Giulia Grechi and Salvo Lombardo curated the n°35 edition of Roots&Routes titled Anche le statue muoiono (January 2021). I’ve contributed with a text and a video under the title “Twelve. There is no age, no place, no time to become a slave”. The work is a digital hack of Montanelli monument in Milan.
Thank to all the people that decided to take a stand against that patriarchal and colonial landmark.
image credit: Twelve-year-old Susanna photographed by her father using an evanescent effect
Valentina Mutti and I have been sharing reflections on some monuments, on my practice and on other artist approaches to those public objects. Here you can find the link to the conversation we edited for Triennale Museum site: triennale.org/en/magazine/hacking-monuments
During the six online meetings, Pietro develops a reflection on the current perception of public monuments in Milan, outlining a geography based on the experience of the participants. The workshop will analyse how and for what purposes the monuments have been created and developed.
Participants: Giuseppe Mongiello, Matteo Tenardi, Vera Pravda, Gianluca Gramolazzi, Emil Cottino, Irene Sofia Comi, Ludovico Riviera.
Pietro Gaglianò deals with the relationship between art and the public sphere. He believes that every action and every thought is expressed in a political dimension of living together; 2016 saw the volume dedicated to the aesthetics of power, “Memento. L’ossessione del visibile”, Postmedia Books. In 2020 he published with Gli Ori the volume “La sintassi della libertà. Art, pedagogy, anarchy.”
Artist: Marcio Carvalho (PT/DE) – Simona Da Pozzo (IT/NL) – Sophie Ernst (NL/Uk) – Kiluanji Kia Henda (AO/PT) – Sara Vanagt (BE)
Hacking Monuments. Tips to make sense of them is an exhibition i curated in the frame of my Hacking Monuments Public Program for Triennale Milano in 2020. This project has been realized in collaboration with VisualcontainerTV.
Tips to male sense of them explores the phenomena of hacking monuments, by hacking and weaving multilayered connections between monuments, denizens, activists and artists. Since ’70s, several artists have been dealing with the legacy of the power by interrupting the narrative flux of monuments. Denizens and activists join this practice to speak out. All these actors transform the monuments in a space of socio-political dialogue, as we can all testify these days. Besides the artistic and activist intervention, the research focuses on the performative act of confronting the claim of the permanence of the monument; the ritual act of re-coding the appearance of the monument, and, with it, its power to inform the reality. Some hackers use monuments as mannequins: the monument supports an object that is the real protagonist and signifier of the action. The object dresses the monument, which becomes interchangeable. Some other hackers act in a way I call “monument specific”: interventions that only make sense with that very object, in that very context.
The exhibition Hacking Monuments. Tips to make sense of them presents: Marcio Carvalho (Lisbona/Berlino), Simona Da Pozzo (Napoli/Rotterdam), Sophie Ernst (Rotterdam/Wakefield), Kiluanji Kia Henda (Luanda/Lisbona) e Sara Vanagt (Bruxelles), working with monuments in a performative way. This performative essence of the interventions is translated in two ways. One sees the action as a ritual where a reciprocal redefinition between the monumental object and the artist happens; a ritual of the transformation of the reality. In another one, the artist uses the monument as a body voicing issues and communities.
This meeting is the first of the series of Hacking Monument public program I curate for Urban Center Triennale Milano 2020.
My research Hacking Monuments guides this meeting at Triennale Milano: In particular I’m very happy to be in conversation with Sophie Ernst, one of the dear artist of “Tips to make sense of them”, and Rete Non Una DI Meno Milano.
Residency at State of the City with Hacking Monuments project thanks to nctm e l’arte residency grant.
Charlois aan het Water Foundation, the foundation behind Pavilion on the Water, has been initiating an Artist-in-Residence programme in collaboration with CBK Rotterdam since 2015. Charlois aan het Water Foundation is an initiative of Vitibuck Architects and Stedelinks010. These foundations focus on the urban and social development of the Rotterdam port, in particular the Maashaven – an area that is subject to a lot of change, and will change a lot more over the next 15 years. The residency programme is part of this research.
In this frame I’ve realized some works around the Maas God monument. Kamiel Verschuren has created a poster for each one of the projects/artists hosted. Here there is Maasgod Voice one:
Happy and grateful for the State of The City residency at PAVILJOEN AAN HET WATER in Rotterdam, curated by Kamiel Verschuren and made possible thanks to nctm e l’arte: Artists-in-Residence grant.
The residency was previewed to last from January to March 2020, but because of the pandemic the stay has been longer.
I shared the residency space with my partner and colleague of research Nicola Ciancio. We shared our work in progress on the led sign of the residency place by editing part of our conversations.
I focused on the MaasGod monument and I invited Roberto Fiorentini to collaborate on a sound work together. Our research resulted in MAASGOD VOICE sound-track and in HALFAWAY River listening action.
I’ve preserved my connection to the Nile Monument in Naples creating a conversation between them and the Maasgod within Sunrise Gods’Call video work.
I’m participating to Dust exhibition with the video Hallacas from It Me research.
DUST
exhibition at Tilde
artists: Cesare Calvi, Jérôme de Vienne,
Marisol Malatesta, Simona Da Pozzo.
Video projection and performance
● Spazio Tilde
via Contessa Piazzoni, 7 – Castel
Cerreto, Treviglio (BG)
My Borderlight colleagues and I are very excited to present this little book in its 200 copies edited by postmediabooks: it is an overlook on 4 years of work on night, light and peripheral districts of Milan. To have a look of it check the link: Scolpire la Notte
simonadapozzo.com 