AN OBJECT OF STUDY / Performance by Ivan Lupi / Queens Museum, New York City, USA

AN OBJECT OF STUDY

Performance by Ivan Lupi

Presented in LiVEART.US for the program 'Transformations' hosted at the Queens Museum, New York City, USA.

AN OBJECT OF STUDY is performed in collaboration with Prof. Ryan Ashley Caldwell from Soka University of America.

LiVEART.US is curated and organized by Hector Canonge.

Saturday 17th of September 2016 at 2.00 p.m.

Queens Museum in New York City

Freehand tattoo designs by Mishka Stein. Ph Martina O'Shea, 2016.

I trust the audience. I don't just consider it merely to be an audience. Once we are in the same room at the same time and we are all focusing on each other, the audience is performing as much as I am. As things correctly stand, most of the time the public enters the room and sits waiting for the performer to create something that hopefully fulfills or perhaps disappoints their expectations. Only a few performers have escaped this format successfully. I believe that a more critical approach from the audience is needed at the moment of the action. Not before. Not after. (Ivan Lupi)

In times of radical political changes it becomes difficult to keep the focus on the importance of what 'sharing' means. How can we come together if we feel separated? How is it possible to exist together when we don’t know how to understand the other(ed)? Performance art, social movements and protests clearly blur into each other more and more in their attempt to raise awareness on the topic of ‘sharing’ thereby creating confusion, noise and sometimes the erasure of important embodied self-narratives. What we see happening on the street, in galleries or underground scenes is only the surface of a hidden landscape that unravels itself between the walls of our actual homes. They are interestingly connected —the individual, the group, and larger culture. Dialogues, interpretations, and meanings unfold about these spaces, “homes”, and stories of identity manifest. Inspired by the private battles for our identities that we “do” within our closer circles of family, these clashes are what the sort of “domestic activism” challenges that are the point of departure for understanding this performance piece. If the family is the initial place for socialization about culture, it is certainly influential in determining not only how we come to see and engage with the world, but also in how we see and engage (and accept) ourselves. This approach is a secluded movement that sees ourselves involved on a daily basis where our body and embodiment plays a very important role in identity, activism, social relations (families, cultures, etc.), and beyond.

In the new work presented by the program LiVEART.US, curated by Hector Canonge and hosted at the Queens Museum in New York City, Ivan Lupi offers his body as a performance tool for those present to “come together" and "experience together” an open and informal, theoretical and practical conversation on the themes triggered by Professor Ryan Ashley Caldwell from Soka University of America. Ivan Lupi is this month's CONVIVIR artist in residence at MODULO 715, a live-in-create program initiated by Hector Canonge in 2015.

Freehand tattoo designs by Mishka Stein. Ph Martina O'Shea, 2016.

More information at 
http://www.queensmuseum.org/events/liveart-us-performance-art-initiative

DEED & FLIRTATION / Riccardo Ambìveri / Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 August 2016 from 2.00 to 6.00 p.m.

English

Riccardo Ambiveri (1993), Flirtation, 2016. Copyright Riccardo Ambìveri.

DEED & FLIRTATION

Riccardo Ambìveri

Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 August 2016 from 2.00 to 6.00 p.m. (free entry)

The public is kindly invited to take part in the performances of the artist RICCARDO AMBÌVERI (1993) on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 August 2016.

The Leitmotiv that runs through Ambìveri’s performances is a comparative dialogue between the artist and his audience, since the artist is not only the author of his actions with the audience, but also plays the leading role in them. The performer uses his physical presence and bodily interaction to build his rapport with those others who also take part in his action, since the body is treated as a vehicle for expressing and feeling the spirit that is housed within it: to measure up physically to somebody else means to act on his constituent equilibrium, on the Id and on the Ego of the Other.

We often fail to stop and ponder our decisions to a sufficient extent… and the effects they may have on those around us – and, indirectly, on ourselves. Slowing down, observing, joining in and taking part, feeling and reacting, so as to remember that every one of our actions has its implications.

DEED, 2015 is a long durational performance lasting about four hours that relies on audience participation, making it interactive: it is due to take place on Saturday 13 August from 2.00 p.m. to 6.00 p.m..

