The Places of Memory

 416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), Artist impression in situ, as officially announced by Universita’ di Pisa in March 2023 here

416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (12 July 2023) installation view

DEVELOPMENT

I conceived the artwork 416_SR1939 (concept, design and activation) as part of the wider Places of Memory, in response to an invite by Prof Paolo Mancarella and this has evolved with the support of Prof Riccardo Zucchi, Rector of Università di Pisa. It contributes to the Memory Pole, SR1938 building designed by Heliopolis 21 Associate Architects (whom Alessandro Melis, former Curator of Padiglione Italia, 17a mostra di Architettura, la Biennale di Venezia, is founder and Ilaria Fruzzetti is Associate) together with Diener & Diener Architeknen. SR1938 is included in the census for Italian architecture since 1945 to today, promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity – Italian Ministry of Culture.

The name “Memory Pole San Rossore 1938” was chosen by Prof Mancarella to recall the collective memory to the “Ceremony of the memory and apologies” celebrated in 2018 on the occasion of the 80th of the signature at San Rossore of the Racial Laws in Italy (1938).

Screenshot of first meeting on 20th December 2020 with Ilaria Fruzzetti (Heliopolis), Paolo Mancarella, Carla Caldani, Fabrizio Franceschini, Maurizio Gabrielli (President of Comunita’ Ebraica di Pisa), where the concept of the project was approved

I set out to develop the concept based on my long time interest in perception in the present in relation to memory (since 1994, and https://elenacologni.com/projects/rockfluid/) based on visual perception studies and gestalt, but earlier also through technology ( https://elenacologni.com/projects/memory/ ),

The proposal of the project The Places of Memory was positively received by the Jewish Community and the University at the end of 2020 and developed along several lines that converge in the final design of the memorial work entitled 416_SR1938 (2022) to be accompanied by: a temporary exhibition on the research carried out and the evolution of the idea I proposed;  the activation of places in the city through walks or ‘walkshops‘; and a symposium which includes international contributions.

The project is based on the idea that a memorial should remember that past, and be a fulcrum of dialogue, which can indicate shared paths of activation of communicative memory (Jan Assman 2008)’.

ARCHIVE  RESEARCH

The research conducted  in the archives of the “Tullia Zevi” Bibliographic Center in Rome (Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy) included two strands: 1) activities of the Associazione Donne Ebree Italiane (ADEI); and 2) documents on the correspondence between the Italian Jewish community and the Mussolini government indicating that in 1938 in Pisa there were 416 members belonging to the Jewish community. Even if this number seems to be only partially verifiable, as Prof Franceschini claims – it is in fact possible that there have been omissions and that many Jews preferred not to be registered – it is true that the numbers of Jews present in Pisa since 1938 have quickly decreased. As we know, the effect of racial laws on the Jewish population in Pisa and throughout Italy has been dramatic.

Folder, “Tullia Zevi” Bibliographic Center in Rome (Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy), photograph by Elena Cologni

DESIGN

To respond to the research done, I conceived an artwork based on previous work and studies, that generates perceptive stimuli in the viewer (including Gestalt and more specifically Gaetano Kanizsa 1955), through the light conditions on the building, in order to implement a temporal suspension by triggering a process of stratification of memories in the present of the fruition of the work itself.

Considering 416 elements, I worked creating sketches and prototypes, to define an increasing spatial progression of the individual modules thus casting a variation of shadows brought onto the surface to which they are fixed in a grid. The static basis of the elements is itself perceived as a shadow and interferes with the real ones that move over time during the day.

This result was of course based on studio experimentation, from initial tests of light and shadows to defining the grid structure, its proportions and positioning.

416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), from initial tests light/shadows (wood+brass)

416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), work in progress

 

416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), Axonometric sketches of ‘fregi’ (graphite + Indian ink on graph and tracing paper)

 

416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), work in progress for grid prototype (graphite+Indian ink)

 

416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), work in progress for grid prototype (graphite+Indian ink+ pins +brass)

416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (2022), defining the dimensions, from a Moleskine sketchbook ‘ The brass elements generate a real shadow, a non-static indication of decreasing depth in the grid, which interacts with the static dark square elements at the base of each module’

The brass plaques in the work aim to remember the 416 Jews in Pisa in 1938 whose fate is not known. If the garden inside the building was designed in parallel to bear the names of the professors of the University of Pisa expelled in that period due to the racial laws, this intervention  on the external facade, aims to recall the community in the city and their places, where they lived, worked and raised their children. Theme that of the relationship of individuals with places, attachment to (and detachment from) place, central to my research.

Paolo Mancarella, Alessandro Melis, Carla Caldani, and I on 05 August 2022, when the final design was shared

 

In the resulting memorial the shadows move with the changing of the light during the day to become prominent at times, just like it happens in history. Maurizio Gabrielli (12/07/2023) said:

the memorial is very much alive […]  you have given life to these 416 people“.

416_SR1938 ©Elena Cologni (12 July 2023) installation detail

CITY INTERVENTIONS

According to the sociologist Paul Connerton (2009) the place-memory relationship can be institutionalized, as in the case of memorials, and through architecture, but it is often in seemingly anonymous places, experienced through the bodily actions of the individual and every day that the individual’s memory grid is built. Through the memories that these places evoke, the individual can tame the surrounding world, but also re-emerge as a figure from the background of history.

So, what effect did the racial laws had on the Jews in Pisa and on the city itself? Where can traces of their stories be found in its streets?

The ‘walkshops‘ (from September 2023) are an integral part this project and were conceived precisely to ask these questions, activating the research underlying the memorial and at the same time stimulating new inputs from the participants to trigger communicative memory processes. For this phase dialogical sculptures will be adopted . At the basis of this modality is the inspiration from the activity carried out by ‘The club of the needle’, organized by the Association of Italian Jewish Women starting from 1936, which in addition to promoting initiatives to help the needy, supported cultural exchanges. This program is being developed with the support of Prof Fabrizio Franceschini and Alessandra Veronese, Director of the Interdepartmental Center for Jewish Studies, of the Università di Pisa, of Dr Maurizio Gabrielli, President of Pisa Jewish Community, of the secretary Federico Prosperi, and Prof Lucia Frattarelli Fischer.

 

 

(research in Pisa,  comunita’ ebraica archives, 2022, with also Federico Prosperi)

 

(walkhops research in Pisa, 2022, courtesy of Ilaria Fruzzetti, and with Guido Cava and I, 2022)

 

 

Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, Alessandra Peretti and Carla Forti indicated sources to evidence the women’s perspective and experience at the time

The project Places of Memory as a whole, thus addresses people, place, architecture, and its history, within which the I operate as an interface, to allow the history of the Jewish community in Pisa to arise. I do so with an approach I have defined as caring with. This is a strategy of dialogic art which starts from the assumption that the identity of the individual within the community depends on the construction of memories through shared experiences and which leads us to think of memory itself as a place.

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INSTALLATION

Thanks to Carla Caldani in the initial phase back in 2020, and also Prof Francesco Leccese, Alessio Giacco and David Lischi for the technical expertise in the fabrication phase.

 
David, Michele and I at the end of day 1 of installation (left) and of day 2 (just before discovering we had to redo a bit :-).

OPENING

On 12 October 2023 at 17 : official opening of 416_SR1938 at Università di Pisa, Polo della Memoria San Rossore

On 12 October between 9:30 and 15: Conference ‘Architettura e arte in dialogo con la memoria’ (Architecture and Art in dialogue with History), at Gipsoteca di Arte Antica, Piazza San Paolo all’Orto 20, Pisa. After welcome notes by Prof Riccardo Zucchi (Rettore Universita’ di Pisa), Prof Alessandra Veronese (Direttore CISE), Maurizio Gabbrielli (Presidente comunita’ ebraica di Pisa), Prof Paolo Mancarella (Università di Pisa), and Joe McCullagh (Head of Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University), the conference will include contribution by: Roger Diener (Diener & Diener Architekten ), Ilaria Fruzzetti (HELIOPOLIS 21 ARCHITETTI ASSOCIATI) and Alessandro Melis (New York Institute of Technology/ SoAD – IDC Foundation – HELIOPOLIS 21 ARCHITETTI ASSOCIATI ),  Gabi Scardi  (Universita’ Cattolica, Milano) Dr Caterina Albano (Reader in Visual Culture and Science, Central Saint Martins, University of The Arts London), Chiara Pazzaglia (Scuola Normale Superiore, & Université Paris Nanterre), Dr Elizabeth Johnson (Cambridge School of Art, ARU) Prof Fabrizio Franceschini (CISE), and Prof Lucia Frattarelli.

conference and opening

PUBLICATIONS

Cologni E. (2021) Invisible pillars. The role of Jewish women in women’s emancipation history in Italy – ARRO – Anglia Ruskin Research Online;

Cologni (2021) Figura/Sfondo. Un dialogo | Foreground/Background. A dialogue

https://www.pisauniversitypress.it/scheda-ebook/autori-vari/universita-di-pisa-obiettivo-cinque-9788833396132-575988.html

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Commissioned by the University of Pisa and curated by Alessandro Melis and Ilaria Fruzzetti – partners of the HELIOPOLIS 21 ARCHITETTI ASSOCIATI – and Gabi Scardi, my intervention was developed in collaboration with the Jewish community of Pisa (president Dr Maurizio Gabrielli, and Federico Prosperi), Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Ebraici “Michele Luzzati” (CISE) Universita’ di Pisa (Prof Fabrizio Franceschini and Prof Alessandra Veronese), Centro, Bibliografico “Tullia Zevi”, Roma, Fondazione per i Beni Culturali Ebraici in Italia, and many members of the local and international community.

The project’s design and conceptualisation phase was funded by the DYCP program Arts Council England (GB), and further support for impact comes from the Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University,  through the Quality Research and Innovation Fund Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (ARU). One of the notebooks is held in the Moleskin Foundation Art Collection.

