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

Depressed Earth
The older you get, the more life becomes miserable, all the people you grow up with die, your parents die, your grandparents die, your dog dies, your energy diminishes, there’s less books to read, there’s no more groups to discover, you just end up a barren wasteland, trying to discover something new, which never really occurs. You end finding worth in groups which 2 or 3 years ago you would have spat on, which I do all the time, its depressing, I mean, I am getting into Buffalo Springfield, which is a nightmare.
Richey Edwards

Beneath the Silures’ feet the Carboniferous swamps, mud, sediment and organic matter, compressed over millions of years, turned into high quality anthracite coal. This valuable dark artery runs serpentine from Spain under the Bay of Biscay to Britain and across the Atlantic to Pennsylvania. The subterranean horizontal passage of solidified carbon sludge is an ominous harbinger of the tumultuous binds that link the peoples and the social institutions born out of its exploitation. On the golden sands of Langland Bay, 2,500 years ago… a Silurian child is building sand castles and knocking them down.

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH ROCHELLE GOLDBERG

The Cyclops:
Binocular vision is the combination of visual impulses from two separate eyes that enable three-dimensional perception. The Cyclops has a single oculus, and thus inhabits a two-dimensional world, where the conditioning of a three-dimensional awareness occurs through a learned feeling for things. Sensorial sight is then re-informed as a haptic encounter. The focused stare anticipates touch to reify the visual field.

Rochelle Goldberg

99 WORDS WITH RICCARDO BERETTA

RICCARDO BERETTA, ARAZZETTO GQ, EMBROIDERY AND THREADS ON PAINTED COTTON VELVET, 32X32 CM, 2016.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GALLERIA FRANCESCA MININI, MILAN

On occasion of The Blank Benefit 2016, annual meeting to support the association’s network activities, Riccardo Beretta has realized a series of fifty velvet hand embroidered tapestries, realized as a unique thanks to a pictorial intervention and to a manual making process.
Each work, Arazzetto GQ, pays homage to the figure of Giacomo Quarenghi (1744 – 1817), in concomitance with the celebrations for the death bicentenary.
During the Benefit Dinner, planned on Thursday 15th December in the frame of Spazio ALT, a harpsichordist will present a repertoire of musical pieces referable to the historical period of Quarenghi, playing the harpsichord Birba (2009 – 2011), an instrument which is also an artwork, realized by Riccardo Beretta.

99 WORDS WITH FATMA BUCAK

FATMA BUCAK, THERE MAY BE DOUBTS, 2015, FROM THE SERIES A STUDY OF EIGHT LANDSCAPE, DIGITAL ARCHIVIAL PIGMENT PRINT, 110×140 cm

Varna 1951

And here we leave as we came
good-bye brother sea
I take with me a little of your gravel
a little of your light blue salt
a little of your infinity
a little bit of your light
and of your unhappiness.
You were able to tell us many things
about your destiny as sea
here we are with a little more hope
here we are with a little more wisdom
and we leave as we came
goodbye brother sea

And here we leave as we came
goodbye brother sea.

In Exile
Nâzım Hikmet (RanThessaloniki, 20th November 1901 – Moscow, 3rd June 1963)

99 WORDS WITH ALIS/FILLIOL

ALIS/FILLIOL, ULTRATERRA (DETAIL), 2016, MIXED MEDIA, DIMENSIONS VARIABLE

beginning to start initial the to hatch paternoster primordial to initiate aire be’ to begin enter into starting gazzette start spring initiator at first jaws prepuberty inaugural address infant starter colony pristine primitive advance lanzo to switch on primeval puberty precambrian first predictable promoter commencement luccicone imprendere cretan primigenial hors-d’oeuvre pregnancy debut child whipped Baedeker to demarcate reduced childhood cause enjambement ourfather source carneade preamble Christian dialefe completion surprised inchoate dance to date in order trigger originally termination normally effect baby Middle Ages eventually end flourish lansquenet again bright spell assumption undertake starter incipit ex novo placement germinal connate inaugurate principle departure to open nationalism to found to reopen prothesis sepulchral durative prosthesis conclusion money celebration

Alis/Filliol

99 WORDS WITH NOVA PAUL

NOVA PAUL, THIS IS NOT DYING (FILM STILL), 2010, 16MM FILM TRANSFERRED TO HD VIDEO, 20 MINUTES

There are two Māori proverbs that unravel the capitalist time of labor and colonial constructs: for ka mura, ka muri we walk into the future backwards with our eyes firmly on the past and i ngā rā o mua: the days before us, that places the past in front and the future behind. This time here – te wa, is encompassing and embodied and resists factors of production, holding onto complexity. A floating world drawn from stories that link rocks, to songs, to children, to trees, to spiders, to wood pigeons, to the sky: these stories are the beginning of self determinacy.

Nova Paul

99 WORDS WITH DEIMANTAS NARKEVICIUS

Deimantas Narkevicius, Ausgeträumt, 2010, HD video transferred on 35mm film and Blu-ray disc Colour, sound Duration: 5’35

‘Ausgeträumt’ has no direct English translation but means a state between dream and reality at the point of waking up.
The very first creative attempts by any artist usually are very positive, unaffected by criticism, even naive activities. I do understand “naiveté” as an initial state to be creative for any beginner in any field of arts. Without naiveté any young person, probably, would not choose to be an artist, so to be condemned for very possible failure. Here I would like to refer to myself. I had to be absolutely naive to choose to be a visual artist, in the late 80’s when in the Soviet Union everything was falling apart. There was no precedent of success, or an example to follow in the country which was still isolated.

With ‘Ausgeträumt’ I am re-approaching to the state of mind of “naiveté” which I find quite beautiful and already lost. I have shot young boys performing their very first song as just started indie band. I find it really optimistic to start a band with some ambitions in Lithuania. Pop music here was not really developed as an original form of self expression at any period, besides a few exceptions also known only locally. No musician has made it internationally so far from here.

I have offered to that bunch of idealists, to produce a music video of their first single. The piece as Lux and Independent Cinema commission was printed on 35mm film and was touring around cinemas in England during year 2010 – 2011. So the guys had a virtual tour of their first song around England, the country with a strong rock music tradition, so the address of a desire to any starting musicians.

Deimantas Narkevicius

99 WORDS WITH KEREN CYTTER

KEREN CYTTER, SIREN (video still), 2014, 15′
courtesy Galleria Raffaella Cortese (Milan); Galerie Nagel Draxler (Berlin) and the artist

… I’m sitting at home in Berlin and go on writing. I’m wearing a pink Hello Kitty t-shirt I bought in Japan with white sunglasses.
Even when I just write to myself it’s clear to me that I want some-one to read it, and I want him to laugh or cry.
No one has ever cried from something I wrote except for some nut I met ten years ago in art school.
She told me she cried from some poems
I wrote, it was the first time I thought she’s mad.
I think I’ll pass the coming days unconscious.

KEREN CYTTER, White Diaries, 2011