The action in DEED – whose English-language title intentionally implies an act, an action or a gesture, but it may also mean a legal document of the kind used to transfer the ownership of a piece of land or to create an obligation or a contract, a term that is often juxtaposed with the action of saying something without actually tackling the concomitant facts, as in “between words and deeds'' – takes place at the moment when the performer allows the participant to enter into a restricted space that is reserved for the two of them alone. The invitation is not verbal: the artist waits until his eyes meet those of the participant and he makes a sign to invite him/her to approach. The participant receives a list of adjectives that the performer has to interpret and act out when they are read out loud. Each thing that is said and completed has a consequence of its own and, although it is the performer who stages the action consequent on the adjective, the participant  is also involved in the evolution of the action, becoming directly responsible for what is happening. The performance comes to an end when the participant leaves the restricted space.

FLIRTATION, 2016, is another interactive long durational performance, which will be taking place on Sunday 14 August from 2.0 p.m. to 6.00 p.m..

This performance takes the form of two people meeting while seated at a table – the performer is already sitting there, waiting for a participant, who is informed by word of mouth about what the action consists of: sucking a finger or holding each other close with the respective arms of the hand indicated, until the performer decides to put an end to the action.

Italiano

Riccardo Ambiveri (1993), Deed, 2015. Copyright Riccardo Ambìveri.

DEED & FLIRTATION

Riccardo Ambìveri

Sabato 13 e Domenica 14 agosto 2016 dalle 14:00 alle 18:00 (entrata libera)

Il pubblico è gentilmente invitato a partecipare Sabato 13 e Domenica 14 agosto 2016 alle performance dell’artista RICCARDO AMBÌVERI (1993).

Il filo conduttore che unisce le performance di Ambìveri è il confronto dialogante tra l’autore e il suo pubblico, nella misura in cui l’artista è non solo autore, ma pure protagonista delle sue azioni con il pubblico. Il rapporto del performer con chi compartecipa all'azione si realizza attraverso la presenza fisica e l’interazione corporea, in quanto il corpo viene considerato veicolo di espressione e sentimento dello spirito che li alberga; confrontarsi fisicamente con qualcuno significa agire sull'equilibrio che lo compone, sul Sé e sull'Io dell'Altro.

Spesso non ci soffermiamo sufficientemente sulle nostre decisioni e sugli effetti che esse possono creare su ciò che ci circonda – e, indirettamente, su noi stessi. Rallentare, osservare, compartecipare, sentire, reagire per ricordarsi che ogni nostra azione ha una sua implicazione.

DEED, 2015 è una long durational performance di circa 4 ore che si avvale della partecipazione del pubblico; interattiva, quindi, e verrà eseguita Sabato 13 agosto dalle 14:00 alle 18:00.

L'azione in DEED – che nella sua accezione inglese significa atto, azione, gesta o anche documento legale per effettuare un trasferimento di proprietà o creare un'obbligazione o un contratto; termine spesso contrapposto con l'azione del dire senza effettivamente affrontarsi con i fatti “between words and deeds'' – si attiva nel momento in cui il performer accoglie il partecipante in uno spazio delimitato e riservato solamente a loro due. L'invito non è verbale: l’artista attende di incrociare il suo sguardo con quello del partecipante e con un cenno farlo avvicinare. Il partecipante riceve una lista di aggettivi che se letti ad alta voce, il performer deve impersonare e interpretare. Ogni cosa detta e compiuta ha una sua conseguenza e sebbene sia il performer a mettere in scena l'aggettivo, anche il partecipante viene coinvolto nel susseguirsi dell'azione, divenendo direttamente responsabile di ciò che sta accadendo. La performance si conclude con l'abbandono del partecipante dello spazio circoscritto.

FLIRTATION, 2016, è pure una long durational performance interattiva, che avrà luogo Domenica 14 agosto dalle 14:00 alle 18:00.

Essa si realizza con l’incontro fra due persone sedute a un tavolino – il performer è già seduto in attesa di un partecipante, il quale verrà informato verbalmente su cosa consiste l'azione: ciucciarsi il dito, tenendosi avvinghiati con le rispettive braccia della mano scelta, fino a quando non sarà il performer a decidere di smettere l'azione.

                       

FRAUGHT / Pier Giorgio De Pinto & Valter Luca Signorile / 28 November 2015 – 14 February 2016 / Opening Saturday 28 November 2015

[Scorri verso il basso per la versione in italiano]

Pier Giorgio De Pinto (1968) & Valter Luca Signorile (1965), Fraughtiana 3, 2015.

