Yesterday

There are some days when everything goes wrong.

It starts with one event, and then the chain of bad luck follows, like it was called by some sort of jinx sorority. But, there also are days when exactly the opposite happens.

First, it started with a dear friend of mine giving me a great news: he has a girlfriend. Actually, he did pronounce the word "engaged", but didn't exactly tie the knot since they've been going out for just a couple of weeks...and been knowing each other since childhood. I was so happy for him. After five or so years of being single, spent trying to forget the only girl who broke his heart, who's now happily married and with child, he merrily tells me that he has fallen in love again. 

I kept on telling him, it will eventually come to you one day if you only stopped searching...love is always unexpected.

Secondly, in the afternoon I had one of those experiences that throw you back in...well...sixteen years' time in the space of a second. A famous pop star popped in my workplace.

One of those people you worshipped when you were sixteen and, despite this made you the joke of your male friends and the desperation of your parents, you still remember the times spent singing the songs over and over and hopelessly waiting outside an hotel with your mates as really good fun. 

Not "the best times of your life", no...those would have come later.

I remember the frustration, though. That of spending so much time trying to see a person in a context that wasn't a gig without actually succeeding. You know, closer look, not just the miniature, big screen or TV version. Well, yesterday, without any advance notice, he was right in front of me.

At the beginning I thought OK, I can handle this (after having pinched hard my poor colleague's leg as soon as he stepped in). Couldn't really control heartbeats, sweating hands and - hopefully unnoticed - rash reactions, though. Damn, I thought I was a mature grown-up woman, but at that very moment I was back a teenager every inch.

"I am just having a look around." He said. 

And I replied with something very intelligent like: "Er...sure."

AskhimifheneedsanyhelpatallforGodssake! 

The result: my colleague maintains that I scared him off and he is never coming back. Just because I collapsed on the floor behind the counter when he left (pathetic, I know) and she claims that he saw me (no, he didn't). Despite losing the dignity, this banal event put a smile on my face: eventually, things come to those who can wait.

Precisely, there it arrived an email at the end of the day:

"Your exhibition proposal has been accepted." 

A curator friend of mine once quoted a passage from "By Nightfall", a novel by Michael Cunningham. 

It was a conversation between someone who wanted to become a curator and someone else, who compared the choice to that of wanting to become a movie star: obviously very few succeed.

True, but some do succeed the first character replied.

Well, that "yes" was coming from a Museum I worship and, if I have to draw parallelisms between curatorial and cinematographic careers, this would definitely be compared to being the leading actress in a Fellini movie.

The Eighth Labours of Hercules

Imagine you are writing a text for a catalogue, something of academic nature, developing one aspect of a potential show.

Imagine the selection of the books to prepare your dissertation, starting with database research and meticulous investigation of the footnotes, to find further references.

Imagine a thorough reading of all the sources, including books you never dreamed of approaching like Hal Foster, The Return of the Real. Fabulous, but your brain asked for mercy and your neurones went to the gym to potentiate their evidently weak connections. You still are not sure about what you've actually read.

Imagine to sit in front of the computer, staring at the screen, because the paragraphs you took two days to organise don't really make any sense and you know that.

Imagine to continue reading the books over and over again, desperately trying to find the connections you are seeking.

Imagine to finish writing at 10 pm of the night before Consignment Day: your eyes are as big as a satellite dish and the curve of your back has increased of at least another couple of inches.

Now, imagine to do all of this in another language.


> Washing the Christmas tablecloth at the end of January? Curator's Stuff

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Conversation in Rome:

A: "Look at you! You definitely are well!"
sy: "Ah, thanks. By the way, I brought something from London: scones! We can have them with mascarpone and marmalade because I had to leave the clotted cream behind..."
A: "Oh, you're so English."

Conversation in London:

B: "Are you having another beer?"
sy: "No thanks, I am fine."
B: "Oh, you're so European."

