October 27, 2011

The Celebration of the Living 2, Venezia/Lecce

The Patience Sanctuary in San Cesario di Lecce

MICROCLIMA and LU CAFAUSU present
The “Celebration of the living (who reflect upon death)”, 2011 (second edition)
A sculpture workshop, a trip, a conference, a celebration.

Between October 30th and November 3rd the second edition of the “Celebration of the living (who reflect upon death)”. This edition will be articulated in the form of a complex workshop which will take place in the Serra dei Giardini in Venice, in San Cesario di Lecce, and on the bus between the two places. The celebration is a project by Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti and Luigi Presicce.

The steps of the workshop are the following:

VENICE
Oct 30 and 31, sculpture workshop at the Serra dei Giardini: all the participants, individually or in small groups, will reproduce Polipo (Octopus) a sculpture made by Ezechiele Leandro taken from the sculpture garden “Santuario della pazienza” (Patience Sanctuary). Once the sculptures are made, the participants will discuss and decide their further destiny.

During the workshop several events will take place, that are open to the public, among which:

Oct 30, 2011, 5 pm Monologues interpreted by Jacopo De Santis. Texts by Brocchi, Gaber, Laforgue, Maupassant, Pirandello, Zola.

Oct 31, 2011, 5 pm Gabriele Mina, anthropologist, editor of the book Costruttori di Babele. Sulle tracce di architetture fantastiche e universi irregolari in Italia, Elèuthera 2011, will present his research on artistic sites in Italy created by outsider artists. Microclima - Serra dei Giardini, Viale Giuseppe Garibaldi, 1254, 30122 Venezia - Castello
info(at)microclima-venezia.com
www.microclima-venezia.com

Nov 1 (only for the participants to the workshop) – bus trip from Venice to San Cesario di Lecce (approximately 12 hours); on the bus a conference with interventions by the participants on the themes related to the celebration will take place.

SAN CESARIO DI LECCE
Nov 2 – public celebration of the “Festa dei Vivi (che riflettono sulla morte)” and possible installation of the sculptures. Morning: Visit to Lu Cafausu and to the Santuario della Pazienza.
From 8.30 to 11.30 pm, in the Laboratorio di Arte e Architettura “Archiviazioni”, in Lecce, via Enzo Ferrari, contrada Pisello, Night party and cafausic happening with music from an almost forgotten Italian repertoire, curated by Oh Petroleum and Luca F.

Last year, on November 2, 2010, AND AND AND* has invited Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese and Cesare Pietroiusti and Luigi Presicce and they have proposed to turn the November 2 traditional celebration of the Dead ones, into a new holiday: “La Festa dei Vivi (che riflettono sulla morte)”, “The Celebration of the Living (who reflect upon death)”.

For this celebration, the artists invited everyone to be part of a pilgrimage, probably the shortest and slowest in the world, having as a departure point and as its destination, Lu Cafausu in San Cesario di Lecce. The celebration and the pilgrimage wanted to represent a reflection upon death as transformation, threshold, mystery, but also as a necessary perspective of meaning.
The pilgrimage was also the occasion for a visit to the “Sanctuary of Patience” and an homage to the figure of Ezechiele Leandro.

Lu Cafausu is a mysterious small building, an architectural remnant that the artists have elected as a source of metaphors and narratives. It is “an imaginary place that really exists” around which the presence of death is floating. Any day, the small building can in fact be demolished to accommodate more parking space for cars, or can also fall apart due to its precariousness. It could also be turned and frozen into a monument.
Because of this feeling of the presence of death, Lu Cafausu is an ideal place for a new celebration, “La Festa dei Vivi”, who, in order to give sense to life, reflect upon death; their own, first and foremost. www.lucafausu.tk

The Santuario della Pazienza by Ezechiele Leandro (1905-1981) is an extraordinary example of mystical garden, a forest of statues, a temple or a cemetery, an almost unrepresentable site of the artistic power and expression of a self-taught dilettante artist, a singularity completely out of the grids and schemes that define and separate high and low culture. 