 

Pratiche di cure, o del cur(v)are

Elena Cologni. Pratiche di cura, o del cur(v)are.  curator Gabi Scardi

May 17 – July 4, 2021, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Palazzetto Tito, Venice

in collaboration with resilient communities, the Italian Pavilion, Biennale of Architecture, La Biennale di Venezia.

ExhibitionGuideCologniBLM-FINAL

selected exhibition shots
Affordances, invito all’uso, installation (2021, 150x400x200 cm)
Affordances, invito all’uso, drawing series (2018, 30×40 cm each )
Mother Hooks, sculptures series (2020/various sizes)

Untitled (Prop), (2016, 100x100x5 cm / 200×300×2.5 cm)
Untitled (Prop), maket series), (2016, 25x25x3 cm ciascuno / each)
Intraplaces (recording forms), (2017, collage 80×100 cm ciascuno / each)
Untitled (Studies), (2016, 80×100 cm)
339282.580645 Barleycorns Away… (2017, installazione / installation)

Gropius’ Offcuts, sculptural composition (2015, wood+textile. 18 modules: 120 cm, variable hight and width)
Gropius’ Offcuts, (2015, 3 C-Type prints on allumynium, 35 x50 cm)

‘From the Orchard to the Home’, 1930, EAFA Cat. 589, East Anglian Film Archive, University of East Anglia
the images above are by Giorgio Bombieri, Settore Cultura, Comune di Venezia

Lo scarto (touch), (2015, from the series, porcelain)

 

Courtesy Comune di Venezia, Settore Cultura – Biblioteca civica VEZ, Fondo Archivio Giacomelli;

 

from the press release

The exhibition offers a journey through the artistic practice of Cologni starting from series of works – drawings, sculptures, installations and performative choreographies – relating to different moments of her previous research, and to her most recent project specifically created in relation to the Venetian context.

The exhibition project is articulated around a concept dear to the artist: the elaboration of the space of separation; an “intraplace” that unites and separates, which is distance, but also common ground; which is woven with bonds and can be bridged through healing practices.

In fact, Elena Cologni’s work is linked to a marked spatial sensitivity, to the idea of ​​an emotional and social bond, to the awareness of the interdependence between the individual, the community and the environment. More specifically, the artist focuses on the theme of care understood both as a personal relational commitment and in its territorial, historical-social, anthropological and gender dimensions.

Her interventions include an exploration of public and private space starting from historical investigations that in many cases touch on the themes of women’s emancipation in relation to the social and cultural heritage of the past, in this case places for laundry washing. The tendency to carry out participatory actions and to insert works in the public space are expressions of the value that Cologni attributes to collective requests. At the same time, however, the forms of his works, although rooted in physical and social reality, go through a process of reduction, in many cases to the point of abstraction. The recourse to a curved trend, frequent in drawings, sculptures, installations and choreographies of gestures in public space, suggests the need to escape linearity by bringing thought back to the idea of ​​the circle, metaphorically associated with ideas of equity, of participation , of continuity.

The exhibition Elena Cologni. Practices of care. On finding the cur(v)e is alive with different references. On the one hand it is rooted in the history of twentieth century art: there is a direct reference to Barbara Hepworth, who in 1950 took part in the British Pavilion of the Biennale d’Arte and who leaves observations of people in Piazza San Marco, which Cologni sees an antecedent of her choreographed exercises. On the other hand, the artist connects to the Venetian social context of which she investigates traditional crafts in danger of extinction and everyday work environments in order to understand the relationship between domestic space and work space.

The exhibition serves as a reference point for a series of events in Italy and abroad planned during the opening months, as detailed here The Body of/at Work

In Venice:

  • 5 June: The Body of/at Work, experiential exercises part of resilient communities Padiglione Italia, 17th Biennale di Architettura 2021, La Biennale di Venezia
  • 18 May – 3 July: The Body of/at Work experiential exercises with dialogic sculptures in the city

In London:

  • 24 June: Care(less). On invisibility; 25 June: Care(less). On forgetting; 26 June: Care(less). On discarding, are part of the London Festival of Architecture

Live streaming and updates available at https://www.facebook.com/thebodyofatwork/

Collaborations: Padiglione Italia, Biennale Architettura, La Biennale di Venezia; London Festival of Architecture; Laboratorio PRIDE, IR.IDE, Università Iuav di Venezia; Comune di Venezia, Settore Cultura – Biblioteca civica VEZ, Fondo Archivio Giacomelli; Comune di Venezia, Direzione Sviluppo del Territorio e Città Sostenibile AFU – Archivio Fotografico di Urbanistica; Associazione Crespi d’Adda, Comune di Capriate San Gervasio Municipalita’ di Casteverano; The Hepworth Collection, UK; Moleskine Foundation Collection; Homerton College, University of Cambridge; East Anglian Film Archive; Luigi Bevilacqua Tessiture; Anemotech theBreath.
The project is funded by: Artist International Development Fund, British Council; Emergency Fund 2020, Arts Council England; A-N Artist Bursary; Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University. And with the support of Wysing Arts Center.

CARE is RELATIONAL

The project ‘CARE: from periphery to centre’, combining commissioned, site specific art and material from the College Archive, was exhibited at Homerton College of the University of Cambridge between 15 and 28 October 2018. Part of the project remains permanently installed in the college, part is looked after in the college archive, and part is in the Moleskine Foundation Art Collection here .

It was discussed in an interview from 2019 with Ayla Van Der Boor in the context of the University of Utrecht’s managed Care Ethics Consortium (available here). Part of this is published in a limited edition catalogue CARE: from periphery to centre. Elena Cologni, with texts by historian of science Melanie Keene, educationalist Peter Cunningham, curator Gabi Scardi and care ethicist Virginia Held (here is the digital version of the catalogue)

The project highlighted Maud Cloudesley Brereton (formerly Maud Horobin, lecturer and Acting Principal, 1903), and Leah Manning (student 1906-08) as figures of international importance representing Homerton’s historic concern with and contributions to health, well-being, and education. A display of relevant items gave a snapshot of early 20th-century life in the College, while focusing on practices of care in society and in students’ learning, through subjects such as domestic studies, medicine, health, and physical education. These themes underpin my sculptural installation designed in response to the 1914 Ibberson Gymnasium (now the Combination Room), and echoed in the Queen’s Wing glass corridor and lawn.

During the exhibition the public was be able to attend the following accompanying events as part of Homerton 250 and the Cambridge Festival of Ideas:

Monday, 15 October: Tour and public opening of the installation, with artist Elena Cologni.

Wednesday, 17 October, 5.30-7.30PM: Workshop with artist Elena Cologni – CARE: Connecting Experiences

Friday, 19 October: Talk and workshop at Gibberd Art Gallery, Harlow

Sunday, 21 October, 2.00-5.30PM: Symposium – CARE: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

This event featured two panels on CARE in the early 20th century and CARE today. The first welcomed Peter Cunningham (Homerton College), Francesca Moore (Homerotn College), and Jessica Meyer (Leeds), and was chaired by Melanie Keene (Homerton College). The second was chaired by Philip Stephenson (Homerton College), and featured Elena Cologni, Gabi Scardi (Università Cattolica di Milano), and Peggy Watson (Homerton College).

Saturday, 27 October: Homerton 250 Festival, including a tour of the installation with artist Elena Cologni, and an opportunity to meet Archivist Svetlana Paterson.

 

RELATIONS OF CARE, ELENA COLOGNI (2018, PAIR OF MOBILE SCULPTURES, STEEL RODS, JUTE ROPES, 2.5 X 2.5 X 2 METRES EACH). Photographs courtesy of ARTUK.org. These are now on display on a permanent basis.

Care Proximities, Elena Cologni, installation view in front of the Ibberson Building, Homerton College, University of Cambridge (2018, installation including two sculptures and drawing on college lawn: wood + lawn marking paint, 20x100x0.5 meters)

Care Support, Elena Cologni, installation view in the Queen’s Wing veranda housing the new gym, Homerton College, University of Cambridge (2018/19, installation including three sculptures and frames: steel,  2.40×0.5×20 meters)

Documentation of the project, and presentation at Gibberd Gallery, Harlow (2018).

 

Mother’s Tools, (2018, compositions of 4: wood, steel, custom-made fabric labels, printing tools from the artists’ mother’s embroidery kit,  20 x 20 x 4 cm each). The labels read: CARE AS SUPPORT, RESPONSIVENESS TO NEED, PERSONS ARE RELATIONAL, UBUNTU.

Care Notes (motherhood), 2018, detail, graphite prints, pencil, laser print on paper on Moleskine Japanese album, with inserts of fabric. designs from the Architectural Review magazine, June 1939, 21cmX 120 cm).

Care Notes (architecture), 2018, detail, graphite prints, pencil, laser print on paper on Moleskine Japanese album, with inserts of fabric. designs from the Architectural Review magazine, June 1939, 21cmX 120 cm). Courtesy of Moleskin Art Collection.

 

Care Is Relational, and Care Instructions, (2018, 2 from series of woven labels, the first of which is inspired by Virginia Held’s writings, and the latter by Maud Brereton’s revolutionary position at the time, that domestic labour should be paid)

 

The above were produced in the project CARE: from periphery to centre, 2018

in collaboration with:

Virginia Held (philosopher, New York City University)

Gabi Scardi (Curator and Author, Milan Italy)

THE 250 ARCHIVE WORKING GROUP

Peter Cunningham (educationalist and social historian) Melanie Keene (historian of science) Svetlana Paterson (archivist)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

University College London Library; Cambridge University Library; The Harlow Art Trust: Gibberd Gallery, Harlow. The project is part of Cambridge Festival of Ideas, was commissioned by Homerton College, and is kindly supported by the Moleskine Foundation.