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

To be totally honest with you, I would rather have nailed myself to the old one and let it linger, just a little bit more. I really enjoyed the past year, for which I didn't have great expectations and instead it turned out to be very productive, therefore I am welcoming the new one with a bit of wariness.
But it's just a sensation and will dissipate very quickly, as the division of time in years is just a notion: to comfort myself, I have started to think about time as a continued, uninterrupted flow.
It's up to us to make this new year work, not the stars or the planets' conjunction.

The year 2010 ended accompanied by many sensations.
The ones discussed in the reported conversations, for example. The labels that make you feel an in-betweener. You go home and everyone sees you as very English (??), whereas when you come back to your new home, where you started to feel even more comfortable (!!), here it comes this sort of disillusion. The result is a question: where do you belong now, exactly?
Deep down, you know of course. Then why do you feel so strange, even physically, in your hometown?

About last post and all my purposes, I did respect many: I went around a lot, saw friends and family, wore short sleeved garments which left everyone astonished.

C: "Oh my God, aren't you cold?"
sy: "My dear, it's minus one in London! Here it's 18 degrees!"
C: "You've become so..."
sy: "English, I know. In fact, it's called acclimatization."

The first days were accompanied by too much food and a persistent feeling of dizziness, nausea almost. I blamed it on the fact that the air must be much less polluted in Rome, but as you may imagine such symptoms bring up other kind of speculations, like pregnancy. Smile politely and let your interlocutor know that no, you're taking it easy. Same sentence as last year, of course.

After all of this is gone, you lapse yourself into family and friends cuddles, the true thing that makes you feel home once again. Some of them still ask you what is it that you miss the most. Well, after five minutes thinking, the answer is: definitely this, but unfortunately it's not unbearable anymore.
Not quite, at least.

I will leave you now with some pictures of places. Not the charming alleys of Rome that I so much wanted to visit again (and I did, avoiding the already mentioned traffic jam this time!), but other kind of places with their dense atmosphere.
Places where people come and go, sit comfortably for a while, share life, experiences, leave and come back the day after, or the year after.

Caffe' Necci, Rome

Caffe' Terzi, Bologna

Trattoria Anna Maria, Bologna: all frames contain greetings by very happy clients. No surprise: amazing tortellini.

Trastevere, Rome: please notice the blackboard next to the entrance.

Book store in Trastevere, Rome: I see Jamie Oliver has reached us

Very old Restaurant in Piazza Campo de' Fiori, Rome

I have stolen this last two pictures on a very crowded underground in Rome.
I had to act quickly, and pretend I was just browsing the images on my camera.

All I Don't Want This Christmas

1. I don't want to be stuck in London.
Although I have never spent Christmas here, and it would be nice, I don't want to start this year: since I have left my country, festivities and all they concern turned from being something that "has to be done" to something that I definitely want to do: spend time with the family. We will all be heartbroken if I missed those days because of the snow leaving airports in chaos. A Skype conference call won't do, this time.



2. I don't want to end up in front of the TV after the meals.
Whenever I go back, it seems like I never left. Therefore, I end up doing what I used to do, forgetting that I now see Rome twice a year if I am lucky; I should be out enjoying the beauty of my hometown, taking a stroll in the chilly air, remember what it is to look at hundreds of years of history. Rome during Christmas is a magic place to share with the people you love.

3. I don't want to be necessarily happy.
"Merry Christmas" is just a wish. People hope that you will be merry, but this doesn't mean that you have to. Well, putting bad feelings aside for a day or two can only do you good, but pretending is another matter. This would be my wish for Christmas: be yourself, whatever mood you woke up in.

4. I don't want to miss a thing.
Wish I wouldn't, at least. But when you've been away two years things happen, things which are not necessarily shared over the phone, things that put you, willy-nilly, out of the loop. Everyone is nice to you because you are there just for a short time and they don't want you to worry, or to burden you with anything. This is, in my opinion, even more worrying.

5. I don't want to eat too much.
I know: just a silly thought. It's just that food and alcohol fuddle you (which brings us back to point 2) and you end up always having the same discussions around the table: politics and your parents telling all the pranks you did as a child to your husband, in-laws and everyone happening to pop by for a quick greet.

6. I don't want to come back to London with yet another set of bed linens.
Of course presents are not important, but please, Auntie dear, please. To see the family all together is already a great present.