* ANDANDAND is an artist run initiative, which is using the time between now and dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012 to consider with individuals and groups across the world the role art and culture can play today and the constituent publics or communities which could be addressed.

October 20, 2011

Click or Clash?, Milano

From The Celebration of the Living, first edition
Click or Clash? Strategies of Collaboration. First stage. Via Lewandowsky, Cesare Pietroiusti, Luigi Presicce

Click or Clash? Strategies of Collaboration, is a long-term project curated by Julia Draganovic and LaRete Art Project, promoted by Galleria Bianconi. The first show will open at Galleria Bianconi (via Lecco, 20 Milano) on October 20th at 6pm with the contribution of Via Lewandowsky, Cesare Pietroiusti and Luigi Presicce.

Collaborative practices are at the heart not only of reflections on post 9/11 society, but also, consequently, of a great number of artistic researches. Meanwhile in the beginning the goal of these strategies seemed to be the creation of a consensus, nowadays voices like Markus Miessen’s that stress the “violence” and even the “nightmare” of participation have become louder and louder. “Collaboration” as the answer to situations of conflict has revealed itself a highly controversial proposal: collaboration could be understood as crossing or even opening the borders to let the enemy in and betray your peers by neglecting their rights. As an alternative, Chantal Mouffe conceived the term of agonism for a friendly confrontation between adversaries, demanding an arena that allows for conflicts to emerge and that gives an opportunity for a constructive expression of disagreement. Do we click or do we clash? is not a simple question. But both results of the comparison between different positions, whether disputable or harmonious, should create a surplus of knowledge and should permit new prospective.

“Click or Clash. Strategies of Collaboration” wants to take up these reflections inviting artists to confront their artistic position regarding certain issues with fellow artists from another country, cultural background or working field. Starting in October 2011 Galleria Bianconi will invite three artists for every exhibition, to show their works in the exhibition space on the ground floor and the basement of Galleria Bianconi, in Milan. Every show will open a debate around a different field of arguments – in a visual and a verbal way, as each show will be accompanied by a panel discussion about the themes the invited artists display.

In the first stage of Click or Clash?, the first click is between Pietroiusti and Presicce. Their installation, which will be for the first time exhibited at Galleria Bianconi, is the result of a larger collaboration, born as part of AND AND AND, an artist run initiative, curated by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, which is using the time between now and dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012 to consider with individuals and groups across the world the role that art and culture can play today. Last year, on November 2, 2010 the artists’ group formed by Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese and Cesare Pietroiusti with Luigi Presicce, in order to answer to the invitation, proposed to turn the November 2 traditional celebration of the Dead ones, into a new holiday “La festa dei vivi (che riflettono sulla morte)” (The Celebration of the Living who reflect upon death). The artists invited everyone to be part of a pilgrimage, probably the shortest and slowest in the world, started from Lu Cafausu in San Cesario di Lecce.

Beside this, the exhibition will present the still hidden “clicks or clashs” that involve Via Lewandowsky, the third actor of this first episode of Click or Clash. German born, Lewandowsky, who is currently artist in residence at Villa Massimo in Rome, often works on the fine line dividing public and private, using a variety of media like sculpture, installation and language.


Photo: Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti, Luigi Presicce. "La festa dei vivi (che riflettono sulla morte)" (The Celebration of the Living, who reflect upon death), first edition, San Cesario di Lecce, 2 November 2010. Inside the project "AND AND AND" curated by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, for dOCUMENTA(13). Photo Luigi Negro

20 October 2011 - 7 January 2012
Click or Clash? Strategies of Collaboration. First stage. Via Lewandowsky, Cesare Pietroiusti, Luigi Presicce
curated by Julia Draganovic
opening 20 October, 6-9 pm

monday - saturday
10 am - 1 pm / 2 - 7 pm
Galleria Bianconi, Milano