February this year, a group show called, incidentally, Time and Time Again. Whitelaw was commissioned an installation for the five-storey stairwell and produced one of her now renowned dough sculptures. The images show 200 kg of dough starting a descent from the ceiling into four different sized nets, which limited and conditioned its vital movement. The dough was captivating; its fleshy-like, slow movements seemed to belong to an organic being trapped by unanimated structures built by men. At the beginning, its advancing through the first net was nearly imperceptible. Only tiny bits were lost, falling into the second net like a sketch of a left trace. And I found myself mesmerized by that moment, holding breath at each falling. I felt part of it, I saw time unfolding, and I saw the beauty of a simple yet powerful symbolic thing as the dough. Flour, water and salt, equally proportioned. Nourishment and matter. Effort. Effort to reach its goal, the last net, guided by the force of gravity and, why not, Fate.

After a couple of hours, the dough freed itself into a stalactite-like shape, longing for its next stop, while other bits of it were already reaching the end of the journey. But time was too short for it, water evaporated, mixing with people’s breath, and the dough dried out.

Dust to dust. 

End note: Amelia - Newton - Whitelaw's recent show reviewed on Dazed Digital.

New Art Criticism_02_March 2009

New Art Criticism is no longer on-line, therefore I thought to copy and paste my contributions to the former website here.                  
I thought things on the Internet would last forever, but even the Revolving Writer website is gone. This is what the project was all about.

INTRODUCING CHARLIE BYRNES AND REVOLVING WRITER: BLUE CREATIVE STREAKS AND MORE

Let’s start from the beginning: someone just wet the bed. Her name is Aisha, she speaks about herself like a sort of unwanted being, seems to be obsessed with “the history behind names”, is a Virgoan and her story has no beginning and no end. This was edition #1 of Revolving Writer. Basically a website, but in primis an international collaborative project started in 2006: writers, artists, musicians and architects had the prompt, or rather the initial commission, like when a site specific artwork is being produced. Then, a selection of characters identified by a Polaroid shot, and finally, their imagination and creativity. Two months as the elaborating time with the received material, about 60 days to think about why, as the contributions went on, this Aisha seems to suffer from split personality, what is going to happen with her life, who is she going to meet next…and interact not only with one, but many stories.

We now are at #18 and, during the precedent editions, the novel evolved with new and unpredictable characters, erased passages, deliberate editing, the insertion of videos, the recovering of the disregarded passages and someone who actually decided to become one of the characters and have a love affair with Aisha. Who knows what is going to happen next. “By now”, says the mind behind the name Charlie Byrnes, “we have a mysterious Mr. Pebbles to deal with.”

The project has been very successful so far, but what she really wants to talk about is what lies ahead: “Revolving Writer apes a democratic society and aims to be as cohesive as possible”, she explains, “but I realized the novel might be just the beginning of other projects. We started using writing as a media and created something site specific. A site. Well, website. The novel is not being very sociable at the moment, because interacting with a given text can be a pretty solitary job. I now would like to work with the same material but different media: art for artists, not artists “acting” as writers; architecture for architects, etc. In short, I’d like to work with many sites.”

The website’s home has an announcement reading: “Major Developments from Summer 2009”. Does it mean that we will maybe see the characters coming to life or something like that? “Not really far from truth.” Charlie grins: “We want people to get really involved with the novel, like it happened when Revolving Writer participated to the High Tide Festival in May 2007. We had a performance with some Revolving Writers writing the story on computers, and the audience, through projected images, could see the computer’s screen and the story being written. Then, we asked them questions about the characters and, even thought they had no idea about the whole plot, we received the nicest contributions. We made them squeeze their brain.”

That sounds interesting, but isn’t there the risk of getting things a bit out of control? “Yes. That’s why, in the future, anyone who would like to contribute will be invited to discuss each passage with me and the other collaborators before proceeding. May it be exhibitions, photographs, acting, film, writing, performances, flyer distributions, we would like to hear from you.” And will all of this converge onto the website? “No, because the website is just one of many sites. Do you see what I mean? We are going to push everything out of cyberspace and organize, say, events around the world, still “Aisha related”. For example, we are thinking about a photographic campaign to get more Polaroid pictures for the characters: 3 different cities around the world, photographers in action at the same time, stopping the people, taking the picture, and asking them one particular question. Then, thanks to the modern technologies, we will map the areas the photographers worked into according to the concentration of people, like popular/not popular, and create 3D charts from that which describe the city from a psycho geographic point of view.”

