(COUNTER-CURRENT)
2004
Sound installation, PVC banners.
Broletto cloister, Gallarate.
Part of the exhibition ZAT, Zone Artistiche Temporanee (temporary artistic zones) organized by Galleria Civica D’Arte Moderna, Gallarate
Controcorrente is a sound path that works as a submerged memory that re emerges from the walls of the Broletto cloister. The project tries to put in relation the actual use of the space, especially as an open-air cinema or else a public space used for narration, with the convents of monks and nuns that inhabited the cloister in the past.
The memory is the story of a prior who left the cloistered life of the monastery to get married to the woman he loved, braking the rules imposed by canonical law. The story of the two protagonists is narrated, keeping the intimate and personal tone of the original account, by our voices that work thus as a sort of echo.
The installation, divided in 8 listening stations situated along the cloister, marks, together with 32 red banners, the ideally impassable border of the cloister. Two letters are written on every banner (one on each side). The sequence of banners forms two sentences. Walking clockwise the sentence reads: i pesci morti navigano con la corrente (dead fish sail with the current), walking anticlockwise: i pesci vivi navigano controcorrente (live fish sail counter-current).
Part of the project consists on a small film festival inserted in the program of the open-air cinema. The films projected, chosen with the prior and his wife, are of significant relevance to the story. The idea is to give another key to the public and to create another relation with the site that houses the work and the people who inhabit the place.
Non si corre nei chiostri 2005