Posted By Adriano Arati ~ 9th May 2012
Bruce Sterling & Jasmina Tešanović cure the preface of the book that accompanies the new photografic project Humanescape of Marco Bolognesi. Here we propose a portrait of the two authors…..
PRESENT and future interwoven with strong ropes of the past. Like Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tešanović. Bruce is one of the cyber-punk fathers’ – the other is William Gibson, the fans of Shirley and Shiner are pleased not to feel themselves slighted -, Jasmina is a feminism icon of the past 30 years and a fine writer. In a four-hand talk like they do often in their texts, published in the introduction of Bolognesi’s book, Sterling & Tešanović speak about Humaescape, the last work of Marco Bolognesi. Important names that speak only for good reasons. Today, we can read them in their online features Wired and La Stampa, where they hold a feature on Turin, the town that adopted them and where they live since some years, when thousands of engagements don’t take them away. Loved names – particularly Sterling – by lovers of culture and modern, “technological” science-fiction. That cyber-punk that owes a lot to the Texan Sterling. From the first editions to the theorization of the “wave”, if we can call it so. The most important titles are written by William Gibson, with the fantastic Burning Chrome, Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdive, but the cornerstone of cyber-punk remains Mirrorshades, year 1986. It’s the collection of short novels, cured by Sterling, with the greatest names that defines and theorizes the category. If someone desires to know better this cybernetic punk, we recommend the reading of those pages. Where the future is the today’s, in some cases differently shaped, we find dystophies, colonization, big commercial empires, the “web” and a lot of darkness. The Serbian Tešanović walked a very different path started up from Italy – her second homeland – with feminism’s mark. She became famous but she took big risks too in the Yugoslavia of the 70’s fostering feminist instances and initiatives. From then her journalist, polemist and writer career didn’t stop and shows a torrential production rhythm bonded with a strong civil engagement. “Woman in black” against Balkan’s War – she Serbian – author of “Normality, moral work of a politic idiot” a touching diary of the Kosovo’s War that, published on the web, made her “expert” of the new modernity. But she remains bonded to an ancient hearth: she translated in Slavonic the works of Calvino, Moravia, Morante. Tešanović & Sterling. Two “dark” hearths if we think about their often dreary works but with a strong faith in progress and in technology, their meeting point.
Posted By Bomar Studio ~ 3rd April 2012
Marco Bolognesi, Inland Empire, 2012, 125x196
“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.” Jorge Luis Borges
The reflection at the centre of the Humanescape project that I’ll present for the 2012 edition of the European photography festival is moved by several questions: How is the individual to be seen within his or her world? How do everyday living, social life, our surroundings , the constructions and constrictions that surround us influence how we feel? How does the individual interact with that which surrounds? Does one feel actor or victim, included or excluded? Being born in a place and living there determines the “landscape” to which one belongs and the reference group to which one compares, this should lend a sense of inclusion, making the individual feel part of a community. This mecchanism, however, isn’t innate in humanity and the collectivity should raise doubts and questions on how to guide the individual towards meeting, exchanging and participating. Society of the new millenium, post-modern, globalised, insecure, has lost its faith and ideologies and, along with these, the structures and limits that characterised these systems over the last few centuries, producing in their place a sense of individualism and solitude. Social structures have come undone, mass media builds a hyper-reality made up of falsehoods and mans’ rapport with others, and with nature, are evermore mediated and artificial. Linking to the concept of Liquid Modernity by Zigmunt Bauman , we may say that the processes of privatisation and deregulation of the State bring to an end the modern project of the individual-citizen. The expectations of the individual and of the citizen contradict one another and may be exemplified in the difference between the ‘de iure’ (rights-duties) individual and the ‘de facto’ (ability to assert) individual. To use Bauman’s words crisis of the individual is characterised by ” a vast and ever-widening divide between the conditions of the ‘de iure’ individual and their chances of becoming ‘de facto’ individuals, meaning to become masters of their own destinies and making choices based on what they truely desire”. The risk is immobility and incapability of asserting the self. The divide was created and is enlarging because of the emptying of the public space: “the individual ‘de iure’ cannot transform into a ‘de facto’ individual before having become a citizen”. My work is moved by this ‘accident waiting to happen’, almost to avoid a possible future, that must be avoided but that is already visible, albeit in embryonic form, around us; photographing and representing a world in which the individual is dehumanised, denuded of all ornamentation and deprived of freedom. Alone and imprisoned, the individual is inserted into a landscape, built of games and scenes that, like the falsities of everyday reality, oppress. Looking back at the characteristics of my past works, operas made up of large format images, with the female figure central, completely painted in white that, like the modern Gulliver, tied down and suffering, recognise nothing within their surroundings and filled with feelings of solitude and motionlessness. As in