16 June 2013

LA BELLA SCRITTURA / KÖPFE UND: UN ALTRO MODO DI RITRARRE at MACT/CACT Suisse



[Scroll down for the english version]


























LA BELLA SCRITTURA
Donato Amstutz, Alex Hanimann, Ivano Sossella, Christian Vetter

KÖPFE UND: UN ALTRO MODO DI RITRARRE
Eva Aeppli, Katia Bassanini, Selina Baumann, Giona Bernardi, Martin Disler, David Hockney, Andrea La Rocca, Mustafa Sabbagh, Valter Luca Signorile, Stéphane Zaech, Christian Zucconi

Vernissage__sabato 29 giugno 2013 dalle 17:30

29 giugno – 25 agosto 2013 / ve-sa-do_14:00-18:00


Le due mostre vogliono compenetrarsi, pur partendo da concetti apparentemente antitetici; quelli alla base della figurazione e del dialogo tra pensiero e rappresentazione, come dire un difficile accarezzamento tra concetto e rapporto con la pratica del reale.

Valter Luca Signorile (1965)i , A white bird never dies, 2008

LA BELLA SCRITTURA e KÖPFE UND: UN ALTRO MODO DI RITRARRE inaugurano entrambe sabato 29 giugno 2013, intendendo il curatore mettere a confronto e intersecare due situazioni in continuo dibattimento in un momento storico di forte cambiamento e di ricostruzione dei parametri di un Novecento, la cui eredità sembra fragilmente sospesa tra la cassa di risonanza di una società che fu della decomposizione nella debolezza e il ‘ressentiment’ sociale. Tema già più volte sollevato, l’idea di Modernità nella società contemporanea e nelle sue inter(sec)azioni sociali e politiche, attraversa ora la sua crisi d’identità. Cultura e processo di civilizzazione non sembrano essersi sviluppate in maniera proporzionalmente parallela, e, nell’ambito artistico, il concetto globale e universale di matrice illuminista ha massificato sapere e conoscenza.
Nel tentativo di creare una società attiva, crescita smisurata e sproporzionata, consumismo per tutti e a troppi livelli hanno indotto, tra gli altri, verso una società estetica, anziché riflettere su di un’estetica della società.


Un'opera di Ivano Sossella

LA BELLA SCRITTURA dialoga in continuazione con l’altra esposizione mostrando opere, ove la rappresentazione è data soprattutto dal suo contenuto concettuale e tendenzialmente slegato dalla oggettivazione della forma. Se Donato Amstutz vanifica la rappresentazione attraverso il suo estenuante fare, Alex Hanimann crea concetti verbali finemente in equilibrio tra scrittura e figurazione. Christian Vetter interviene sull’inconscio dell’immagine, reiterando talvolta stilemi, nei quali interviene con segni appartenenti a un universo personale ed eterotopico. Ivano Sossella, artista italiano, ma dal temperamento anglosassone, si cimenta con l’opera a carattere più spaziale, ricontestualizzando in qualche modo l’estetica architettonica di una delle sale del MACT/CACT.

Un'opera di Christian Vetter

Se la rimessa in discussione della forma, e la sua conseguente rottura nel verso di una (ri)lettura dell’opera più concettuale e astratta in questa prima fase della mostra, la sezione che vi si contrappone, KÖPFE UND: UN ALTRO MODO DI RITRARRE, affronta in maniera più dura e pura la figurazione dalla radice espressiva. Gli artisti sono tanti e di estrazione diversa; una configurazione di tre autori storicizzati (Aeppli, Disler, Hockney) sono affiancati da autori più giovani, la cui importanza riposa proprio nel rappresentare il crinale del cambiamento verso una società solo apparentemente confusa, ma da molti punti di vista più forte, libera e consapevole.

Mario Casanova, 2013




Stéphane Zaech (1966), Modèle des collines, 2011 (Courtesy the artist and Katz Contemporary Zürich)



WRITING WITH STYLE
Donato Amstutz, Alex Hanimann, Ivano Sossella, Christian Vetter

KÖPFE UND: ANOTHER WAY OF PORTRAYING
Eva Aeppli, Katia Bassanini, Selina Baumann, Giona Bernardi, Martin Disler, David Hockney, Andrea La Rocca, Mustafa Sabbagh, Valter Luca Signorile, Stéphane Zaech, Christian Zucconi

Opening__Saturday 29 June 2013 at 5.30 p.m.