The Body of/at Work

The Body of/at Work

The Body of/at Work, Elena Cologni, Piazza San Marco, Venice, 2021

 

The Body of/at Work series of situated interventions was premiered at resilient communitiesItalian Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, on 5th June 2021 in conjunction with the exhibition Elena Cologni. Pratiche di cura, o del cur(v)are, curator Gabi Scardi May 17 – July 4, 2021, at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Palazzetto Tito, Venice

This is part of an ongoing project, the details of which can be found here https://elenacologni.com/projects/the-body-of-at-work/

…AND ENCOUNTER

…AND ENCOUNTER

by Elena Cologni

curator Eliza Gluckman, assistants Maria Azcoitia and Seana Wilson

New Hall Art Collection at Murray Edwards College of the University of Cambridge

20 October 2017- 7th of January 2018

This was one of the outcomes of the project Seeds of Attachment developed in collaboration with  Prof Susan Golombok, then Director of the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, and Dr Robbie Duschinsky Head of the Applied Social Science Group, University of Cambridge.

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Exhibition view 

45C5F671-AC0F-4301-A11D-4139F7F842C8

Margaret Lowenfeld Mosaic Test
Box (1938) book and record forms (1954)
Courtesy Margaret Lowenfeld Library, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge 

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339282.580645 Barleycorns Away… 
Installation: collages on paper, wooded shelves and fabric

Untitled (Prop) , Plywood and fabric, 100 x 100 x 2 cm closed / 200×300 cm open 

During a residency at the Margaret Lowenfeld Library, Centre for Family Research University of Cambridge, to devise a strategy for engagement, artist Elena Cologni developed a nomadic and dialogic sculpture inspired by the Margaret Lowenfeld’s Mosaic Test box and related book (1954). The prop was used in a series of encounters in the city over the period of a year under the umbrella project Seeds of Attachment.

The exhibition … And Encounter marks the conclusion of the project in the UK, and includes the sculpture, together with traces of the process in the form of drawings, collages, and constructions.

Cologni’s artistic research and interdisciplinary approach explored the bond between parent and child, in relation to the experience of place attachment.

While Cologni set out to investigate the emotional, psycho-geographical condition of motherhood, the work also highlighted the crucial role of non-linguistic forms of dialogue at the core of processes of identity construction, and in relation to place.

The exhibition includes traces of the process adopted by the artist and the nomadic dialogic sculpture inspired by the Margaret Lowenfeld’s Mosaic Test box and book (1954), also on view, courtesy of the Lowenfeld Library, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge. The prop was used in a series of encounters in the city over the period of a year under the umbrella project ‘Seeds of Attachment‘.

Also New Hall Collection Curator Eliza Gluckman oversaw Assistant Curators Maria Azcoitia and Seana Wilson selecting works from the collection, specifically to contextualise Cologni’s project into ecofeminism. Looking to ideas of ecology, the mother, place and identity, on display are pieces by Monica Sjoo, Judith Tucker,  Mary Cassatt, Celia Paul.

Further material: video essay by Cologni on research background here  and 8 minutes interview with Phil Sansom  here

Exhibition events include

Nomadic and Dialogic: Art and Ecofeminism, New Hall Collection at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge

20 October 2017

The round table, part of the Festival of Ideas in Cambridge , was chaired by New Hall Curator Eliza Gluckman, with artist Elena Cologni, author Susan Buckingham and Murray Edwards’ fellow Jenny Bavidge. It positions motherhood in relation to ecofeminism, ‘deep’ environmentalism, the caring role devalued in neo-liberal societies, to discuss the space between us, inter-corporeal space, micropolitics and haptic communication. (Edited video recording available here)

Attachment & Intraplaces: Discussing a Nomadic and Dialogic Approach in Spatialized Art Practice, Freud Museum, London

Artist Talk by Elena Cologni introduced by Curator Jamie Reurs on 21 January, 2018

Plate No. 11, Elena Cologni (2017/18), from the series Intraplaces

On the research background of Cologni’s artistic project Seeds of Attachment, which looks into the attachment between parent and child (Ainsworth, 1973; Bowlby, 1969; Freud, A.,1967) as crucial to place attachment (Seamon, D., 2013). We get attached to a place through our attachment to our family (Gordon Jack, 2010), but how troubling can it be to be detached from a place and our loved ones (Bowlby, 1998)?

Cologni attempts to investigate this through the adoption of a nomadic (Braidotti) and dialogic sculpture though a non-verbal approach, she designed based on the principles of the Margaret Lowenfeld Mosaic Box (1954). Aspects of this process were exhibited at New Hall Art Collection at Murray Edwards College of the University of Cambridge, for which she developed the series ‘Intraplaces’.

 

Intraplaces: Dialogues without words, Freud Museum, London

Elena Cologni facilitates an active engagement, followed by a discussion with ecofeminist geographer Susan Buckingham, 15 September 2018

Cologni has previously discussed at the Freud Museum the research background of her artistic project ‘Seeds of Attachment’ (2016/18), looking into the attachment between parent and child (Freud, A.,1967; Ainsworth, 1973; Bowlby, 1969) as crucial to place attachment (Seamon, D., 2013). Cologni brings the dialogic sculpture into the museums gardens to facilitate its activation with participants and to discuss its possible implications with Buckingham. This is done by considering issues of ecology, feminism and place, ad to ground the definition of ‘Intraplaces’.

The active engagement at the Freud Museum concludes a series of encounters in London’s public spaces, the implications of which are then discussed with author Susan Buckingham, whose research and publications address gender and environmental issues.

Museum Curator Jamie Reurs wrote:

Seeds of Attachment is timely because it transcends the difficulties and bypasses issues of misunderstanding. The artwork seems to acknowledge the gendered nature of language by accenting a different way of bonding. We are not bound to the rules of language, we are not limited by culture or geography. Language can be linked to a geographical place or a certain culture and, as we have seen, it is limited by the gendered social order. This detail of Seeds of Attachment, seemingly minute is representative of major themes in the work.

Seeds of Attachment, humble in its make-up, is a sophisticated example of the visual arts transcending the confines of language. It possesses a universality that transgresses the social order and the gender bias of this discourse. It is capable of evoking more than what is said, written, emailed or texted. Instead, you feel it, you experience it, and it is liberating.

Relevant background

Cologni’s in(ter)disciplinary research approach with a consistent interest in artist/audience/participant relational and perceptual dynamics has been centered around memory in the present for sometime, and in collaboration with academics (psychology, philosophy, cognitive science). Relevant projects include Present Memory and Liveness in Delivery and Reception of Video Documentation During Perfornance Art Events (AHRC funded 2004/06) in collaboration with Thomas Suddendorf, on ideas of mirror self-recognition using video delays; based on same issues, RE-MOVED, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (ACE funded 2008); GEOMEMOS, Yorkshire Scukpture Park (ACE 2009); rockfluid in collaboration with Prof Lisa Saksida, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, when a more specific interest in place in relation to memory is addressed, including the live installation Spa(e)cious (Wysing Arts Centre, MK Gallery, Bergamo Scienza) related to James Williams’ concept of Specious Present (various Arts Council England grants 2011/); more recently Lived Dialectics, Movement and Rest at MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, was developed in dialogue with David Seamon and on place attachment (discussed at the Leonardo Laser series of talks in London).

prizes 

The ROYAL SOCIETY FOR PUBLIC HEALTH (RSPH) in collaboration with the Royal Society of Sculptors awards Elena Cologni with the fist prize of ‘The Shape of the Public’s Health’ (2019) for the sculpture untitled (prop) in Seeds of Attachment !!!, details in the link

Dr Ranjita Dhital, Committee member of the RSPH Arts, Health and Wellbeing Special Interest Group states:

‘Elena Cologni’s award winning sculpture Prop, seeds of attachment expresses the importance of space in public health. Particularly spaces which promotes meaningful communication about both the physical and emotional aspects of health. The vibrant purple and its soft sheen fabric are inviting and draws you into its positive energy.’

exhibitions

Project statements section show in PARALLEL VIENNA Sept. 24th–29th curated by Gulsen Bal and Walter Seidl Open Space, Vienna

‘The Shape of the Public’s Health’ prize show at ROYAL SOCIETY FOR PUBLIC HEALTH with the other shortlisted artists including Steve Hines and Lucy Glenndining, details in the link

PARALLEL LINES: Drawing and Sculpturegroup show curators Jo Baring and Caroline Worthington (The Ingram Collection + Royal Society of Sculptors), 22 June – 25 August 2019, The Lightbox, Woking.

conferences/presentations/workshops 

On Care, And Finding The Cur(V)E. A Geography of Difference Through Caring, performance, in Ecologies of Care: Feminist Activism panel curator Basia Sliwinskal, 108TH CAA ANNUAL CONFERENCE, Chicago, February 12–15, 2020

On Care, and Finding the Cur(v)e. A Geometry of Difference Through Caring, two-part workshop in The Paradox European Fine Art Biennial forum Art Future / Future Signs 2019 in Riga, Latvia, program


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to Prof Susan Golombok Director Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, and Dr Robbie Duschinsky Head of the Applied Social Science Group, University of Cambridge, who supported and advised on the scientific aspect of the project. Thanks to New Hall Collection Curator Eliza Gluckman for her incredible support, Maria and Seanna, and the participants for having entrusted the artist with their invaluable input.

‘Seeds of Attachment’ is funded by Grants for the Arts, Arts Council England.
logos

 

It was supported by Art Language Location, Anglia Ruskin University; Lowenfeld Library, Centre for Family Research University of Cambridge; New Hall Collection at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge; Eleanor Glanville Research Centre, University of Lincoln; Freud Museum London.

 

images courtesy of New Hall Collection at Murray Edwards College of the University of Cambridge, and the Margaret Lowenfeld Library, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge

STRUCTURing SUPPORT

STRUCTURing SUPPORT

Visions at The Nunnery, London

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STRUCTURing SUPPORT, instructions drawing (2016) Elena Cologni, graphite on Moleskin paper 

OMY1187  Documentation Images by Orlando 

This is to be intended as a work in progress where the performers/facilitators would feedback on their physical and psychological experience proposed.

