Driant Zeneli
And Then I Found some Meteorites in My Room
video installation, 22’00” min, live streaming of ISS and sound performance by DJ Sulejmani
Photo credit Andis Rado, Courtesy The Artist and Bazament Art Space Tirane – 2018

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART 
99 WORDS WITH DRIANT ZENELI 

“Why are you interested in the space?” Flora asked me.
“I am curious of those who observe it. I would like to know what there is in the space between your father Bujar, 158 height at Metallurgjik, and the maximum height of the International Space Station (ISS), located 400.00 km far from the terrestrial surface…”
“What is the ISS?”
“The International Space Station functions as a laboratory where experiments are made in condition of microgravity in the law terrestrial orbit. Dedicated to scientific research and managed as a joint project between five different space stations.”
And then Flora’s father, Bujar, asked me with a low voice:
“So what it the sense of all this?”
“The attempt is to create a space in which the work can share with the public a physical as well as a mental dimension. The interview about your perception of space that you gave to Fatmira Nikolli at Metallurgjik, will resonate with the transmission of the streamed images from the International Space Station (ISS), 400.00 km away from the earth surface. Everything will then be catalyzed by the sounds mixed by your daughter Flora (DJ Sulejmani) during the opening of the exhibition. In this way, the public will not only participate, but it will be an integral part of the artwork, as we are all part of the solar system”.

January – Mealurgjik Elbsan – 2018
And Then I Found Some Meteorites in my Room
from the diary of Driant Zeneli

Jonas Mekas, The Internet Saga curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, installation view, Venice, 2015
photo credit: Giulio Favotto

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART 
99 WORDS WITH JONAS MEKAS

The first word that comes to our mind when we think about Jonas Mekas is “inexhaustible”.
Inexhaustible as his work. Like the narrations of it that can be made.
Like the invention of Film Culture, the New American Cinema, the Anthology Film Archives, the film diaries.
Like shooting, editing and publishing online a movie a day every day in 2007. Like jonasmekas.com.
Like painting flowers on large white papers the night before an opening. Like telling us “It’s challenging enough to say yes” and to reaffirm it again and again.
Inexhaustible, even more than eternal.

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, curatorial duo

Performance, Mid-afternoon Slump, Coast Contemporary, Kunsthalle Stavanger Cabin, Hurtigruten, 2017 NO
photo credit Maya Økland

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART 
99 WORDS WITH HANNE LIPPARD

The more I speak the more I disperse of it. The more I disperse of it the more it becomes another story, a story not belonging to me. This way, it goes away, another way, any way. The more I speak the less I hear. The more I speak the less I am here. Nothing but a voice. Nothing but a pleasant feeling until you start feeling your knees again, remembering that they are also part of your body, a pair of functional limbs doing their best to act as a support for your voice, like a tripod supporting a speaker.

JOSH TONSFELDT | RAINDROPS, TAXI | DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH, 2017
Courtesy the artist, Simon Preston Gallery and Raucci Santamaria

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH JOSH TONSFELDT

Hi The Blank,
I apologize for being so late after your deadline, and hope this still comes in time for the newsletter. I’m attaching a picture we can share – rain reflecting on the face of an iPad that’s resting in my son’s lap as he sleeps in a taxi.
As I try to think of what else to tell you, my attention drifts between considering the image, then back to this email window, occasionally checking for new messages and culling old ones. I’m left thinking of the other side of this message, where these words might briefly appear on other screens and windows, within a similar cycle of glances and momentary awareness.

OSCAR SANTILLÁN | HAIR OF SAINT CATERINA VOLPICELLI FOUND IN AN ENVELOPE, 2016
photo credit Vibeke Mascini

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH OSCAR SANTILLÁN

Crimes of passion are always a mistake and the reason is quite simple: they restore no power to the murderer.
While setting up the room in which she plans to kill her husband, a woman confesses to her accomplice, “my only regret is that he’ll never know that I killed him.” The film is Diabolique.
Sometimes, however, a victim does acknowledge his own death. This was the case with Bernardo Jaramillo, a communist militant who ran for President of Colombia. One morning in 1990, at the airport with his wife, Bernardo was shot several times by paramilitary hitmen. As the assassins escaped, he serenely sought for his partner’s gaze:
– Hold me, those motherfuckers have killed me.

Oscar Santillán

VINCENZO SIMONE – SENZA TITOLO | OIL ON LINEN | 25×35 CM | 2017
photo credit Vera Roveda

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH VINCENZO SIMONE

Your words on Dutch sobriety sounded strange; oh delicious bunches,
peaches and
apples, vegetable and fish – although they are called naturalistic, aren’t they
metaphysics?
Well, of course they are – here it is the idea of bunch, the idea of apple, etc. Everything lights up by itself in
a the perfect style of Rembrandt…
I don’t deny the moment of self-illumination in these still lifes; but, in
contrast
with Rembrandt, these fruit and vegetable seem to have a right relationship with the
world:
there’s something of the icon painting in it, this is the work of the light.