29 June – 25 August 2013 / Fri-Sat-Sun_2.00 - 6.00 p.m.

These two exhibitions aim to penetrate one another, although they start out from apparently contradictory concepts: the ones that underlie figuring and the dialogue between thinking and representing, a difficult embrace, as it were, between concept and relationship with the practice of reality.
LA BELLA SCRITTURA (WRITING WITH STYLE) and KÖPFE UND: UN ALTRO MODO DI RITRARRE (KÖPFE UND: ANOTHER WAY OF PORTRAYING) both inaugurate on Saturday 29 June 2013, as the curator’s intention is to draw a comparison and interface between two situations being debated constantly, in an era when we are experiencing radical change  and the reconstruction of the parameters of a Novecento whose inheritance seems to be suspended in its fragility between on the one hand the loudspeaker of a society that thrived on decomposition into weakness and on the other social resentment. This is a topic that has already been raised on several occasions: the idea of Modernity in contemporary society and its social and political intersections/interactions is now experiencing an identity crisis. Culture and the process of civilisation do not seem to have developed in a parallel proportion, while – on the art scene – the global, universal concept inherited from the enlightenment matrix has mainstreamed knowledge and erudition.

Martin Disler (1949-1996), Untitled (Kopf mit Kreuz), 1993

In the attempt to create an active society, unfettered, disproportionate growth and consumerism for all – and at too many levels – have led us, among other things, towards an aesthetic society instead of towards pondering on the need for an aesthetic for society.

LA BELLA SCRITTURA dialogues continuously with the other exhibition, displaying works in which representation is constituted primarily by a conceptual content that tends to be detached from the objectivisation of the form. While Donato Amstutz frustrates representation with his extenuating making, Alex Hanimann creates verbal concepts balanced finely between writing and figuring. Christian Vetter intervenes on the subconscious of the image, sometimes reiterating styles, amending them with signs belonging to a personal, heterotypical universe. Ivano Sossella, an Italian artist but with an Anglo-Saxon temperament, gets to grips with a work whose character is more spatial, somehow altering the context of the architectural aesthetics in one of the rooms at the MACT/CACT.

Eva Aeppli (1925), Teresa, 1977-78 (Private collection, Switzerland)

While form is questioned and as a consequence undergoes breakage in the sense of a (re)interpretation of the more conceptual, abstract work in this first phase of the exhibition, the section that opposes it, KÖPFE UND: ANOTHER WAY OF PORTRYAING, adopts a harder, more uncompromising approach to figuring with an expressive matrix. There is a larger number of artists here, from different backgrounds: a core of three established artists (Aeppli, Disler and Hockney) is accompanied by younger peers, whose importance comes from their ability to represent the crest of the wave of change towards a society that is only apparently confused, but from many vantage points stronger, freer and more aware.

Mario Casanova, 2013 [translation Pete Kercher]


Mustafa Sabbagh (1961), Maria, 2013



12 June 2013

58 (+1) INDICES ON THE BODY. Amae/De Pinto in Freiburg (Germany)



































58 (+1) INDICES ON THE BODY
Emulation as mimicry of transit within performance art. Empathy and conflict between identity and otherness.


Index N.17_Proximity and Distance
Performance by AMAE/DE PINTO
Kommunales Kino im alten Wiehrebahnhof, Freiburg (D)
Urachstr.
40 - 79102 Freiburg

Sunday 16 June 2013, 11 a.m.
http://www.koki-freiburg.de/heute.php


On the occasion of the meeting with the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, the philosopher, psychosomatic doctor, psychotherapist Martin Dornberg and the students of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg.


The themes preferred by the collective Amae and by De Pinto such as transience, transfer, otherness, virtuality, Queer Theory will be the very soul of the project, which it will take charge of a method of creative presentation leading into a series of 58 (plus one) performances. The performances will focus on the idea of body from the physical, philosophical, biological, psychological, emotional, social, educational, economical and cultural point of view.
Amae and De Pinto will literally fuse their bodies, not only to demonstrate the occupied/achieved contiguity/interruption by each body, but in order to bring to life a body/corpus unicum: here the physical, philosophical and psychological extension of the body in action will find its shape. These will be bodies put into a condition of mutation and transience: a technological, biological and political introduction will allow:

  • to stimulate discussion around the idea of the contemporary body itself in pursuit of a new awareness of the agents engaged with the project.
  • to communicate the cultural change required to broaden the under standing of the word “body”.
  • the various agents to bravely explore their own selves, in order to be able to engage with the discourse about the contemporary social human being.
  • to put together an enormous quantity of data, collected and synthesised into a text (corpus), which must give due consideration to all facets from which the contemporary human being is built.

The long series of performances will cause the active visitor to be themselves author of those thoughts, of those actions and integrate them all.

During 58 (+1) INDICES ON THE BODY the body Amae/De Pinto will put the public into a condition of active interaction with the performers through the use of technologies and softwares that were originally created for commercial and/or scientific purposes and now exploited for a brand new artistic practice. Among them we remind: QR codes, as viral diffuser of messages, texts, animations and videos. The use of video and audio-interactive installations, as well as softwares for augmented reality.