This piece evolved from a previous work, and is on an ongoing interest in place attachment, an issue I have been working on for sometime. Within this the way we move through space while navigating it to produce meaning and ‘place’, to know it from a phenomenological viewpoint, and in relation to others is what interests me.

Instructions for facilitators:
On Thursday evening you will be given simple props. You will adopt a simple modular movement, in order to move from one end of the dedicated space in a group of 4 performers per every one structure – there are two available for the performance on Thursday. The two structures can be experienced one after the other, eg. when 4 performers with structure n°1 start from one end of the space and move towards the other end, the other 4 will start with structure n°2 to follow the same journey, slowly.

The structure is a 3part folded light object, 180 cm which opens to become 540 cm. The movement in three positions include: close, 45° open, 90° open, see sketch above.

The performers are positioned at the ends of the sections of the structure and support the structure itself with their abdomen, and applying pressure towards the other performers, while moving.

The performers devise a system to navigate the space while applying enough pressure to keep the prop up. Devising good group dynamics is central, and I cannot indicate how that might happen: its up to you!! The performance requires concentration and physical strength.

Please wear black stuff, I shall also provide black padded fabric belts you can wear around your waist

It’s a durational piece about 2 hrs (with pauses )

FEEDBACK

The performance was easy enough in my experience.
I would have liked if there would have been another 4 performers so that it could have been more complex and interesting to evolve within the space when moving 2 structures. I also think it could have more of a visual presence. It worked for 4 however.  Perhaps a belt that would allow for a better fixing to the body could help performers to focus on the movements and possibilities that arise more than we did.  Sometimes we would work together, sometimes we created more difficulty for ourselves or one individual amongst us, other times we would attempt to help one another or the group to help one. We started to find a sort of balance in a sideway walk that developed by itself as we repeated and experimented various steps and areas within the space.  
I became very much interested in our level of connection, direct and indirect ones; sometimes being affected by the smallest move of one or more of us and sometimes not at all by any moves except one’s own.
I could also see and feel gender related relations being evoked and put in various arrangements although the main one was that women were one side and men the other, each of the 2 groups coming very near or very apart its specific members as we moved”. (Ludovic )

“I felt the spatial dynamics of the implications and of site and gender and their overt and subtle power shifts came to mind, especially being of balanced gender and the site of the Nunnery dark alleyway. It would be interesting to re-perform this with different gender groups in different locations/spaces and see if audiences pick up on this. The most difficult part was not letting the structure fall from our fronts – the balancing act between our stomachs, the black belts and the wood wasn’t the easiest, however I feel you wouldn’t want to make the wood integrated with the belts, but the tensions and dynamics are disrupted when the structure falls – but this all feels part of it(?) There were interesting moments when two of the performers on one side would come to support the other in tight spots or pass the structure over to the other if the balancing act was likely to fall.” (Sebastian)

 

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

Programme 3 Launch Event of the Visions at The Nunnery 2016 

Date: Thursday, December 1, 2016
Address: The Nunnery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ
Time: 6-9pm
The final Visions programme will launch on the last First Thursday of 2016 with five live performances, including an exclusively new and live performance from Richard Layzell that will start at 6:30pm, as well as Elena Cologni, Marina Moreno and Tony White and Raluca Croitoru and Mikio Saito from the Unnoticed Art Festival, with a new installation Hey You! by Tessa Garland, a film about control and the power of information. Whose watching who now?

Programme 3 will explore digital worlds, utopias and dystopias, with artists including Adriana Amodei, Sandra Araújo, Ulu Braun, Carla Chan, Milo Creese, Sandra Crisp, Raluca Croitoru, Dennis & Debbie Club, Nina Danino, DMK (Davies, Monaghan, Klein), Valentina Ferrandes, Tessa Garland, Heidi Kilpeläinen, Lawrence Lek, Allie Litherland, Jonathon Monaghan, Marina Moreno, Chris Paul Daniels, Mikio Saito, Mauricio Sanhueza, PolakVanBekkum, Schellekens, Zeljko Vidovic and Tony White.

Curated by Cinzia Cremona and Tessa Garland, Visions 2016 showcases over 100 international artists’ work through an innovative six-part programme, including artists Marina Abramović, Ori Gersht, Susan Hiller, Mikhail Karikis, Richard Layzell and Uriel Orlow. 12 events punctuate the programme, featuring live performances in the gallery, Carmelite Café and Bow Arts’ unique Victorian enclosed courtyard. View the full programme here

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Cinzia, Tessa, Ludovic, Sebastian, Lynn, Orlando

LIVED DIALECTICS, MOVEMENT AND REST

LIVED DIALECTICS, MOVEMENT AND REST (1 & 2)

Eidotipo a, 2016, site responsive drawing (indian ink and graphite on tracing paper)

 

#1, dialogic site responsive action: MuseumsQuartier, Vienna courtyard 7, in front of AZW (2 facilitators + elastic band, variable duration)

 

#2, dialogic site responsive action: to walk from MuseumsQuartier, Vienna courtyard 7 (in front of AZW) to Burgtor/ Heldenplatz (2 facilitators + wooden strauctures + balloons, variable duration)

Curated by Gülsen Bal and Walter Seidl

Performance: 27 July 2016
Venue: stroll from MuseumsQuartier, Vienna courtyard 7 (in front of AZW) to Burgtor/ Heldenplatz

“…a pre-reflexive corporeal awareness manifested through everyday’s gestures and behaviors and typically in synch with the spatial and physical environment in which the action unfolds….bodily routines as contributing to the lived dimensions of place, including attachment grounded in habitual regularity…  the simple act of walking with its movement and rest patterns….”  Webcast available  here

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

The work was developed during a residency at Q21, Museums Quartier, Vienna and produced by Q21 and Frei_Raum, Architekturzentrum Wienand MuseumsQuartier Wien, Austria.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to Q21 director Elisabeth Hajek and to the support team: Lisa Ribar, Suchart Wannaset, Kai Trausenegger, score  interpreted by facilitators: Daliah Breit and Kaan Ertaylan, filming: Suchard Wannaset.

Frei_Raum, Architekturzentrum Wien and MuseumsQuartier Wien, Austria

RELATED TALKS

Indisciplined, London LASER program of talks at University of the Arts London on the in(ter)disciplinary approach in my work, on 23 October 2016; London LASER is hosted by University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins MA Art and Science) and University of Westminster (Imaging Art and Science programmes) and supported by LENS Community of Practice at UAL and CREAM at Westminster. LASER is a project of Leonardo® /ISAST (the International Society for Art, Science and Technology). London LASER is organised by Heather Barnett and co-chaired with John R A Smith.  Webcast available here l

Locating oneself. lived dialectics, movement and rest through Art, part of the The New and History – art*science 2017 Conference in Bologna , to contextualise my artistic research, also encompassing phenomenology and environmental psychology, and now The New and History – art*science 2017/Leonardo 50 Proceedings book is out. This, published by Noema Media & Publishing, collects the proceedings of art*science 2017/Leonardo 50 conference.

GROPIUS’ OFF-CUTS

GROPIUS’ OFF-CUTS

5EEA9788-D4EB-401E-A1BA-7F0F948A158Ein the exhibition ‘A Modernity Which Forgets’ with Curator Cristina Bogdan’s Education between Modernist Walls, part of the Festival of Ideas, Cambridge 2015, and outcome of the project Gropius’ Impington.

Most of the research for the exhibition focused on the historical moment of the Chivers’ family farm and jam business funding the Gropius’ project by donating the land and paying for part of its design by the Bauhaus Architect, with the condition that the education programme would be open to its workers. In particular by looking for more information about who they might have been, it became apparent how such an important business in the interwar period attracted people from around the region, country as well as overseas. In a journal published by the Chivers’ business a series of anecdots form a picture of a community created around the business, the identity of each person defined by their position within it. The war was also inevitably cause of growth for the local population as evacuees from London and Europe found their home in Impington, some 7000 children were sent to leave London a portion of whom came to find a new home in the coutryside, and study in Impington. But a lot of the information about their identities is missing, from the historical archives, like mnemonic lacunae.

During the Cambridge Festival of Ideas (2015) the program Cologni devised Gropius’ Impington, modernism and power, art and the rural opens up a debate on the importance of the connection between people and places, and the construction of memory, cultural (monuments) and communicative memory (live interaction, Assman). According to Paul Connerton (2009) this connection may be institutionalised, as in the case of the memorial monuments, such as architecture, but it is in often apparently anonymous places, experienced through the individual’s and everyday’s bodily actions that the individual’s memory’s grid is founded. Through the memories that these places evoke the individual can domesticate the surrounding world. However, Modernity has imposed a frantic pace to the transformation of human environments. The result is that memorials and architecture last, but the common, anonymous places that are the individual’s loci of memory (Connerton 2009) are often altered beyond recognition. In particular, with the continuous process of urbanisation of the countryside, an abstract ideal of the rural is often nurtured by our memories of how familiar places used to be.

‘The paradox of a culture which manifests so many symptoms of hypermnesia and which yet at the same time is post-mnemonic is a paradox that is resolvable once we see the causal relationship between these two features. Our world is hypermnesic in many of its cultural manifestations, and post-mnenonic in the structures of the political economy. The cultural symptoms of hypermnesia are caused by a political-economic system which systemically generates a post-mnemonic culture – a Modernity which forgets.’

Gropius’ Offcuts, the sculptures as architecture off-cuts of unused spaces between the bay windows at the front of the Gropius building, occupy the space of a crouched body, and are moved around the site, as from her drawings.

Cologni’s response is symbolically in memory of all people whose nomadic way of living inevitably shows paradoxes like cherishing their memories, while also erasing part of them to make room for new ones in the encounter of a new place.

more here

Acknowledgements. This residency and project is being supported by: Impington Village College, The East Anglian Film Archive, Cambridge Central Library Special Collections, Chivers’ Pensioners Association Histon and Impington Viallage Association, CIAN University of Cambridge, Cambridge Festival of Ideas, funded through the Arts Council of England Grants for the Arts scheme.