And who are those revolving writers? “So far, I can mention among all gallery director Hannah Barry, Naomi Wood, artists Clayton Smith and Noon Day Demons, Nick Fleetwood, Architect Simon Fujiwara and the Independent Critic and Novelist Jay Merrick.”

Watch out for www.revolvingwriter.com then. A new stage of the project is about to begin, and it might need someone just like you. Are you ready to meet Aisha and add more colored dust to the Mandala?

End note: even though the above link is no longer active, I have decided to keep it anyway, like a memorial stone. Ugh, melancholia is here?

New Art Criticism_01_December 2008

New Art Criticism is no longer on-line, therefore I thought to copy and paste my contributions to the former website here. It is mostly exhibitions reviews and I hope you will enjoy the reading!

PLAYING GAMES WITH LANGUAGE: KATE STREET SOLO SHOW AT NETTIE HORN

Wandering and rummaging about which show was worth reviewing in this cold winter, I must admit that the only spotting of the Nettie Horn website made me decide to come and see this one: the small, pixel-made images were showing drawings beautifully made, with what I call a superhuman skill to make the pencil strokes disappear in a foggy, perfect sfumato.

It looked like a plant in a drawing you might well see in a Victorian botanical etching, however the orchid spreads from a dissected heart, whilst little bird’s skulls grow within the flower’s place; this can be considered as being very odd. Why are artists so obsessed with death now, I thought. Then, recalling the old still lives, I corrected myself because they’ve actually always been.

However, what sparked my curiosity were the use of the birds. As soon as I entered the gallery space, I was surprised to find another kind of artwork I did not know about: three sculptures, or rather assemblages, in the form of a funeral wreath. Flowers, of course, were neatly arranged in a circle and in the form of a heart shape. Again here and there we have “intruders” such as human hands and stuffed birds peeping, holding objects such as broken spectacles, trinkets and even chocolate cookies, whose icing drips down the hand in perfectly frozen drops.

I just stare, realizing that I have to do with a fairly Queen of the Composition: nothing is left to chance, nothing is random. A painstaking work made of intricately crafted components. In another sculpture, two crows seem to be stuck on a black flower wreath invaded by busy bees, their honey leaking all over like viscous glue. The bees, birds and hands should ring some bell now. It is not only about death and a strange obsession with taxidermy, I can feel there is something else those works are trying to say. But for someone like me, oblivious of typical English language expressions, it is quite difficult to get hold of the hidden meaning without obtaining some clarification.

I learned from Marie Favier, curator of the show with Director Danielle Horn, that a “bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. Excuse me? Ah, that is it…sexual meaning! We now enter the realm of language and its different expressions, ranging from one culture to another. Of course, the bees, the pollination…sex explained to children. The use of the orchid in the drawings evokes the ancient Greek belief that this plant sprung from the split semen of mating animals. There are then the skulls, Love and Death. Eros et Thanathos, no wonder Kate Street’s series of work is called “Little Death”, originating from the French term for orgasm “petite mort”.

We could go on for ages: Street uses words, proverbs and mythologies as a starting point to create sculptures and drawings tinged with a tongue-in-cheek approach to language. It is always interesting to see a young promising artist using something as simple as her own native language and turning it in something so complicated; imagery. Discomforted ones perhaps, which forces the individual to try and subvert the typical idea of romance into something far more intricate, perhaps beyond the usual classifications. It is familiar, yet extraneous at the same time. Those sculptures could seem an absurd baroque-style charade because sometimes that is what love longing can be. When desire is wasted, all is left is just a deep, aching sense of loss. How sad, simple and essential at the same time, though. If you are a fan of semantics and of the honourable art of cultural imagery, you will love Street’s work. Also, if you would like to see some not-too-cryptic contemporary art, you should definitely hit this show, which runs until the 21^st of December.


End note: this first visit brought a further collaboration with Kate and a video work was proudly presented by me in a public museum, here. 

Vampires Suck. Not all of them, though.

I have always been into vampires.

One of my "biggest regrets" is not having written a story that I had in mind when I was in primary school: it was about a vampire girl, aged 12, who didn't want to kill humans and then falls in love with one of them. Impossible love, of course. This made me jealous of every successful novel or movie that came out afterwards, from Interview with the Vampire (1994) to bloody Twilight (2008) and, finally, arriving to Let The Right One In.
Oh well...you can't patent ideas, can you?