FRAUGHT

Pier Giorgio De Pinto & Valter Luca Signorile

Opening on Saturday 28 November 2015 at 5.30 p.m.

28 November 2015 – 14 February 2016

Fri-Sat-Sun from 2.00 to 6.00 p.m.

(Closed from 21 December 2015 until 8 January 2016)

 “However complete it may be, the union of two souls will always leave differences that make conversation a pleasure.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The MACT/CACT brings 2015 to a close with an exhibition entitled FRAUGHT, devised and conceived in 2014. The two artists who are making this anomalous project happen are PIER GIORGIO DE PINTO and VALTER LUCA SIGNORILE, who have combined forces for the occasion to create a joint thematic project for four hands.

FRAUGHT (frɔ:t) is a term with a venerable pedigree: northern European in origin, it encompasses a variety of different meanings, including those of ‘charged’, ‘weighed down’, ‘full’, ‘dense’ and ‘pregnant’ with archetypes. It is with the diverse meanings of this term that the two artists have worked to develop their entire site-specific project, which embraces all four of the exhibition rooms available. Each room has been named with the neologism ‘FRAUGHTIANA’ (or ‘FRAUGHTIAN’) and each of them has a number, whose sequence follows the Fibonacci progression: 1, 1, 2, 3. This sequence was theorised by the mathematician Leonardo Pisano, known as Fibonacci (1175-1235), as a result of his observations of nature; its progressive development is indicated by the exponential increase of the number. For the two artists, who ponder man’s existence from birth to death, this numerical sequence represents a deflagration and a liberation after the stratification of human experience, from the pain of giving birth to the awareness that we lose the possibility that we may ever live in an ideal world. As a consequence, the artist once again takes his place – within his unreal dimension – in the nerve-centre of an existential and/or autre potentiality. DE PINTO and SIGNORILE play with the various different planes, with the stratifications of time laid down by their individual life experiences in society, almost as though they were acting outside of time, to a certain extent in the manner of a novel by James Joyce, since the exhibition’s two drivers are poised precariously on the knife-edge between foetal unawareness and the awareness that comes from the metaphorical experience of life.

The rooms contain no particular works – nor would their existence be of any importance to us – but an invitation to an immanent perception, which takes place amid contextual and environmental installations and evocative sound installations. The circle, roundness, cycles and spheres are the elements at work in FRAUGHT, where visitors will experience dual and dualistic states of mind, sometimes both reciprocally conflictual and at the same time complementary.

Every path within FRAUGHT leads towards a moment, a reflection, an action or a stasis, but always and in any case man’s motion towards the universe, wandering between allegories and symbolisms. Every work in a given room bears the name of the room that contains it and, with the effect of a crescendo, the last stage achieves the pathos and symbolic energy that unites us to the universal. Videos, plastic and sound installations – in short intentionally symbolic elements – together generate this great magma, which defines man through his indefinability or his persevering fascination with the double and the dual, for the elusive ineluctable.

As I wrote above, the works – if that is what we should call them – created by the two artists are contextual in nature. Here we find – among other things – a version of Ravel’s Bolero whose tempo has been amended musically and recreated to apply the logic of the Fibonacci sequence; then, as we progress from one room to another, we pass through the time of instability and of endless construction and deconstruction... ultimately arriving in the last of the rooms – FRAUGHTIANA 3 – where a space built inside another space conjures up the idea of the almost esoteric catharsis of a songbird’s trill or masonic symbolism via the element of light.

Mario Casanova (with Pier Giorgio De Pinto and Valter Luca Signorile), 2015

Translation by Pete Kercher

MACT/CACT Suisse enjoys the financial and cultural support of Republic and Canton of Ticino/Swisslos, City of Bellinzona, Friends of MACT/CACT, the Artists.

Special thanks are due to enterprise Casa Nova SA that made this exhibition possible.

FRAUGHT

Pier Giorgio De Pinto & Valter Luca Signorile

Vernissage Sabato 28 novembre 2015 dalle 17:30

28 novembre 2015 – 14 febbraio 2016

Ve-sa-do dalle 14:00 alle 18:00

(Chiuso dal 21 dicembre 2015 all’8 gennaio 2016)

'Per quanto possa essere completa, l'unione di due anime lascia differenze che rendono piacevole la conversazione'.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Il MACT/CACT chiude l’anno 2015 con la mostra dal titolo FRAUGHT, ideata e concepita nel 2014. I protagonisti di questo progetto anomalo sono PIER GIORGIO DE PINTO e VALTER LUCA SIGNORILE, che – in questa occasione – si uniscono per dare vita a un progetto tematico comune a quattro mani.