RELATED

Bauhaus and moral purpose: the very model of modern community schools article on the Guardian

IL SOFFIO (AT THE BACK OF MIND)

IL SOFFIO (AT THE BACK OF MIND)

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Tournai Cathedral, Belgium, Triennale of Fextile and Contemporary Art (2008)

Video live installation (280 mts of fabric, 4 books, graphite, 4 projectors, cctv system)

When I was approached by Catherine and Christian to propose a piece for the Cathedral and went to see it, it was overwhelming. I kept my eyes on the pattern of the floor tiles, as safety net. Just like we do in life: we need something to hang onto. A lot of the times it is a constructed philosophical architecture, like religion, other times we adopt a recipe for a do-it-yourself sort of reference structure. I was told to do maths when I get anxious. Either ways, there is a common element, a meeting point: the obsession expressed in repetition, modularity … which is ritual.

DSC00232DSC00205FDA2D382-C3B5-4ABE-A213-AED0D2E40976

Action

I roll in the red fabric repeating:

nero, nero, bianco (black black white)

through the 67 mts long transept while a camera films my movement from my forehead. The live films is projected back onto the fabric. The end of the fabric is attached at the opposite side from where I start. When I arrive at the other side I take the fabric back with me by rolling my body in it. I stop when there is no more fabric, in the middle of the transept, I stand and spin to free my body from the fabric. I go back to where I started. I roll again till I come to the centre of the Transept and take the fabric around my body again, back to where I started. A pile of the red material has formed at the bottom of the structure where the whole composition starts. Ready for the next performance.

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I drew the floor tiles pattern (two black and one white) in 4 books which were positioned on the first floor corridor of the Norman nave. The audience walking through were followed by video shadows projected onto the fabric in the opposite corridor

CONTEXT

Triennale Internationale des Arts du Tissus et de la Tapisserie, Tournai, Belgium.

http://www.notele.be/list13-le-jt-a-la-carte-media2330-vernissage-triennale-2008-aux-beaux-arts-et-cathedrale-14-06-08.html

http://www.notele.be/list95-transart-media2432-puls-24-06-08.html

RELATED

Traces of the project were exhibited at Wysing Arts Centre in the exhibition Performed (17 May — 28 June 2009), artists: Elena Cologni, Simon Davenport, RJ Hinrichsen, Andy Holden, Katherine Hymers, Olga Jurgenson, CJ Mahony, Rob Smith, Townley and Bradby, Mark Wilsher.

A one day symposium on performance and contemporary art practice (30 May), accompanied the exhibition. This was chaired by Dr. Gavin Butt of uGoldsmith College, with invited speakers artists Mel Brimfield & Elena Cologni, Dr Amelia Jones, then Professor in Art History, Manchester University Kathy Noble, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My warm thank you to Vianney, Maxime, Vivien , Philippe, Sylvain, Eric, all the hands, minds and hearts involved, and to Christian, Catherine and Dominique for not saying no…

LO SCARTO

LO SCARTO

‘We tend to go through places without inhabiting them. The project tries to offer people the opportunity to understand that the space between us, as well as that around us, and its history belong to us, even if we inhabit them only for a short amount of time. The awareness of one’s own identity in relation to one’s own place must be cherished and nurtured’ .

Elena

https://i0.wp.com/rockfluid.com/wp-content/uploads/20150414_160937web.jpg?w=900

40 sculptures for hands (7 x 12/15 cm) + 10 drawings (28 x 35 cm)  + 10 wooden studs (240 x 6 x 4 cm) + workshops

   

 

more details here

related publication

Cologni, E., ‘Reciprocal Maieutics: An Approach For The Artist As Interface In Intercultural Society’ (2015), in International Handbook of Intercultural Arts Research, London, New York, Routledge Publishing

 

Acknowledgements. Funded by Unesco and European funding through IArt, supported by: CLAC, Museo Civico Selinuntino and Comune of Castelvetrano Selinunte, CRESM, Belice Epicentro della Memoria Viva Gibellina, la Rete Museale e Naturale Belicina, Liceo Classico Giovanni Pantaleo and the ‘Akkademia del Teatro Selinus, as well as all people who gave their time, passion, dedication, culture and experience thus activating the exchange vital for the realization of the project

NAVIGATION DIAGRAMS

NAVIGATION DIAGRAMS

2013, site specific performative outdoor installation (100×100 cm x variable, 14 sculptures, plywood, caster wheels, solid wood)
MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, curator Simon Wright
THE PIECE
The public is provided with a set of parameters and props to navigate the space opposite the gallery. One word on each platform from the sentence:
is    city    a    place    for    trust       is     trust    a    place    in   the    city
 
Navigation Diagrams, is    city    a    place    for    trust       is     trust    a    place    in   the    city (19×21 cm, graphite and ink on paper + inkjet print)
Trust is also a central issue in participatory projects based on dialogic approaches. The public is provided with 14 unbalanced platforms to navigate the space opposite the gallery. Their action in space and interaction with each other create meanings within the context. The exercise creates the physical and psychological conditions to enhance an awareness of the perception the body in space and interaction of the participants with each other to create meanings within the given context. Cologni was here introduced by Caterina Albano.
see the related documentation on vimeo
 
CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND
This is the final outcome or a series after a period of interaction with the people of Milton Keynes within the umbrella production project rockfluid. In the project (from a residency at the) Faculty of Experimental Psychology at Cambridge University, memory is considered in its ‘fluid’ and ‘solid’ states, as Dr Lisa Saksida suggests referring to the recollection of events. Memory in its archival state would be solid, and, when in the process of resurfacing would be fluid.
In this sense this transitional quality of memory can be a metaphor of Cologni’s way of working, as she considers art in a similar way, neither only matter related, nor only ephemeral: its manifestations can vary and feed into each other.
In RockFluid the artistic activities aim at looking at how places influence the way we remember and who we are. This includes a series of interconnected tours, map drawings, urban interventions, in different places in and outside the UK. Dealing with the relationship among perception, personal and social memory, and various ways of understanding place, it has involved the public throughout in the making and delivering of its outcomes.
RELATED PUBLICATIONS:
Calvi, L. (2013) A Performance-based Approach For Interactions In Public Spaces, volume 10, issue 2, November, Participation, Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, NHTV University of Applied Sciences, Breda, The Netherlands.
MK Calling, Catalogue, MK gallery, 2013
mkgallery.org/events/2013_07_04/scratch_night/
rockfluid.com/navigation-diagrams
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Supported by MK Gallery, University of Hertfordshire, School of Art, funded by Grants for the Art, Arts Council England, produced by rockfluid, documentation credits: MK Gallery and Charlotte Nichol

U VERRUZZE’ (BALANCING)

U VERRUZZE’ (BALANCING)

 

DOPPELGAENGER 7/27 March 2014

including drawings, sculptures and a textile installation

From the press release

Balancing is the second phase of a site specific project developed in the context Radio Materiality, curated by cultural association Vessel in Bari in the summer of 2013. For the latter, the artist engaged through dialogues with mums living and working in the city, instrumental for an investigation into the sociological aspect of the notion of trust. The dialogues, translated in a collection of sound documents, have been presented at the Athens Biennale in 2013. The second phase, brings various elements of the project together as a performative installation. The artist has realized ten custom made wooded spin tops with a graphite finished point. The spintop – in the local jargon ‘Virruzzo’ – better than any other object represents a tension towards an alterable balance, never still, just like the one between a mother and her own child. The public will be able to participate in the performance as a game, allowing the spintops to draw their journey down a fabric made slide Cologni will construct on the two flights of the staircase in the Gallery. The project Balancing is manifestation of, and search for, equilibrium at the same time. It points at a social realm in constant evolution, where that very balance becomes unstable and precarious. Within this context mothers act as axes of rotation for taking history forward in new terms

CONTEXT

Balancing is based on a series of dialogues between Elena Cologni and mothers based in Bari. The project’s research was part of Vessel’s curatorial and artistic process of investigation Radio Materiality, started in  2012. At the heart of this is the European Mediterranean area, with the geopolitical and social dynamics. The Apulia region, more specifically Bari, is the starting point for a dialogue expanding on notions of sameness, proximity, conflicts and distances. A project opening up through narratives and alternative self referential stories, other’s voices at times discordant with the dominating discourse: voices of women, mothers, migrants, and from diverse sexual orientation too. All of these define a multi-centric and fragmentary landscape. The radio thus becomes a metaphor for a collective of diverse voices from individuals. This happens within a process of re-appropriation of the discourse and the ‘word’ therein, the very concept of expressing oneself

PUBLICATIONS

Balancing (Catalogue),  Doppelgaenger Gallery, 2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

The project was supported by Arts Council of England, and VESSEL, Bari. The exhibition has been sponsored by Carvico SPA (www.carvico.com)

more

GEOMEMOS

GEOMEMOS

is the outcome of a residency at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2009. The resulting drawings and related sculptures are based on various maps of the place, and mark the process to devise a route for the performance journey and those elements brought into the conversation, to generate an overlapping of physical and conceptual contexts. The one to one performances can therefore also be seen as the act of drawing in the landscape as artist and audience move through it. More details here.

 

Conversation drawings: possibilities, (graphite on paper, 35×50 cms)

stills form video documentation
Conversations (open) (series of 10, graphite on paper, 60 x 80 cms)
Conversations (open), balsa wood (series of 10, 6 x 15 cms)

Acknowledgements. Many Thanks to Oliver Brown for liaising with the participants and supporting the project throughout; to the participants: Anna, Angie, Alan, Jo, John, Jeremy, Lesley, Lewis, Libby, Sally; rickshaw: Francis.