Pavel Florenskij
Royal Doors

APPARATUS 22 – EXCERPT FROM THE SCRIPT OF ALL (TO ALL ARTISTS THAT WORKED IN THE XXI CENTURY) | 2017 | SOUND INSTALLATION

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART 
99 WORDS WITH APPARATUS 22

Crystal memo 8
July 3

Black hats
Black market
Black sheep
Black book
Black day
Black-and-blue
Black mark
Black look
Black eye
Black mirrors
Blackmail
Black magic – though the tension in this one sounds so beautiful

pretty much everything with the word black means something negative.
Is this racist? someone asked.
Well, I hink the racist act was not in coining these notions, but in assigning the terms “black” – with its figurative meanings of dark, strange and other, and “white” – with its figurative meanings of known, seen and light, to groups of people whose skin is “brown” or “cream” respectively.

NAVID NUUR, MIND MAP, 2013, ARGON GAS, GLASS

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH NAVID NUUR

If I take the time to look at one of the objects in my studio, this time exists in relation to that object as a mix of past, present and future focused on the object’s location and the light which ensures that I can see the object at all. I’m not sure why, but it irritated me that all these relationships co-existed while I was making the object. After all, I’m working on an object, and not on light, time, present, past and future. I needed to isolate all these ingredients so that I could get closer to the actual object. After looking at my object for a long while, I discovered that the now does not exist, because the now has already gone while you sit there thinking about it. Nor is there a relationship between the now and the object. Which means that there is not a clock in the
world that runs synchronously with actual time, except for one that has stopped – the only type to give the exact time twice a day. So at which moment is there an opportunity for me to see the object? After looking again for a long time, I slowly realised that in order to see the now, you constantly rebuild it on your retina. On a smaller scale, we do the same thing with words and meanings. Because we have collectively agreed that ‘mug’ is the word for a mug, and not ‘sulpt’. So virtually everything is subject to collective agreements. I think that you also do this physically and mentally with the things you see. So as soon as light falls on the object, it allows me to see it, and I recognise the work time and time again, as fast as separate film frames that are played in rapid succession so that you get a fluent confirmation, or a rapid disappearance of doubt. But suppose I were able to look, at the speed of light, at my object: in that case I would actually find myself in the now and experience the object. So that was the problem. For me, this disparity between my speed and the speed of light means that I can’t see the object in the present – I’m too slow for this – but actually in a constant pre- absence of the future. Now that I have calibrated my viewing rhythm to the object, I can finally understand what I saw, and when I saw it, in the pre-absence of the future. With these new insights, I could once again view the works and objects in my studio and see how I could use to my advantage the combination of this phenomenon with light. Now I still had to find forms that allowed me to isolate or extend light from time, or extract an after-image from it. When I will have made a few more works, I will deal with this matter in more detail.

Navid Nuur

99 WORDS WITH GUIDO VAN DER WERVE

GUIDO VAN DER WERVE, NUMMER DERTIEN, EFFUGIO B: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A MOUNTAINEER, 2010, TWO FRAMED DIGITAL C-PRINTS, ONE FRAMED TEXT, EACH PRINT: 58.1 X 44.13 cm
Courtesy of the artist

On January 19th, 2010, I reached the summit of Aconcagua in Argentina, 6.962 meters.

I was looking for some wisdom in this period, and was hoping to find some at the summit. I had heard stories like “if you make it to the summit, you realise it’s all worth it” and “you climb up a boy and you come down a man”.

After two weeks of pain and suffering, we finally reached the summit. Besides being completely exhausted I didn’t feel anything.

Guido van der Werve

FRANCO VACCARI, ESPOSIZIONE IN TEMPO REALE N.45, 2017
Courtesy the artist and P420 Gallery, Bologna

FRANCO VACCARI, PROVVISTA DI RICORDI PER IL TEMPO DELL’ALZHEIMER, 2003, DIGITAL FILM FROM VHS, 21’57’’
Courtesy the artist and P420 Gallery, Bologna

When I visited the place I found myself in front of a massive building perfectly preserved, with a large room in the raised part that once served as a dormitory for soldiers guarding the City. I immediately thought of recreating a similar situation where, instead of soldiers, were going to spend the night not only the valiant exhibitions visitors, always willing to discover new experiences, but also the assorted group of curious people that represents the current version of the picaros, the beggars, the storytellers, the mendicant friars of the seventeenth century.

Franco Vaccari