The release of the American remake Let Me In by much respected director Matt Reeves, prompted me to watch the original Swedish movie, Låt den rätte komma in. 

I said I am into vampires, not horror movies. Therefore the immortal Christopher Lee and Murnau's Nosferatu are not included in the list. Hail to them, but no, thanks. Perhaps Gary Oldman's Dracula can still make it despite his various metamorphosis in furry wolf, giant bat, rats, old man, hot prince...
My ideal of vampire is, unfortunately, the Hollywood type: painfully beautiful, cold eyes, trickle of blood nobly falling from the corner of his mouth. Who, woman or man, wouldn't offer the neck to Brad Pitt? I bet Kirsten Dunst has a framed giant poster of this picture in her house.

Right, end of digressions.
Let The Right One In is very, very, very Ingmar Bergman: the silence; the suspended atmosphere telling us about a country where life goes on slowly, beaten by rigid seasons; the almost inquiring videocamera, closing up on the characters' soul. Real life is brilliantly painted in the movie and...oh, all of a sudden there is a vampire in the picture. It's a bit clashy, but nonetheless works.
Said vampire has no problem whatsoever in killing people and sucking their blood, to live. And the protagonist, Oskar, seems to have no problem with it either. A bit creepy there, I must say.

I was expecting someone to die. To turn into ashes. At least to get charged with murder, in the usually cathartic plot: the heroes win, the villains pay. Even if the villain is the hero.
Instead, the end - spoilers alert! - sees the two protagonists leaving the town together, with the boy ideally becoming the vampire's new guardian and partner (in crime). No issues about growing up apart, immortality vs mortality, etcetera. Quite a hasty, naive ending, and a shame, as it leaves too much space for imagination and a very worrying idea about rough justice: are you bullied at school like Oskar? Hit them harder, or befriend a vampire to have the thugs tore to pieces, why not.
This last bit, of course, adds a bit of implausibility to the whole situation, but the message is still clear: don't trust the system, do it yourself.

What happened to redemption? Lessons learned? Education?
I might sound like an old auntie or the preacher here, but movies are the reflection of real life, a mirror of what might happen. All of a sudden, movies are full of vigilantes administering their own justice.
And we sympathise with them, but maintaining at the same time our own judgment criteria.
I hope.

I would like to remember the vampire like this. A being torn between good and evil, that eventually pays or disappears. Every vampire movie teaches: you don't want to mess with the immortals.

Little note: I haven't read the book. Perhaps I should.

Frieze 2010 in ten minutes

New Blog, new life.

Someone tells me it does look a bit too serious, but I am confident I will expand my blog design knowledge in the forthcoming weeks, and maybe something will be done on this regard. 

However, why shouldn't a curator be serious? 

We've just left Frieze's week behind us and I am slowly switching from the frenzy of organising stuff and meeting people to the act of looking intensely at the computer screen, try to work out what to do next. To put myself together, I am just making up deadlines: I have to finish this post by six this afternoon. 

The video I have put above was filmed and edited by Italian journalist Riccardo Stagliano' with an iPhone, the new frontier of communication. The title reads: "The Art of Selling Art".
The Frieze Art Fair really reins upon anything happening in October: the whole art world revolves around it and, although other galleries and exhibition spaces try to organise parallel events, it is likely they'll end up with just a bunch of visitors who, by the way, came for the fair and just happened to stroll by. Not even the new Sunday Fair, of which I heard very positive comments - especially about the free entrance -, or the much anticipated prints fair Multiplied at Christie's, could claim the same amount of visitors. My approach to the fair is completely different from that of any other visitor or journalist: we can call it the Nerdy Approach. This year, I have set a personal record of time spent visiting the fair: 10 minutes. 

> Popping in at an Art Fair at 5:50 pm thinking that it will definitely close at 7 whereas it definitely closes at 6: Curator's Stuff.

This is nothing of a performative nature, just the grim reality of not being able to go because I am usually working elsewhere: after all, I am part of the lovely art world too. The first time I went to Frieze, in 2005, I had the privilege to go to the private view. All I remember is struggling to see something whilst I was literally dragged towards the drinks area by the crowd. In the opposite direction, a flock of paparazzi was running after George Michael. After a while, I thought I was a bit drunk when I saw a portrait by Julian Opie winking at me. Maximum time spent there: one hour. 

