The Places of Memory

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 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.

 

The Body of/at Work

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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 communities, Italian 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 including a series of public interventions (and relevant publications). These take place in different locations referring to the social history of places and architecture of women labour in relation to cloth, mostly in preindustrial times, when the body was central to labour.  These places include laundries and washhouses, and factories, but also public spaces where some of these works took place. The project looks at including: the concept of the threshold between public and private; the relationship with places of labour; the body as a measuring instrument.

The details of which can be found here https://elenacologni.com/projects/the-body-of-at-work/

 

…AND ENCOUNTER

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…AND ENCOUNTER

by Elena Cologni

curator Eliza Gluckman, assistants Maria Azcoitia and Seana Wilson

Women’s Art Collection (then 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 

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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 Sculpture, group 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

LIVED DIALECTICS, MOVEMENT AND REST

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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

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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

LO SCARTO

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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

http://rockfluid.com/wp-content/uploads/20150414_160937web.jpg

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

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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)

Posted on by ecologni@gmail.com

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

Posted on by ecologni@gmail.com

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.