Geomemos was awarded the Grants for the Arts and  supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, York Saint John University and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

 

RE-MOVED

RE-MOVED

2008, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow international 08, Glasgow

director Francis McKee

The installation was developed through the Creative Lab Residency (2006) and tested through open studios. Visitors were invited to engage with her through a one-to-one installation in which the audience actively participated in the construction of the work’s meaning, generating a collection of video portraits. This is a two way corridor structure for a one-to-one mediatised performative installation designed as a site specific by making sense of the history of the place and people it is presented to. The work’s meaning is constructed together with the audience’s participation in it. With the use of archival footage and video delays, it tries to capture people’s moment of self-awareness in the present, here constructed as layers of representation of time.

‘When we think of the present as what ought to be, it is no longer, and when we think of it as existing, it is already past…all perception is already memory’ (Henry Bergson, Matièr et mémoire, 166-167)

The work was based on research on the redevelopment of areas where once the Tenements Houses stood, the Gorbals area of Glasgow. They were taken down in the 80’s causing a tear in the city and collective memory. The research was carried out at the Scottish Screen Archive and Peoples Palace, were the installation was initially thought to be placed.

The final installation was presented at the Centre for Contemporary Art, part of the biannual Glasgow international 08, directed by Francis McKee

Structure and piece for CCA. The two way corridor structure shown in the pictures is for a one-to-one mediatised performative installation and is designed as a site specific by making sense of the history of the place and people it is presented to. The work’s meaning is constructed together with the audience’s participation in it.  The interaction over a period of 3 days and the information recorded and played back. These will be between 12-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, allowing for 4 people per hour (booking organised accordingly). The environment is an mdf/wood structure. Two small corridors of 1 x 2 mts each (2 mts high), the partition in the middle would have to raised from the floor of a couple of centimeters to allow for cabling to go through. The two corridors are: one for myself and one for a member of the public. We were sited in front of a screen connected to a camera recording and playing back our own delayed mirror image. At times this was  interfered by selected footage about collapsing/rising buildings in Glasgow (National Library of Scotland and Scottish Screen Archive kindly provided video footage).

During the dialogue with a member of public I asked questions such as: what is memory? what are you looking at now? and they overlapped aspects of the past with their experience of the present.

Technical. The following equipment were used: 2 video cameras (high definition minidv), 2 monitors, 2 video delay systems, 1 dvr, 1 video switch, 1 video splitter. Microphones to record to cameras.

(installation view, stills from Scottish Screen Archive footage and video of participants)

“The recent experimentation of gaps, scotoma (in the visual field), apnea (of breathing), amnesia (gap in memory), time-gap (transmission), is introduced to allow the audience to participate in the event because, just like a spot on a blank page, we/audience fill it in with our brain/life experience/imagination. Process which, if contextualised in relation to the Baudrillian concept of punctum and the perceptual Kaniza effect (a perceptual gap is where the eye goes to compensate for a loss): it enables me to define a strategy for the creative process in which the designed perceptual lacuna asks to be filled in by audiences.  These are adopted, implied and experienced in my work in relation to the condition within which they happen: in liveness as site for continuous present, where performance art and live installation interchange take place. I specifically use various digital technologies postulating that continuous present can be constructed by perceiving reality as collapsed layers of its representations and time (i.e.: memory, live documentation). In the Mnemonic Present series, Apnea and Re-Moved for example making the audience aware of the passing of time as they are experiencing it (time gap in video), by being faced with an element of past experience in the present, allowed them to participate in its construction; this also mirrors the everyday life condition of relating to the world by referring to our memory archive in the perception of reality, and ourselves, in any given moment.”

(from Cologni E, That spot in the ‘moving picture’ is you, (perception in time-based art), in Blood, Sweat & Theory: Research through Practice in Performance  ed. John Freeman, Libri Publishing, London, 2010, pp. 83-107)

 

further documentation

http://www.gsa.ac.uk/research/contemporary-art-curating/the-glasgow-miracle-materials-towards-alternative-histories/

http://www.glasgowmiraclearchives.org/individual/elena-cologni/

About Glasgow International

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

POLLEN FORECAST: ANEMOFILA

POLLEN FORECAST: ANEMOFILA

 

video live installation, 2006 (10 mnts, fabric + pigment + minidv + sound system, installation and performance views, and stills from live projection)

Territories of Duration, Karsi Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey 22 June – 19 July 2006
(with Cengiz Tekin, Dilek Winchester, Elena Cologni, Genco Gülan, Karl Ingar Røys, Nasan Tur, Shezad Dawood, Sophia Kosmaoglou, Turan Aksoy, curator Gulsen Bal)

THE PIECE
A long stripe of elastic cloth draws an arch in the performance space, the lowest part being kept off the floor, hanging from the opposite sides of the ceiling. In the middle of the space, on the floor beneath the white material a stripe of yellow powder. The artist abandons herself onto the canvas till this touches the floor and rolls on it, so that the canvas picks up the yellow dust as this continues. A background voice tell about recent research done on the origin of pollen on the holy shroud and its journey from Palestine, Turkey through Europe. There is no religious statement behind the work, but a conscious decision to work on traces of the roots of the artist’s culture, in an almost distant and detached way. And yet, by enacting such piece, the artist wants to find herself in the position of the person leaving a trace of a journey. Even if it’s a 15 minutes one. The technology employed allows the audience to view close ups of the action from viewpoints that the artist has selected. One of which is the artist’s own.

extract from the text in the installation:

The plants whose pollen is transported by wind are said to have “anemofila” pollination, and produce a higher quantity of pollen if compared to the species called “entomofile”, whose pollen is transported by insects. On the shroud there are better possibilities to find anemofilo pollen type than the entomofilo type. A study was conducted on the intrinsic characteristics of pollen including: dimension, shape and weight, and also the ones coming from plants of single territorial zones and their anemofilo aspect thus determining speed, direction and periodicity of winds. Once those information were collected, the next step was to compare the samples of the pollen taken form the shroud using special masking tapes. Two fundamental considerations are to be made: numerous entomofili type pollen typical from Palestine, Anatolia are present; whereas less numerous are the anemofili type pollen coming from central Europe. The results confirmed though, that the journey was from Palestine to Anatolia and Europe: Jerusalem 33, Constantinople 944, Lerey 1353, Chambery 1453, Turin 1578.

CONTEXT

The project curator Gulsen Bal brings forward artist responses by asking where borders and in-between spaces exist in trans-local and/or trans-national boundaries in re-locating European space in order to delineate dynamic answers to static structures.

In this context Territories of Duration explores the temporary mediation systems with its practical ramifications where the new ways of being in the world are re-read to follow unfamiliar routes by questioning ‘difference of identity’ and ‘difference’ which inhibits transitional interactions, and therefore it aims to create a cross-border dialogue at existential territorial boundaries within an interdisciplinary artistic approach.

For this group exhibition, Cengiz Tekin, Dilek Winchester, Elena Cologni, Genco Gülan, Karl Ingar Roys, Nasan Tur, Shezad Dawood, Sophia Kosmaoglou and Turan Aksoy have been invited to present works addressing the questions of new European space and articulation of re-building geographies.

related article Negotiating the In-Between? Karen Edwin, 19 July 2006 on MUTE 

http://www.karsi.com/sergi_detay.php?id=72

AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

 

PUBLIC PRIVATE PERCEPTIONS

 

PUBLIC PRIVATE PERCEPTION 02

2002, video live installation (1 live feed projection, one video projection) in solo show at neon campobase, Bologna, based on a previous version took place at Toynbee Studios, London, also shown as video installation at Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins College, London

THE PIECE

It was developed as a reaction to the 9/11 media frenzy and marks a direction towards the local versus the global digital technology and 24/7 access to live information imposes in us. This piece was particularly driven by the urge to explore my immediate everyday’s surroundings (in the same period I produced a series on homes).  At the time I wrote the following:

I explore the environment through touch, while being blindfolded, focusing on the possible new connections between touch and absence of vision, and associate a tactile sensation to colours, thus mapping the place. On show is one projection of a prerecorded action taken place in London, opposite to one projection of a live action taking place in a separate room.

CONTEXT

The overall context investigated in the work is the relationship body-environment: how this influences my perception of myself in delivering a piece. I believe that the awareness of the bodily experience (here through touch) of the environment enables me to reposition my self within a particular place. The apprehension is subject to the changing conditions of the context; from the juxtaposition of present and past action the space/time in between seems to arise as a possible answer.

The surfaces present certain characteristics that I try to visualise with my eyes blindfolded, and by saying colours I draw a map, neurological as well as one that indicates urban places.

The audience simultaneously in two projections perceives the two dimensions a relationship between two representations of myself in different dimensions of time and space takes place.

This body of work was developed to engage with issues of synaesthesia, the relationship of touch in relation to colour in the context of exploring a ‘memory mapping’ of the environment. The first version was presented as ‘Public Private Perceptions’ a video live installation, at Toynbee Studios, London, 2001. This was subsequently followed by a developed iteration at Galleria Neon, Bologna, Italy 2002, as an exhibition. This project also led to a paper: ‘Private action becoming public, a practical investigation of the performer’s reactions to the environment’, at Performance As Research In Practice Symposium, University of Bristol 10-11 November 2001. This symposium context allowed me to further investigate the relationship and interchange between myself as performer and a live audience. Key points to emerge here were the impact of a live audience and issues around documentation of the practice. A major outcome of these joint explorations and reflections was the positioning of the performative work within the philosophical Antiocular-centric discourse referred to in my doctorate work. The experience of myself, ‘knowing’ the space whilst blind-folded through the sensory medium of touch, had to be conducted in front of an audience. This action was contextualised in relation to the documentation (pre-recorded or live) of the same action happening in a space without an audience. My thoughts and working diary were collected in a publication together with other essays, to produce a collection of fragments based upon the findings of these inter-related explorations.