Second time I went, I don't even remember the year. Must have been 2008. First proper visit, I think I have spent at least two hours in there, and the only memory I recall is bumping into Valentino and into a friend of mine: we were interns together for a famous gallery; now she was a gallery director and I was... well, just back to London and starting it all over again. Artworks taken in: zero. 

Last year, I think I made it for at least half an hour: I cycled from work, hung a press pass on my neck and made my triumphal stroll through the aisles. Said hi to a couple of people and exchange glances with others I know but couldn't greet because they were busy talking with clients. Art fairs have a very peculiar language, or code, that once cracked is very interesting to analyse. Artworks taken in: maybe just one; a large tree sprouting out from a wooden board floor. Artist's or gallery's name: uncovered.

Arriving at my ten minutes spent at this year's fair, there isn't much I can say: I literally crossed it running, trying to dodge the invigilators clearing people up and realising with surprise that it didn't seem much different from last year's one. It's like time is stuck, in that place. History repeating. Just the realm of sales, where art shines like tempting jewelry from its shop window, and dealers can't do nothing but pushing out the goods. It's a place where the young outsiders can only wish to understand the mechanisms behind. 

It's 6:02 and I don't think I have finished this post. After having delivered three shows in two days, all on time, for once I am going to be late.

What is your profession?

Last night, on Five, there was the TV premiere of "300".

Believe it or not, I went to see it at the cinema when it came out, with a more than enthusiastic husband. I laughed from beginning to end, as I did again yesterday.
Because, let's admit it, that movie is hilarious: "Spartans! What is your profession?" and the consequent Auh! Auh! Auh! was the most common joke among me and my friends, especially if we were involved in sport contests. It made us feel like total bonkers and at the same time it was nice, bonding.

The reasons why I am writing this post about a testosterone movie, as you might be wondering, are two: with this, I open a new section of the blog, dedicated to reviews and many other N.E.A.R. - Not Exactly Art Related things. The second is that "300", directed by Zack Snyder, is a literal shot-for-shot adaption of the graphic novel by Frank Miller.

In fact, visually speaking, "300" is a comic strip translated for the big screen and, because of this, loved or hated by critics and the public. I read with great interest about the complaints on historical mistakes, the grudge bore by Iranians because of the way Americans depicted their ancestors the Persians, and the nonsense of the dialogues (Persian: "Our arrows will obscure the sun!" Spartan: "Then we'll fight in the shade." Delightfully yob-ish) but I won't discuss the plot here, just the "translation". Movies are made of image frames, and each frame, in my opinion, constitutes a unique "artist" vision. Snyder's one is extreme, fascinating and unreal at the same time. And, for "unreal", I mean even more unreal than a movie normally is, because it is in the nature of a movie to be something else from reality. For its strong graphic flavour, with every frame digitally reduce to its essential contrasts of light and dark, the natural colours almost erased from the palette, this work is neither a movie nor a comic strip, entering the realm of the undefinable tableaux vivant. Images conceived for the printed paper will inevitably clash with the celluloid world if literally transposed to it.

Although the result of "300" is fine, and visually speaking acceptable in some ways as an extreme, interesting experiment, I think that, as a "visual artist", Snyder made just a little mistake: wanting to justify his particular vision through an allegedly accurate referral to ancient history. This is the so much sought after connection with reality, sometimes pursued by both directors and the public, that in the end spoils the magic of cinema. A movie is there to remind us that everything is possible... in our imagination. The moving images just give shapes to this idea, with no need to convince us about the plausibility of certain facts. Snyder himself called Miller's graphic world "surreal" and wanted to reproduce this mood in his movie, so what was the need for historical facts? Not digging properly into history may lead to superficial results and that's exactly what happens here: everything is left on a very baroque surface with loads of style, but no depth.

In the end, "300" is just an interpretation of a legendary battle, consciounsly parodying the notions of glory and dying for the honour of the homeland. Such an absurd - and indeed surreal - movie to become a classic.

All right, I did say this post would be not art related, but I couldn't help such professional bias. After all, what is my profession?

Designers, Artists and a touch of Red Sea

London's Design Festival 2010 is upon us. This sounds like a daunting sentence, but in fact it's just that there will be so many events scattered around town that you won't even know where to turn. Yesterday I gave it a start by going to an exhibition mixing together artists and designers in a former factory listed for demolition. In this difficult economic climate, pop-up shows in abandoned or empty spaces are thriving, giving creativity the chance to fill in the void and reinvigorating the old concept of philantrophy. I must confess that I am very fond of such spaces: their roughness, the mouldy walls, uneven floors and gigantic windows give a different flavor to exhibitions, dragging them closer to the viewer, lowering down the "sacrality" of the space to a much more relaxed experience. Of course the artworks are still for sale, but it won't be only about that.