The project is part of Ivan Lupi’s studies. The proposal for his research took its shape in twelve years of artistic practice (as a member of the AMAE collective of artists) internationally developed within collaborations (Rome, Detroit, Barcelona, Hong Kong, London, Bellinzona) investigating the body trough ongoing projects, public and online performances and commissioned installations.
His MA in Queer Theory Arts and Culture explored the Foucaultian notion of “Technology for the care of the self” in relation to self-performing, self-fashioning and self-harming of queer bodies versus themselves or an audience both physical or virtual. (Butler-Halperin-Jones).
This opened several questions on the relation between the audience’s body and the performer’s and how the audience could critically engage with performance art in current times of augmented reality. This application for a PhD program with Prof. S. Golding has the aim to take these questions further proposing a method that gives priority to the practice of performance art from which theoretical support on the notions above will be developed in second instance.

The research and his development will include some texts and quotes from some of the philosophers, sociologists and theorists who have worked and are working on the body and soul, identity, gender, religion, performance art, new technologies and augmented reality. Some of them are: Jean-Luc Nancy, Amelia Jones, Judith Butler, David M. Halperin, Robin George Collingwood, Mario Perniola, George Edward Moore, Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer, Simon Woods, Karl Popper, Peter Frederick Strawson, John Harwood Hick, Clive Staples Lewis, Antony Garrard Newton Flew.

Key Areas - Intersubjectivity and transfer in performance art. Inheritance and mimicry of behaviour. Mimicry against emulation. Identification and conflict. Primary society and contemporary society. Time and space of assimilation of empathetic behaviours. Behaviours towards otherness. Transient bodies. Augmented reality.

WHO (WHAT) IS AMAE
Amae's research contaminates traditional languages of art communication, such as poetry, video, sound, photography, installation, performance, with mass media and makes an attempt on cultural and social stereotypes. As well as photographic works and performances which are often broadcast live on the web, since 2002 Amae has stood out internationally in the video and performance domain: Videoakt Loop09 (Barcelona, 2009); Hackney Wicked Festival (London, 2007); The Eyes Are the Objects (Hong Kong, 2005); M.O.N.A. International Video Festival (Detroit, 2005), performances and poetry. MACT/CACT Arte Contemporanea Ticino, Switzerland (2013).

AMAE’s research recently approached Queer Theory with a group of works developed with the support of Birmingham City University. The works explore the theory of the Self, the perception of sexuality and the therapeutic influence of art in the construction of identity.


Links


WHO IS PIER GIORGIO DE PINTO
1968, Born in Italy, lives & works between Bellinzona (CH), Basel (CH) and Florence (I). He is a trans-disciplinary artist,  performer,  curator,  theorist and media trainer.
De Pinto strongly uses new media as a “thinking medium” in which he involves the audience, creating performative experiences and immersive environments. His projects usually focus on collaborations with other authors, like musicians, choreographers and artists from different cultural backgrounds, styles and identity genres.
These collaborations enable De Pinto to undertake new and radical experimental projects, capable of stimulating discussion about stereotypes and prejudices, asking awkward questions in the areas of culture, politics and religion.

Studies & Trainings
After having taken his vocational school diploma in Florence, he went on studying and taking part in courses, workshops and seminars, carrying on a steadfast study of contemporary culture languages: from the study of plastic arts, of videos, of computer graphics & digital art and photography, to the study of body considered as a performative element, taking courses in oriental disciplines, in communication, form and behavioural relationship and undergoing training sessions in dubbing and acting at a School of Cinema and a School of Theatre.

Recently, he took part to a workshop in Spatial Data Art, Urban computing, Geo-Mapping, Social patterns with Prof. Mauro Martino of MIT in Boston (Barabási Lab at Center for Complex Network Research; Harvard University, Boston) in collaboration with i2A International Institute of Architecture, Vico Morcote (CH).
He attended in November 2011 a Course in Fundraising with Brainard Carey, Co-founder and Director of The Artworld Demystified in New York.
De Pinto speaks fluently Italian and English. He has a good knowledge of French and currently he is attending a German course.

Collaborations
Since 2010 he is collaborating with MACT/CACT Arte Contemporanea Ticino in Bellinzona, Southern Switzerland, as coordinator/curator, graphic designer and media trainer.
In October 2012 he began a collaboration with Ivan Lupi of the AMAE project in London, in collaboration with the Birmingham City University and MACT/CACT Arte Contemporanea Ticino.

Art Residencies
2012 Guest artist at Kunst, Atelier und Gewerbehaus Oslo, Basel (CH).
Thanks to Christoph Merian Stiftung for iaab - international artists Exchange and studio program Basel, Switzerland.


Links


PIER GIORGIO DE PINTO
www.depinto.it


Links




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