all of my works, the female body is the actor, this time used as a metaphor of the single individual no longer ( – or not yet) citizen, and the only real element of the image, surrounded by toys. The subtle red line that guides is the contrast between the real and the fictional, white and colour, human and toy. The real is the individual, the womans body, large and central. The risk underlined is loss of humanity: All the details and imperfections typical of humanity are cancelled in these purest white figures, without hair and expressing, at times, seeming resigned to their fate, at others, ready to fight. Here is the apologia of individuals who fight, wrestle and, in the end, give up on trying to defend their own rights, the wish to be an important part of the world. The fiction is the series of landscapes in which these bodies are immersed; like dioramas representing moments in life and real situations. They’re built from coloured meccano, which become landscape structures and, at the same time, coercive elements that imprison the individual. Houses, schools, churches, hotels, gyms, places from everyday life. All around them, many little personalities are playfully busy in their silent lives, unworried by the sufferings and the horror of the individual, they populate the INSCAPE, its internal point of view. The concept of ‘INTERNAL LANDSCAPES’ has been present for some time in my work and this project amounts to its first chapter. The external landscape, objective and tangible, which appears to our senses is always mediated through an interior landscape, hidden and mutable. The interior landscape is the reflection of mans’ gaze upon the world. A subjective vision linked to that which exists, to memories, to emotions, to the people that live in, and shape, the places in which they live. The term ‘INSCAPE’ is used for the first time by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to define that mix of characteristics that confer uniqueness and exclusivity to individual experience. The symbolic message is very clear: No landscape exists without a representation of it and it is through this passage that society manifests its aspirations and participates in the process of socio-cultural evolution. This study of the interior landscape that analyses the links between places, personality and experience has been transformed into this work of INSCAPE and HUMANESCAPE, the human landscape or man running away? A scenario on the limits where the placecomes from a society that is unable to welcome, make feel part of nor grant the individual status as a citizen.
Marco Bolognesi
Posted By Vittorio Beccari ~ 12th March 2012
Le farfalle volteggiano nel fitto dei fenomeni, nella cui ombra la pantera sogna. (Ernst Jünger)
“Ceci n’est pas un papillon“. Facile la parafrasi magrittiana ma, in questo caso, non del tutto scontata; perché questa “è una farfalla”, intesa come essere vivente, vibrante particella del creato, giusto nella misura in cui… non è una farfalla.
Una normale farfalla, neanche particolarmente bella, ma che ha una particolarità: non è stata la natura a determinare i disegni delle sue ali. O, per meglio dire, lo ha fatto solo in parte, perchè il codice genetico del lepidottero è stato deliberatamente alterato dall’artista Marta De Menezes. Quindi una “tipica” opera di Arte Transgenica (o arte genetica, biotech o bio art), espressione quindi di quella ricerca creativa che introduce il materiale biologico come nuovo strumento dell’arte.
In un precedente post avevamo parlato di “Post Human“; termine, coniato nell’ormai lontano 1991 dal critico Jeffrey Deitch, che in questo ventennio ha goduto di grande popolarità. Seppure spesso abbinato, in modo alquanto disinvolto, ai contenuti più disparati, ha avuto il merito di fotografare una tendenza che si è progressivamente affermata nell’arte contemporanea, e che trova proprio nella Transgenic Art la sua frontiera più estrema, che ha eletto a propria icona… un coniglietto verde.
Infatti nel 2000 l’avvento sulla scena di “GFP Bunny”, una coniglia albina che, se esposta alla luce U.V., diventa verde fluorescente, “creata” dal brasiliano Eduardo Kac, attrae l’interesse dei media internazionali, e scatena una ridda di polemiche. Fino ad arrivare ad una vera e propria censura, che rende impossibile presentare in pubblico il coniglio.
“E’ chiaro che la manipolazione genetica diventerà una parte integrante della nostra esistenza nel futuro. Gli esseri transgenici popoleranno il paesaggio terrestre, organismi transgenici vivranno nelle nostre fattorie ed animali domestici transgenici entreranno a far parte delle nostre famiglie. Non possiamo ancora dire se sia un bene o un male, ma sta di fatto che la carne e i vegetali che mangeremo non saranno più gli stessi. Nel futuro avremo noi stessi del materiale transgenico, impianti meccanici ed elettronici all’interno del nostro corpo. In altre parole, diventeremo transgenici.” (Eduardo Kac, “Transgenic Art”, 1998)
Kac, che già dagli anni 80 aveva posto al centro della propria ricerca artistica il rapporto fra arte, potere, tecnologia, ritiene che l’arte possa fornire strumenti importanti di decodifica, riflessione, conoscenza anche quando si parla di biotecnologia. Tematiche che l’artista ha ulteriormente indagato, trara il 2003 e il 2008, sviluppando il progetto “Natural History of the Enigma”, che vede al centro Edunia, una petunia contenente il DNA di Kac.
Dalla nascita del coniglietto ad oggi sono nati molti centri specializzati nel binomio arte/biotecnologia. Fra questi un ruolo di rilievo spetta al collettivo SymbioticA, fondato da Oron Catts e Ionat Zurr. La loro attività di ricerca è svolta nella School of Anatomy and Human Biology della University of Western Australia, in un modernissimo laboratorio interamente dedicato all’esplorazione artistica delle tecnologie biologiche (The Art and Science Collaborative Research Laboratory () ) presso la University of Western Australia.