Sure enough, when I popped into the huge room all I find is groups of friends, beer in hand, chatting among each other. The works occupied the space evenly, from objects like customizable squared ceramic vases or an interesting table lamp that is actually a lamp-table to a large size picture on the wall and a sculpture made of wood bark appearing behind a mirror. The boundary between design and art object in this show is indiscernible, because none of the design objects seem to aim at being functional. I guess the only difference is the interaction: you normally can't touch an artwork, whereas you'll definitely want to touch, for example, Alison Dunlop's corner mirror made of many leather gusset that you can open or close as you please, creating different patterns on the interactive surface.

I. Loved. It. Why? Because it becomes your playground, and your mark will be upon it until the next person decides to change it. It's democratic, ever-changing and not functional, as the reflecting surface doesn't really do the job. It's an artwork that you can touch and change.

Next door to all of this glittering and clattering, another show was there to be discovered, announced just by a timid red candle.

Inside: myself, two artists, and another guy. In terms of affluence, it reminded me of my openings. Maybe attracted by the empathy, one of the artist immediately approached me. She was elegantly wrapped in a white cloth which had the same consistency of sails and wears dizzy high black heels, her hair tied up and hanging down scruffily, making her look like an underwater mangrove:

"How did you hear about this show?"
"Er...I am coming from the opening next door..." No offence, we both are foreigners who go straight to the point. The Importance of Not Being Earnest rule doesn't apply here.

She handed over some literature with scatter sentences about the need to "invest physically" and "relating clothing to circumstances / creating history / sharing its process". I learned that the artist Arunas Survila "has gotten involved", but the girl's name was nowhere to be seen and I soon forget it.

She informed me that there will be a performance, later, and showed me some clothes, hanging from ropes, that were left soaking in the Red Sea. The process was filmed and the fabric felt heavy and rough under my fingertips.
That had the power of a Proustian madeleine: suddenly, the long gone days at sea in a summer that unfairly lasted too short came back to me, the salt flavour in my mouth, the thickness of the sea water permeating and beating my days.

Some other clothes had a less nice fate: they were filled in with raw meat and left to be tore by stray dogs: "There are a lot of stray dogs in Russia, you see?" she told me. Well, I think, I guess they had the time of their lives thanks to her. So why she did that? "To create patterns on the clothes", is the answer. Also, she wasn't very happy about the result because the holes are in far too precise points, they seem almost industrial. She described the whole process as "very hard and disgusting', then gave a good sniff right on the dried blood: "You can still feel it."

But I still don't get it.
Don't get me wrong, Mangrove, I did like your installations and think they had some potential. Some thoughts and sensations are still stirring if I think about it. But honestly, next time, just find yourself a curator. As I should find myself a PR.

Message in a bottle

"Walked out this morning, don't believe what I saw / Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore / Seems I'm not alone in being alone / 
Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home." 


Trafalgar Square on a cloudy Sunday afternoon is a place bursting with people: Londoners, tourist competing to have a picture on the lions at the base of Nelson's column, families with children running around freely, skating teens. I have a very nice memory of an hot afternoon back in 1993 when I had my first school trip to London to learn English: people were bathing in the two fountains, with children even wearing bath suits. Of course, although I was fully dressed, I joined them. Not even in your most forbidden dreams would you do it in Bernini's fountain in Piazza Navona, Rome: you'll get arrested on the spot, no questions asked.

At that time, I didn't noticed the empty plinth. 

It sparked my interest when I learned, several years later, that it was being used to commission temporary site specific artworks: from Rachel Whiteread to Marc Quinn, the plinth joined his equals to host contemporary art which exquisitely mixed up with the eldest in the monumental square.

Now, under the corner stare of neighbor George IV, the Fourth Plinth hosts Yinka Shonibare's Nelson's Ship in a Bottle. You would say it is overshadowing from the pictures and the various reportage on TV; instead, at that height the bottle seems contained, almost disappearing compared to the imposing plinth. A little monument for a big square, directly linked to the historical victory of Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar at the beginning of 1800, which freed the seas allowing England to get in touch with different cultures, and to become the cosmopolitan country we live in today. The colored patterned sails, made out of Shonibare's trademark African textiles, refer exactly to this: the British colonialism legacy.