PUBLICATIONS

Cologni, E., ed. Public Private Perception 02, texts by Malcolm Le Grice, Marina Wallace, Elio Grazioli, Galleria Neon, Bologna 2002

EXTRACT

IMAGES OF KNOWING

by Marina Wallace

“I came to the fields and spacious palaces of memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images, brought into it from things of all sorts perceived by the senses. There are stored up,….either by enlarging or diminishing,…those things which the sense hath come to. ”

St Augustine, Confessions (357-400AD)

In response to the body of work and related research that comprises Elena Cologni’s video/live installation, “Public Private Perceptions” (2001-2002) – (originally performed at the Toynbee Theatre in London on 21st of October 2001, and presented by the artist at the PARIP symposium at the University of Bristol, 10-11 November 2001 as a paper entitled ‘Private action becoming public. A practical investigation on the performer’s reactions to the environment’) – I shall reflect on memory, and consider its complex relationship with the five senses, particularly vis-à-vis images and vision. The subject is vast, and much has been written on it. Here, I only propose to offer some reflections, thinking about one of the crucial advances of the last century: the use of photography in art and in life.

Our memory of the visual world is fed by a wealth of images that populate our visual field. Some of these images are projections of “live” and “real” things, of the three-dimensional “moving” objects that occupy our world; some are two-dimensional renderings of “life”, they are transcriptions of the “real world” produced in various graphic forms and by different media, such as painting, film, and photography. Our emotional and psychological responses to two-dimensional images are quite different from those we have when looking at three-dimensional images. Equally, we react differently in front of moving or still images. Post-modern writing on the history and theory of photography and film, which had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, epitomised by Roland Barthes and Laura Mulvey, deconstructed the two related forms of art in relation to our perceptions, using, as a point of reference, psycho-analytical theories, from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan. Here, I should like to proceed from premises that are more connected with the neuro-sciences, with our every day experiences, and with the artist’s point of view, than with the much cited post-constructivist writings on art theory.

CLEAR AND WELL LIGHTED PLACES

The common vocabulary now used to describe the operations of our minds is closely related to the terminology used for film and video, and, of course, computers. We “focus” on things, life events and their objects are “viewed”- sometimes in a “distorted” way – and they are “recorded” in our minds, “stored” up in our memory, and we “access” them by “scanning” our “mental filing system”. These terms give us the impression of being fully in control of what may seem an ordered and systematic process. However, as the neuro-scientist Antonio Damasio observed, “only a fraction of what goes on mentally is really clean enough and well lit enough to be noticed, and yet it is there, not far at all, and perhaps available if only you try.”[1] This “trying” is what forms so much of our wakefulness, and it is aided by an array of visual devices.

The “trying” was different in ancient times, in a world without printing, film, television or computers, when “artificial memory” techniques were used to aid the art of rhetoric (at least since Cicero’s time), and were linked to ideals of ethics and prudence. Memory was deemed to be a natural gift, that could be assisted by the especially constructed “art of memory”, a system based on a few rules, but requiring a great deal of exercise. [2] Within the particular context of a classical world, a world without an advertising industry based on a world-wide mass production of manipulated images, words themselves were considered to be highly important social and political tools, and had to be memorised. The “art of memory” was devised for this specific purpose. Martianus Capella, a pagan orator writing around 450 AD about the benefits of this newly formed art, stated that its great advantage was that it enabled words and things to be grasped quickly and firmly. Martianus distinguished between “memory for things, and memory for words”. However important, words were not always to be memorised, as this was felt to be a demanding skill for the human mind “Unless there is plenty of time for meditation, it will be sufficient to hold the ‘things’ themselves in memory, particularly if the memory is not naturally good.”[3]

 Image result for Day with the genius of light, Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1815, marble, Thorvaldsen Museum,

ILLUSTRATION: Day with the genius of light, Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1815, marble, Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen

It is interesting to note that metaphors used in the 21st century to describe consciousness, are not dissimilar to those used in ancient days to describe memory. Damasio talks of “clear and well lit images”[4]. Useful rules for artificial memory, in classical times, included the visualisation of “well lighted places” (locis illustribus), filled with “images of things” (species rerum) and “striking agents” (imagines agentes), such as a memorable (human) figure in an unusual pose. Cicero speaks of images as “active” and “sharply defined”, setting them within what we can visualise in our modern minds as a sort of photographic studio:

“One must employ a large number of places which must be well lighted, clearly set out in order, at moderate intervals apart, and images which are active, sharply defined, unusual, and which have the power of speedily encountering and penetrating the mind.” Cicero, De Inventione…..

Damasio, writing about the extension of “core consciousness”, to which he refers as “extended consciousness”, describes two “tricks” which aid its emergence and storage:

“The first trick requires the gradual build up of memories of many instances of a special class of objects: the ‘objects’ of the organism’s biography, of our own life experience, as they unfolded in our past, illuminated by core consciousness. Once autobiographical memories are formed, they can be called up whenever any object is being processed. Each of those autobiographical memories is then treated by the brain as an object, each becoming an inducer of core consciousness, along with the particular non-self object that is being processed. ….The second trick consists of holding active, simultaneously and for a substantial amount of time, the images whose collection defines the autobiographical self and the image which defines the object. The reiterated components of the autobiographical self and the images whose collection defines the autobiographical self and the object are bathed in the feeling that arises in core consciousness.”

MIND AND LIGHT TRICKS    

Thinking of objects and images that may aid the recall of our autobiographical self, it seems that photographs can be best suited at performing the second “trick” that Damasio describes: they hold active, simultaneously, and for a substantial amount of time the images whose collection may define the autobiographical self. However photographs are not images inside our brains. On the contrary, they are two-dimensional graphic devices, external to our minds, which portray reality in a convincing and illusionary manner, giving us only the impression of viewing our past, or the past of our friends and relatives.

ILLUSTRATION: black & white photograph of two children by an old well

However, photographs re-enter our consciousness in a process of psychological displacement, common also to painting, film, and now computer-generated images. Family photographs shape our own views of events, past and present. In the process of replacing the memories of our childhood or past events, they also take the place of the “well lighted” places with orderly objects, which the ancients recommended we should create in our own minds in order to remember. Furthermore, press and other publicly used photographs shape our expectations of every day social and political events. Images and, in particular, photographic images, have a power that has been well-explored and widely recognised.

The emergence of photography as an “art” caused much debate in academic circles in the 19th century. From its beginnings, photography shaped the standards and expectations of artists. Those training in art in Europe and the USA in the 1860s were aware of the fact that established painters made use of photography. Nevertheless, debates about the possible relationship between photography and painting raged on. Deeply rooted prejudices were set against the appeal of photography’s aesthetic qualities, and its applications in art. Questions were raised about the relationship between artistic talent or genius, and academic skill in observation, above all recollection (the memory and mental record of the seen), composition, and drawing. Thus, whilst the increasingly common use of photography by painters in the 19th century was widely recognised, it was rarely condoned unreservedly.

The greatest trick of all in the game of visual remembering, “drawing with light”, was received with scepticism and, for a long time, it caused much controversy, as it does, paradoxically, even now through David Hockney’s famous attempts to relate the use of optical devices by artists to their creative skills and artistic production.

The relatively straight forward implications of resorting to using two-dimensional photographic or projected images for the purpose of aiding our visual memory, has been buried under mountains of theoretical and technical explanations. It would be worth taking one step back to reflect upon what the ancients were formulating and envisaging. The “well lighted places”, with ordered objects and significant figures in unusual poses, could be paralleled to many of the images which we can now print and view outside of our minds. Without falling into the trap of creating equivalent amounts of theory in a different direction, I should simply like to point out that, looking at a three-dimensional, “real”, moving section of reality (the real world), is a very different business, psychologically, from looking at a still, two-dimensional printed image. Artists who paint, draw, or make art from a projected image or from a photograph, distance themselves intentionally from the “real” world, from its many stimuli, thus reducing and selecting the stimuli for the purpose of a more focussed representation of the visual experience as it is remembered and recorded by the senses. Vision, only one of the senses, is correlated by the other four senses, and smell, touch, hearing, and taste contribute to the images we create in our minds more than we immediately realise or concede. (Homer’s exquisite poetic sensitivity was focussed not least by his proverbial lack of sight.)

The “tricks” of extended consciousness, analysed by neuro scientists, and those which the ancients devised to aid and extend memory, ensure that the complex and fundamental functions performed by our minds are retained and used again.

Elena Cologni’s “tricks” of her artistic activity include performing her relatively simple actions blind-folded, repeating her performances in different environments, switching perceptions, and alternating between private and public spaces, conceptually swapping places with the audience. Her work reflects a preoccupation with mental processes linked to cognition, vision and touch. She is interested in the contribution of all the senses to vision. Her action and project of a video installation in two parts,‘…going to the bedroom from the dining room’ (April 2001) and ‘…going to the rear garden from the side entrance’ (May 2001), represents her way of “apprehending a part of the domestic space”. She controls her perceptions and stimuli by controlling the environment in which these take place. “The background is almost silent, the visual space tightly shot. I wanted to record the tactile sensation of these places with the aim both of remembering and encountering them for the first time.”

She often performs in front of a mirror, and treats the lens literally as a reflective surface (applying her morning make-up in front of the camera lens, simultaneously recording her own image electronically and mentally). Her special interest in synaesthesia – the particular condition according to which some individuals have a multi-sensory experience as a reaction to different stimuli – derives from her autobiographical memories of her childhood (to which she refers in her work in the form of a diary). Synaesthesia, which is found to be common in babies, gives way to more specialised and exclusive sensory perceptions as the cervical cortex develops. In some individual adults, sensory perceptions continue to “blend”, and they go through life attributing smells to shapes, colours to sounds, or shapes to words. Since the art of memory relies on skills of association, often across the senses, it shares much in common with synesthetic experiences – as, for instance, when we associate a particular smell or taste with a particular sight or sound.

Cologni’s autobiographical self is defined both in relation to perceptions of a synaesthetic kind, and to the physical space that surrounds her. Her “mental maps” – her actions and video/live performances – contribute to reveal how very complex and articulated mind processes are. The surfaces the artist touches blindfolded in her attempt to recall different sensations appear to be  irregular, porous, and rough. “Blind-folded, I try and visualise these surfaces.  Calling out names of colours, I create a drawing which both is a neurological map, and a map which points to a physical space.”

