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 the avant-garde wave – in the nineteen’s he reappears as a story-teller. He did it in 1995 with Outside, one of the most discussed records, among electronic and Viennese Actionists, mutilations and artificial bodies, scenarios of that what – at that time – was future and pre-millennium tension disquiets (the story rules out in 1999). To bond all, one of the most effective fiction’s adhesive, the crime story, that sees Bowie in the part of the detective Nathan Adler, specialized in “artistic crimes”, murders in which the bodies are mutilated to become art works. Outside should have been the first of the chapters of a five-act story following Adler and other actors of this dystopic world told with records of different styles. The target was to create the concept of a unique narrative world, into Bowie’s representing coordinates of this dark pre-millennium image. The common points with Bomar Universe are a lot, the science-fiction themes, the willingness to enter in a new world bonded with the earth reality, the strong interest to the idea of the body as art-work and of the relation between body and machine: it’s a painful relation. In Outside the detective Adler/Bowie encounters personages that modify and mutilate their body – Bowie’s memory of the sixteen’s, of Nitsch, of the Viennese Actionists, of his guru Lindsay Kemp. Memories of alternative worlds, of the classic “sci-fi” that inspired the first Bowie’s masterpieces, background of another historic record Diamond Dogs, where transmuted humans revive the most famous dystopia of the ‘900 narration. Another time it’s easy to walk hand in hand with the Bomar Universe.
And sounds? We are speaking of music, of course, and Bowie is the masse-diffuser of avant-garde and experimentation. In this case, electronic music, dance and harsh rhythm, British pop-rock of which the Duke is the guru, all in synthetic black, as the atmosphere and his partner (the immortal Brian Eno). It’s not simply a disc: the added-value is the packaging. Outside it’s accompanied by a good book, the cited works, work-drafts, the artistic murders, extracts of Adler’s diary (rich of good reflections), the texts, translated in a lot of languages, as Bowie asked. Maybe the last great flicker of Bowie. Not a music masterpiece but a great conceptual work. With a regret: the following is not yet arrived and a lot of fans are waiting new artistic mutilation to listen. Maybe watching some extracts of Bomar Universe.
A.A.
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 did you drive toward him?
I’ve ever loved and I love science-fiction and my meetness with this big pioneer of this gender – Antonio Margheriti – has been naturally. The research of the extent in which the Italian culture contributed to the cinema’s story and particularly science-fiction is very important for me.
I refer to film directors that built a vein, more or less interesting, that promoted our cinema with La morte viene dello spazio (The death comes from espace) of 1958 directed by Paolo Heusch (his first science-fiction film) with scenography by Mario Bava who realised with Riccardo Freda Caltiki il mostro immortale (Caltiki the immortal monster) a Italian remake of the original of Blob Mortale and in 1965 Terrore dallo spazio (Terror from the space) an extraordinary film that gave inspiration to Ridley Scott for its Alien .
And the great and pioneristic cinema of Antonio Margheriti at the beginning with Space men, then with Il pianeta degli uomini spenti (The planet of the damped men) and with a cycle of very interesting science-fiction films.
Mock-Up puts together more “modern” parts (the last generation animations) and “older” one (Margheriti’s film, the spaceship model). Why this mix of opposite elements?
From 1992, when I began my artistic career, my favourite expressive mean and file rouge of my research is collage.
Catching old and new elements to mix them produces a de-contextualization aimed to transformation that is a creation, something new. This is a common element in the postmodern culture that bases its originality in the fusion of genders and styles.
Why did you use the spaceship as display?
The spaceship is a mock-up, like the prototypes used in publicity to reproduce an original item.
It’s re-construction, artificiality, control on vision.
In the same way, my Skeleton Arcadia attracts the audience making it actor of the installation, induces it to search the truth inside that that in the best propaganda’s action is a “war spaceship that fights to enforce peace and democracy”.
In the spaceship Arcadia – beginning from its name – there are a lot of call-backs to great Japanese science-fiction and animation directors, as Leiji Matsumoto, author of Capitan Harlock and Starblazers. It’s a tribute?
Sure, I’m a great fan of Matsumoto, his style and his characters are very appealing for me.
What do you think about these authors? In Italy they are often considered “for children only”.
We have an old cultural problem that induces to think that cartoons are only for children because they are near to tales.
This culture pushes us to think that the Walt Disney story is the “right” cartoon to propose to our children, and we do not consider how much dangerous allegories are included in the tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
The video develops in Bomar Universe. However, in this thirteen’s video we se lot of call-backs to the “Earth” actuality, to the manner to diffuse the news, to the manner of action of the media. Today like 70 years ago. What do you want to tell with this comparison?
We developed the text based on studies of popular and populist speeches of at least ten dictators form the thirteen’s to nowadays and we discovered an incredible analogousness. They magnify the regime’s power that often expresses itself in a form of popular republic.
You are one of the protagonists of Invideo 2011. It’s important for you? It’s more a conclusion of a path or a birth of a new phase? Are you already thinking about new projects? Will they always live in Bomar Universe? Will they have a knot with Reggio?
I’m been honoured of taking part to the festival Invideo but I think that projects are a bridge of an interior and philosophic path that develops in the time.
I think that in future I’ll develop more videos because I want to animate my universe, to give a form to what remained blocked in my photos.
Reggio is my town now and therefore it is involved every day since two years in my life and in my projects.
A.A.
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 science-fiction’s universe, using a cine-magazine of the thirteen’s. After Dark Star and the tribute to John Carpenter, Marco Bolognesi, revisits the Space Opera of Margheriti “The Battle of the Worlds”.
The eye of Bolognesi interlaces with the naïf images of Margheriti to create an installation in which you enter totally.
In the original film a planet guided by the “central mind” enters in collision course with the Earth to destroy it. The central mind continues ruthless his mission to conquer the Earth. The hero of Margheriti’s film is the eccentric scientist Benson, whose intervention allows to the humans to find the enormous central mind and rescue the Earth.
Bomar Universe’s amazons (the universe in which lives the art of Marco Bolognesi) interact with the protagonists of Margheriti’s film to create a perfect integration between the two worlds. Bolognesi gives a face and a body to the feared “stranger” that in the original film is never shoot. He rereads the story from the point of view of the invader and re-interpreting the final. The spaceship, with his kaleidoscopic shape, is an integrating part of the story and a scenographic element that allows you to participate to the scene.
Re-emerging from the imaginary of Bolognesi you have the impression that the forced propaganda of the video is only a “mock-lecture” of the actual politic communication. A resolute critic that Bolognesi has no fear to express.
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…
Posted By Bomar Studio ~ 23rd August 2011
Are there particular books that have inspired you in your work?
Marco Bolognesi: ’1984′ is a book that has had a strong influence on my work, because of the control trip that’s presented. On the one hand, the concepts of IngSoc fascinate me, the english socialist ideology that’s based [...] Continue Reading…
Posted By Elena Invernizzi ~ 25th July 2011
The 16th July 1988 a nuclear explosion devastates Tokyo and signs the beginning of the third world war in the Japanese cartoon Akira of Katsuhiro Otomo, a true masterpiece and considered by someone the first of the modern cartoons.
In 2019 – after thirty-one years – Tokyo risks the civil [...] Continue Reading…
Posted By Michele Medici ~ 11th July 2011
Mrs. Stardust sang her songs of darkness and dismay.
Lady stardust
If we would play, but it’s not really a play, if we would compare a soundtrack to the work of Marco Bolognesi, this would be the one of the album The rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the [...] Continue Reading…