FRAUGHT (frɔ:t) è termine antico, dalle origini nord-europee, che riassume diversi significati, tra cui quello di ‘carico’, ‘gravido’, ‘pieno’, ‘denso’, ‘pregno’ di archetipi. Ed è attorno a questo termine che i due artisti sviluppano tutto il loro progetto site specific, che si estende sulle 4 sale espositive a disposizione. Ogni sala è denominata con il neologismo ‘FRAUGHTIANA’ e ognuna di esse porta un numero, seguendo la sequenza matematica di Fibonacci; quindi 1, 1, 2, 3: sequenza che Leonardo Pisano, detto il Fibonacci (1175-1235), teorizzò osservando la natura e il loro sviluppo progressivo per indicare l’aumento esponenziale del numero. Per gli artisti, che riflettono sull’esistenza dell’uomo, dalla nascita alla morte, tale successione numerica rappresenta la deflagrazione e la liberazione dopo la stratificazione dell’esperienza umana, dal dolore per la nascita alla consapevolezza della perdita di un mondo possibile e ideale. Ecco che l’artista, nella sua dimensione irreale, si colloca nuovamente al centro di un possibilismo esistenziale e/o altro. DE PINTO e SIGNORILE giocano con i diversi piani, con le stratificazioni temporali legate al loro vissuto individuale nella società, quasi come se tutto assumesse un’atemporalità quasi Joyciana, dove i protagonisti di questa mostra rimangono in bilico tra l’incoscienza fetale e la presa di coscienza nell’esperienza metaforica della vita.

Nelle sale non ci sono opere particolari, né la loro esistenza sarebbe per noi importante, ma un invito alla percezione immanente, giocato tra installazioni contestuali e ambientali, ed evocative installazioni sonore. Cerchio, rotondità, ciclicità e sfericità sono gli elementi di FRAUGHT, ove si manifestano stati d’animo duali e dualistici, a tratti contrastanti e complementari contemporaneamente.

Ogni percorso di FRAUGHT conduce verso un momento, una riflessione, un’azione o una stasi, ma comunque il moto dell’uomo verso l’universo, passeggiando tra allegorie e simbologie. Ogni opera all’interno delle sale reca il nome della sala stessa e come in un climax ascendente, l’ultima tappa raggiunge quel pathos e quella energia simbolica che ci unisce all’universale. Video, installazioni plastiche e sonore, elementi – appunto – simbolici danno vita a questo grande magma, che definisce l’uomo attraverso la sua indefinibilità o la sua perseverante fascinazione per il doppio e per il duale, per l’inafferrabile ineluttabile.

Come detto, le opere, se così si possono definire, realizzate dai due artisti sono a carattere contestuale, dove trovano collocazione – tra gli altri – anche un ‘Bolero’ di Ravel modificato musicalmente per quanto riguarda il tempo, e ricreato secondo la successione di Fibonacci, oppure, passando da una sala per accedere alla successiva, si attraversa il tempo della instabilità e della costruzione/decostruzione infinita... Fino ad arrivare all’ultima delle sale – FRAUGHTIANA 3 –, laddove uno spazio costruito in un altro spazio suggerisce la catarsi quasi esoterica del canto degli uccelli o la simbolica massonica attraverso l’elemento della luce.

Mario Casanova (con Pier Giorgio De Pinto e Valter Luca Signorile), 2015

MACT/CACT Arte Contemporanea Ticino è sostenuto finanziariamente e culturalmente da Repubblica e Cantone del Ticino/Swisslos, Città di Bellinzona, Amici del MACT/CACT, gli Artisti.

Un ringraziamento particolare va alla ditta Casa Nova SA per aver contribuito alla realizzazione dell’esposizione.

Pier Giorgio De Pinto (1968) & Valter Luca Signorile (1965), Fraughtiana 2, 2015.

Photo documentation / Ph. Pier Giorgio De Pinto © PRO LITTERIS Zürich

Photo documentation / Ph. Valter Luca Signorile 2015