The so skilfully realised ship, rich in details, is enclosed in a giant bottle, like the tiny traditional handicraft work; this seems to make the concept behind its creation small and contained, almost silenced. Shonibare is not an artist who leaves anything to chance, therefore even the fact that you can’t really make out the ship’s details nor the sails patterns by looking at it from the bottom of the tall plinth means something.

It’s the first time that the empty plinth hosts a work so directly linked not only to the history of the square, but also to the city of London in particular. The multiculturalism and immigration Shonibare is talking about is all there, making London the seaport she wanted to be: people arrive and leave all the time. Maybe they'll leave traces of their passage, maybe they won't. Strangers are so many in this city you can hardly make out the features. Multiplicity often leads to confusion, and then tolerance steps in: polite smiles, shifts to one side to make some more room, just a tiny bit. London’s social and cultural structure is indeed a very colorful and patterned fabric like the one in Shonibare’s ship, but every community is an island, trying to look at one another from too much a distance to figure out the details.

An updated version of this post is going to be published as an article on the magazine Arte e Critica n.64

Wicked. A nostalgic bohemian feeling

Yesterday, Hackney Wick opened its doors, and artist's studios doors, to the other side of the world for a three-days art festival. 

For a non-English mother-tongue obsessed with grasping every nuance of words' meaning, the name of the festival is a delightful and clever language game, swinging between "cool" and "bad": wicked. Very appropriate, if you consider that, as soon as you get off the overground, in normal days you would find yourself in the middle of nothing. Instead, the industrial and unattractive buildings (which, in fact, I find fab) are studios and homes for a large community of artists.

It feels like landing in another world, which you have to explore just with the aid of the - few - tools in your possession (a map of the area highlighting the main events' location) and a good dose of interpersonal skills, especially in  matter of orientation. The territory is not hostile of course, but you do feel like an outsider and start following the other +people, who know exactly where to go, like a stalker.

The many events were just unfolding around us, we could hear some music and percussion coming from the train station exit, and we had just missed our place at the dinner/performance organised by the curatorial collective Cosmicmegabrain. I just had the time to see one of the curators rushing to the terrace in Oslo House, wearing a shiny yellow foil hat with some flowers and cherries sprouting out of it. This is what I call landing on the job. After having bumped with pleasure in the only artist I know in the area (Martin Weswood, ndr), Habda and I ventured to see the studios and some art in the making. That was when I had the bohemian attack.

Known also as the Late Bohemian Sindrome, this rare and unlikely illness strikes subjects who are particularly sensitive to large, loft-like spaces, possibly with mezzanines, where art, great second-hand furnishings and private life are equally mixed. The first symptom is that the mind starts to wonder, imagining night parties like sin and a continuous, often stimulating confront with your neighboring peers. The attack carries on with drooling, a good dose of envy, loads of mental notes like the-day-I-will-have-my-own-house-I-must-remember-this-arrangement and, finally, it quickly fades away with the very down-to-earth thought: "But there is a common loo. No shower." The bohemian feeling lingers, though. The idea of something going on which maybe won't lead to the next generation of star artists to be born, but it will certainly be a tale to remember and tell: When I was twenty, I had a studio in Hackney Wick which I transformed into a living unit. I was painting everyday and partying every night - or the other way round -, we would talk a lot about art with the others and sometimes young critics and curators would join us. We organised shows and events, made things happen and... All right, I'll come off it.  It just made me think that all the famous artists and curators we know must have started like this: with a beer, a romantic kennel and a good chat. That's what they must still be doing, actually.

Moving on, we managed not to miss Roberto Ekholm's performance The Magnetic Man inside the show La Perruque: inspired by Michel De Certeau's writings around cultural practices and relationships, the show tries to manipulate commonplaces and make them habitable, which is to say, to use your own creativity space into the rigid and framed working society.

The evening was concluded with a quick - rainy - shower and my venturing up an emergency iron ladder to go to one of the building's roof and have a glance at the city landscape. On the other side of the river, the Olympic Village is taking shape and I couldn't help but wonder what will it be of these guys once this is turned into a fashionable residential area. Below, lights were glowing from the opened spaces, with people milling around, commenting the latest works. Looking down, De Certeau sprung to mind again for his most famous writing about the practice of everyday life (1984): the city seen from above is the result of the institutionalised bodies, who organise it in a grid and try to direct the experience and gaze of the person traveling in it. Below, people continued to get lost or get rid of the map, following their instinct instead, enjoying the dérive.