During one of her live performances, she showed a video of herself at home. To her private image, projected in public, she added the projection of a coloured screen as a marker of perception. “Exploring the environment through the sense of touch with my hands and keeping my eyes covered, I register the information of the space which was, until then, known to me only through sight. I associate a colour to a tactile sensation, in two different situations: at home, without an audience, and in the theatre, in front of an audience.”

In a way, Cologni’s autobiographical video image is treated, by the artist, on a par with her actual presence in the performance space. Each recording, and each performance, adds to the store of images of herself and of her experience of self. Elena Cologni’s diary, which is directly related to her performance work, includes present memories of her past childhood, recent interpretations of what may have been her actual past memories. A wardrobe in the artists’ childhood bedroom is remembered as if it had been viewed through a wide-angle lens. The image becomes “stored” amidst other “archival” images of her past. However the sum of the artist’s performances and video recordings, as well as of the extracts from her personal diary, do not add up to a final and ultimate knowledge of self. As in the case of the human brain, the information is not stored for later retrieval, but what is remembered is continually changed by new learning, and new connections. The visual archive is complemented by new visual and sensory experiences. Thus memory is actively and continuously at work.

FORGET ME NOT

Themistocles is supposed to have refused to learn the art of memory by saying that he preferred “the science of forgetting” to that of remembering. His contemporaries warned him against the risk of not exercising the newly conceived “art of memory”. Once invented, this art could not be forgotten.

In a similar way, once someone has seen a photograph, and realised how it is made, they cannot forget photography. So compelling has the photograph become in our minds as a trace of a past time that our view of memory itself has been transformed. We instinctively sense that the fixing of the image is akin to an act of memory. In fact, the acts are basically dissimilar. They share a certain level of selectivity, but the photograph nowhere comes close to the extraordinary plasticity of memory as the object becomes transformed in form and meaning, both as it is laid down and as it is later recalled.

Through two-dimensional images, which are placed outside the artist’s minds, and through actions and words, performed and spoken by the artist and by her interlocutors, Elena Cologni is in a continuous process of construction and re-construction of memorable events, judiciously joining life and art, movement and stillness: “My work is the result of my instinctive interest in understanding the importance, the symbolism, and the limits of the sense of sight.”

Memory and forgetfulness, seeing and not-seeing alternate in a seamless process which moves from life to art, and back again. In this process, remember to keep the camera rolling…and do not forget to turn on the lights…

 

[1] Antonio Damasio, The feeling of what happens, Body, emotions, and the making of consciousness., London, 2000, p. …?

[2] Frances Yates, The Art of Memory, London, 1996

[3] ibid. p. 64

[4] Antonio Damasio, The feeling of what happens, Body, emotions, and the making of consciousness., London, 2000, p.129

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
neon campobase, Bologna
London Underground
University of the Arts, London
British  Artists’ Film and Video Collection , Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London

METTERE OGNI SIGNIFICATO…

METTERE OGNI SIGNIFICATO SOTTO-SOPRA, DIETRO-DAVANTI, ALTO-BASSO

”Turn every meaning upside down, inside out, back to front.”

video live installation, 2006 (typewriter+ tracing paper+ videocamera+ 2 projectors + live delay system)

in Dissertare/Disertare, curators Associazione START, Gaia Cianfanelli & Caterina Iaquinta, at Centro Internazionale per l’Arte Contemporanea, Castello Colonna di Genazzano, Roma, June/September 2006

Artists:  Elisabetta Alberti, Alessandra Andrini, Elisabeth Aro, Atrium Project, Fabrizio Basso,  Sara Basta,  Bianco&Valente, Annalisa Cattani, Silvia Cini, Elena Cologni, Francesca Cristellotti, Simona Di Lascio, Christine De La Garenne, Simonetta Fadda, Mariana Ferratto, Valentina Glorioso, Ulrike Gruber, Alice Guareschi, Goldiechiari, Koroo, Lorenza Lucchi Basili,  Sabrina Marotta, Libera Mazzoleni, Amanda McGregor, Dessislava Mineva, Motaria, Sabrina Muzi, Sandrine Nicoletta, Valentina Noferini, Anita Timea Oravecz, Paola Paloscia, Benedetta Panisson, Laurina Paperina, Arianna Pecchia Ramacciotti, Chiara Pergola, Luana Perilli, Maria Vittoria Perrelli, Michela Pozzi, Giada Giulia Pucci, Moira Ricci, Cloti Ricciardi, Francesca Riccio, Fiorella Rizzo, Stefania Romano, Anna Rossi, Ivana Russo, Nika Rukavina, Erica Sagona, Lucrezia Salerno, Guendalina Salini, Maria Salvati, Monica Stemmer, Federica Tavian, Adriana Torregrossa,  Francesca Tusa, Sophie Usurier,  Marta Valenti, Marcella Vanzo, Anna Visani,  Elisa Vladilo, Cristina Zamagni.

THE PIECE

Sitting down at one end of the bridge I write on a piece of paper as long at the whole bridge (about 30 meters), using a typewriter. I transcribe from my breastfeeding diary recordings, reawakening memories of the attachment to my baby back then. The live video is played back through two projections indoors: one is live and the other is delayed by 8 seconds.

I then stated ‘The piece refers to my interest the time in live documentation of performance, its reception and processes of memory construction’.

‘November 2004, 2.00. I get up, and go to his room because he is crying, he has eaten from both breasts and has fallen asleep immediately afterwards

2 30. I go back to bed to sleep. I sleep on my side, towards the edge of the bed, next to the door. So, I’ll be quick

5.50. He rumbles. He’s not crying yet. Maybe he’ll go back to sleep….
6.00. He Cries. He’s hungry. I go to his room and feed him from both breasts. He falls asleep on me. I try to put him to bed. Maybe he continues for a while. No way. I put him into his cot to fully wake him up with his things. He’s getting used to his music box and the pictures behind the bed, which he probably sees as blurry shades. Then I turn on the music box and he smiles at me. […]’

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

(the curators referring to the project in the book below)

PUBLICATIONS

Jill Fields (2012), Entering the Picture: Judy Chicago, The Fresno Feminist Art Program, and the Collective Visions of Women Artists, Routledge, page 303

This was also presented and an extract performed on 27 January 2023 after a long time, within my #feminist #careaesthetics input in the context of ‘Maternity and Care’ at Drew University (NY) in a colloquium for Medical Humanities and Health organised and chaired by the brilliant Merel Visse and with the amazing care ethicist Prof Inge van Nistelrooij and Melanie Miller (lactation educator).

this performance was discussed as part of the colloquium:

in Cologni, E., Towards a Feminist Care Aesthetics (in progress), in Maternity & Care
a Medical and Health Humanities colloquium with Professor Inge van Nistelrooij and Melanie Miller (MA IBCLC), lactation educator and doctoral student, chaired by Merel Visse, Medical Humanities Director, Drew University. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Soprintendenza alla Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea

more here

ANCORA CERCA

1999, site specific mediatised performance, National Portrait Gallery, London (still from one out of eight cameras recordings)

Eight channel Installation at Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia 2002, Curator Enrico Depascale

THE PIECE

The screen of the monitors is a meeting point for myself artist and audiences in this following work, marked by a continuous change of position from in front and behind it. In the making of the piece Ancora Cerca, I was able to experiment with cctv systems, issues of documentation and time as well as self-representation.  The work was performed at National Portrait Gallery, NPG, London 12-14 March 1999 and presented  as an 8-monitor video installation at the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo in Brescia, Italy, between the 6 and 24 April 2002. For this piece I worked with the existing video security system of the gallery. After having done some research on the ideal location for the performance within the space, I looked at the monitors to which the video-cameras would send the captured video information and made notes.

Cologni, E.,

Floor plans of the top floor of the NPG with notes for production, 1999

‘…room 17-cam.24 -coming from18-stop between sculpture and entrance-watch camera; room 19- cam25 – stop watch camera between glass case and sculpture; room21-cam26 – standing behind sculpture watching camera; room 22-cam 28- walking from 21 in the middle and out; room 18- sitting on sofa…’.  This enabled me to visualise the space from the viewpoint of the cameras – the space I would physically enter while performing. The performance took place on the 12th of March, the recording of it from the documentation on the 14th.

12 March – performance: I would stage an encounter with the warden watching the surveillance monitors in the NPG, by walking towards it and watching the video-camera of each chosen room. As I address the camera in each room, I become a ‘picture’ in the gallery, yet the camera, fantasised as the Gaze of the Other is also, as it were, ‘pictured’ as the spectator sees me imaging what it is seeing and giving myself the things I lack and are looking for (meaning of ancora cerca).

14 March – video recording: I went back two days after (as required by the gallery for security reasons) and played back the tapes that were stored. I was surprised to find that the system reduced the footage by half, so that not all frames were kept. As a result the quality of the recording was poor. However, I placed the video camera in front of the screen to record the half an hour of the performance from each of the monitors: the recording of the action went through a number of filters. In the resulting video, the viewers see the evidence of the performance through the ‘eye’ of these surveillance cameras, that have videoed me walking from room to room barefoot, clad in a beige dress, and evoking a romantic spirit of the gallery by carrying a red rose. The spectators, at this stage positioned as the camera when watching the surveillance video or see stills from it, are pictured by myself as I look at the camera. The spectators project what I might have seen from my vantage point in the gallery space.  In this gallery dedicated to the construction of identity through picturing it, this performance makes the deep structures of that identity construction emerge, so we all become aware of how much both the artist and the spectator never fully or comfortably, inhabit the illusory space of identification.

Cologni, E. That spot in the ‘moving picture’ is you, (perception in time-based art), in Blood, Sweat & Theory: Research through Practice in Performance  ed. John Freeman, Libri Publishing, London, 2010, pp. 83-107

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

National Portrait Gallery, London

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London