Il loro lavoro, che indaga l’potesi di rendere il corpo vivente massa organica malleabile, viene definito “art of the semi-living”. Le loro opere consistono in frammenti di tessuto cellulare coltivati in vitro, ed esposti trasferendo complessi apparati di laboratorio nelle gallerie di arte contemporanea. La materia vivente diviene contemporaneamente mezzo e fine dell’opera artistica.
Un esempio in questo senso è il progetto per realizzare le “Ali di Maiale”.
La storia delle culture è ricca di corpi alati (sia animali che umani) utilizzati come icone fantastiche e mistiche; basti pensare a Pegaso, alla Sfinge, a Icaro, ai draghi, agli angeli… Le Ali di Maiale di Symbiotica, realizzate con l’impiego di cellule staminali prelevate dall’osso del maiale, reinterpretano il mito in chiave moderna. L’impalcatura osseo/cartilaginea è stata realizzata mediante polimeri su cui sono stati disseminati condrociti i quali lentamente sostituiscono la matrice artificiale con tessuto organico cartilagineo, che va a sostituire il polimero che gradualmente si degrada. Alla fine di tutto questo delicato procedimento, le ali ottenute vengono conservate sotto formalina per due mesi, poi fatte seccare e ricoperte d’oro per proteggerle.
Un’altra realizzazione di SymbioticA è “Disembodied Cuisine”, sviluppata nel corso di Marzo del 2003 a Nantes, in occasione della mostra internazionale di arte biologica. Dalla biopsia fatta su di una rana sono state isolate le cellule da “coltivare”; mentre la rana saltellava per la galleria-laboratorio, contemporaneamente si sviluppava in vitro la “bistecca” da lei originata, in seguito offerta “in assaggio” ai visitatori dell’esposizione. La prefigurazione di un possibile futuro in cui il consumo di carne potrebbe prescindere dall’uccisione di animali.
Symbiotica sostiene che gli artisti per primi hanno la possibilità, se non il dovere, di partecipare attivamente alla definizione dei possibili scenari futuri determinati dalla implementazione delle nuove concoscenze tecnoscientifiche; più in generale, la finalità di questo tipo di sperimentazioni è provocare la discussione, simulando in una forma estremizzata le ricadute della tecnoscienza sulla società. Ma le implicazioni epistemologiche, etiche e giuridiche di questa sperimentazione artistica restano controverse, perchè per la prima volta gli strumenti dell’artista sono “materiali viventi”.
“Le farfalle volteggiano nel fitto dei fenomeni, nella cui ombra la pantera sogna” ha scritto Ernst Jünger; ma, la dove volteggiano farfalle transgeniche, il confine fra sogno e incubo diventa labile…
Posted By Adriano Arati ~ 25th January 2012
It’s easy to return to the sixteen’s and to the beginning of the seventeen’s, but other times the British artist tried to launch webs that connect far planets. And if in the “innocent” sixties he looked like a pioneer – in fact an attentive and very good observer of [...] Continue Reading…
Posted By Adriano Arati ~ 5th December 2011
After the first presentation of Mock-up and of the video at the Italian Institute of Design in Milan, Marco Bolognesi speaks about his last work that is leaving for an international tour in galleries and exhibition spaces.
Propaganda Republic retrieves an old guru of the Italian science-fiction, Margheriti. What [...] Continue Reading…
Posted By Bomar Studio ~ 14th November 2011
Mock-up is the name of the installation presented by Marco Bolognesi at Invideo 2011, the international video and cinema show.
The installation is composed by the model of the spaceship Skeleton Arcadia, a big scale reproduction realised with 300 toys and the homage video Propaganda Republic that recalls the social [...] Continue Reading…
Posted By Bomar Studio ~ 24th October 2011
A new Bomar Universe’s domino is actually being presented to the great public in an international framework. The intense activity of these days brought Bolognesi to Rome where he met one of the professionals that participate to this new project: Davide Masi.
Here, we can read the interview with [...] Continue Reading…
Posted By Bomar Studio ~ 28th September 2011
What’s Bomar Universe?
Marco Bolognesi: Bomar Universe is an expanding artistic project, each of my project is a domino of this global work. In other words, Bomar Universe is the living space of my art, the universe in which I fertilize my artistic creation.
In the Bomar Universe the heroes are [...] Continue Reading…
Posted By Elena Invernizzi ~ 15th September 2011
An orange jumpsuit, a cloak with bits of old PCs stuck onto it, a helmet with electric wires of every possible colour and length coming out of it, plaited as though they were the hair of some electromechanical punk coming from some parallel universe, arriving in our reality directly [...] Continue Reading…
Posted By Adriano Arati ~ 1st September 2011
Twenty years ago appeared a monster called Screamadelica, one of the key albums for the present music.
In 1991, the Primal Scream – one of the firsts and among the bests – mixed rock, dance and electro and
now they present him live in a world tour, that crossbred son. Son [...] Continue Reading…