7. I don't want to forget this Christmas.
Let's admit it: we do do always the same stuff at Christmas; this makes the days muddled and interchangeable, making you forget what happened in the specific. This year could be the year before or the one after, and so on. Some changes in the routine will make an unforgettable day.

8. I don't want to make anyone unhappy.
I have put my best effort in the presents this year. I have searched, selected, and really thought about the people I am going to give them to. Little thoughts, nothing special, but everything is heart-made.

I would like to also add points 9 and 10 to have a nice, round list, but that's all for now.
For some serious good wishes, please come back later!

Pictured: my Christmas Ficus Tree and home-made garland, realised from scratch with till's receipts.

Falling Slowly: the three works show

Exercising is vital.

I have been neglecting the blog and writing terribly lately, but in the rush up to Christmas things picked up and distraction is not an option, otherwise mistakes occur.
I have to say that they do occur even without distractions, but that's another story.

Talking about University and MA instead, I would like to report here an "exercise" that our tutor gave us:
Choose three artworks and make a show out of it, completed of an exhibition plan.


That is what I came out with and, I must say, I really like the idea of a small, virtual show.
The title would be Falling Slowly, taken from a song:

Take this sinking boat and point it home / We've still got time

Raise your hopeful voice / you had a choice / You've made it now

Falling slowly sing your melody / I'll sing it loud

Glen Hansard, musician

These would be the artworks on display, in an ordinary, four walls room:

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851 ca, Oil on canvas, 76 x 111 cm

First one to be seen from the entrance: it's quite a large work and has to make its impact. Not to mention the incredible importance that it had for many future generations of painters, so the spot of honor is definitely for it.

Lee Miller, Dead SS Guard in Canal, Dachau, Germany 1945

This small photograph goes in front of the Millais. I am very interested in the dialogue between the two mediums, painting and photography. And that is why the third selected work is:

Yigal Ozeri, Priscilla in Ecstasi, 2006, Oil on canvas, 20 x 26 cm

This one would go on the bottom wall between the two mentioned artworks. 

The text accompanying the show would be this:

John E. Millais’ Ophelia is the depiction of a tragedy: an exceptionally young woman, who was driven crazy by death and loss, lets herself drown while singing until the very last moment. From painting to photograph, Lee Miller’s most famous war reportage picture of a dead SS soldier in Dachau’s canal has often been described by the critics as a contemporary take of the above painting. In the middle, here it stands Yigal Ozeri’s small work: at first sight it does look like another photograph but is, in fact, an incredibly detailed painting; the reprise of Ophelia is, this time, turned from agony to ecstasy, with the techniques of the other two works fused together in a confusing, hybrid result.

The dialogue between the three pieces moves on from the investigated technique to explore the meaning of a fall: according to Eduardo Cycelin, who in turn drew from Deleuze, “falling is the most vivid of sensations, and it is here where one recognizes the feeling of being alive. The staging of death is not its content, but rather indicates the place where the tension of representation is highest and the fall most rapid.”
These look like Apollonian, perfectly represented forms: from the obsessive precision of the Pre-Raphaelite painting to the photograph’s automatic depiction of reality, culminating in the surgical exactness of a painting copied from a photograp; at the same time, they seem to hem in the expression of our Dionysian bestial selves, the intensity of the sensation expressed by gaping, singing mouths and culminating, at the end of the fall, in the self-contemplative silence of death.

It would be nice to hear your opinions: is this a show worth seeing?

Warp and Weft

This is the critical essay accompanying the performance "Scala 1:18" by Marco Dalbosco

Behind the intertwining of textiles the remnants of the history of modern society are concealed. The Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the middle of the 18th Century, brought about the textile industries that drove people from the countryside to the city, to serve in the factories. The constant and never changing rhythm of factory machines has since lasted for centuries upon centuries.

With a long experience as a worker in an Italian textile factory, Dalbosco, originally from the Trentino region of Northern Italy, has taken on the meanings of factory work, investigating its dynamics. Following Guy Debord’s idea of society as a spectacle, instead of the spectacularization of the production system, the alienation of the individual, the suspension of a thinking being and the unavoidable conformation to the masses underline Dalbosco’s work. Still following Debord’s ideas, the same suspension is applied to the definition of art: every artwork holds a crystallized and closed eternity within it, whereas the direct experience of the ephemeral carries forward the concept of situation. A situation’s flux expires in the space of an action, and in this clever passage suspension is transformed into movement.

Dalbosco’s performance not only engages with but also engrosses the public; there is no account of its fleeting passage but for the films and photographs, today’s techniques of reproduction. In Scala 1:18, five performers, all dressed and with their hair in the same style, move according to the imagined trajectory of a warp and weft. They weave the void, pushing it towards something unknown as if to redeem the mechanics of alienation. It may succeed for a second, yet they can neither go beyond their starting point nor change a predetermined trajectory, as this would result in the breakdown of the machine put into motion. Hence, the dancers/performers are stuck in a never-ending production. A performance that appears to be a metaphor for our own thoughts: the movement may appear free but it is, without our knowing, constructed and constricted.

MARCO DAL BOSCO > Scala 1:18

SYBINQ ART PROJECTS, in collaboration with LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY, is pleased to invite you to:

SCALA 1:18 a performance by  
MARCO DALBOSCO

Presented by sybin > susanna bianchini

TUESDAY 14 DECEMBER 2010

from 6:30 pm

Unit G15

London Metropolitan University

41 Commercial Road

London E1 1LA

RSVP ESSENTIAL at curatingcontemporary@gmail.com

Italian artist Marco Dalbosco presented the performance Scala 1:18 for the first time as a parallel event at Manifesta 7 (Rovereto, Italy 2008). Setting its contents in the factory ambient and analyzing its obsessive and repetitive production process, the performance involves five women, dressed and combed the same, repeating all the same gestures, steps and sequences enhanced by a projected video of machines at work. The entire operation seems to have a liberating aspect that redeems creativity from job alienation; in fact it focuses, at the same time, on the issue of repeating and modulating mechanisms, set behind the creativity myth. The performers look like they are free, whereas they always come back to the starting point; they become metaphor for our own way of thinking, which sometimes may be constructed and constricted.

Following Guy Debord’s idea of society as a spectacle, instead of turning the production system into a show it is the alienation of the individual, the suspension of a thinking being and the unavoidable conformation of the mass that underline Dalbosco’s work. The choreographer Gloria Ploritch and her students, all from the Italian Northern Region of Trentino, have been working all along with Dalbosco to give shape to this performance, never before presented in the UK.

The exhibition is accompanied by a text by the Curator. 

Scala 1:18 is the closing event of SybinQ Art Projects for the year 2010.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTIST:

MARCO DALBOSCO lives and works in London. Selected Events > 2010: Scala 1:18, London Metropolitan University, London (UK) and 26cc Space for Contemporary Art, Rome (IT); Meeting Ring, SybinQ Art Projects, London (IT);Incerti Arredi # Office Sales, Cesare Pietroiusti’s Studio, Rome (IT). 2009: 1h Art Project, London (UK). 2008: Scala 1:18, Manifesta7, Parallel Event, Rovereto (IT). 2008: Incerti Arredi, Paolo Tonin  Contemporary Art, Turin (IT).

GLORIA POTRICH lives and works in Rovereto, Italy, where she teaches Contemporary and African dance at the CDM – Didactic Centre for Music, Theatre and Dance. Her research started from Expressive African Dance passing through Contact and Dance Theatre to arrive to a research-based type of dance characterised with a bond with live music. 

SUSANNA BIANCHINI lives and works in London. By using the pseudonym of sybin, she curated various shows and created SybinQ Art Projects, a nomad space devoted to the promotion of exhibition projects, especially with young artists. This is mainly through the commissions of new artworks and the creation of unusual shows settings, outside the so-called “regular” exhibition’s parameters.

This event is possible thanks to the support of the Provincia Autonoma di Trento (IT), Cultural Association Ordine_Sparso (IT), London Metropolitan University and Levent Bozdere (UK).

More information on www.marcodalbosco.com