Vandalisms (with Giovanni Morbin, Luca Vitone, Gaia Carboni)

The term ‘vandalise’, with its derivations such as ‘vandalism’, and especially the one from which it comes, ‘vandal’ (the person who vandalises), has always had an exclusively negative inference, meaning apparently unjustified damage and destruction. However, it would seem that the 'vandal' is raging and using violence against what it perceives to be superior (in beauty and authority). But one could also suppose that the quality necessary to unleash this destructive fury is the diversity perceived in something or someone, in relation to oneself and to one's culture. Likewise, one might suppose that such energy used in destroying is not activated without a strong respect for what one  therefore wants to destroy: indifference, or the absence of respect and/or awe, generally averts the occurrence of an offensive or destructive action. In this case, the most serious accusation could be  destroying without cause that which especially terrifies someone, by failing to foresee and prevent violence, with appropriate behavior. Incidentally, this is also the case with natural agents (earthquakes, floods, fires) that strike ruthlessly and without warning, without there being any opportunities to oppose it: at best, the damage can be limited. Instead, the case of a motivated violence, enacted against an enemy that is respected and even feared, gives the  act of vandalism a sort of legitimation by attributing creative, and therefore constructive, qualities to the destruction. Perhaps, the right conditions for creation can only be created through destruction (sometimes also by natural phenomena). Yet, the act of vandalism is affirmative and vital because it allows the author, the vandal, to affirm their own presence and their power towards the enemy, of whatever or whomever has been identified as such. And the act of vandalism itself determines a discontinuity, a fracture of the established order, which is subverted, thus freeing up space and energy for the new.

During three successive meetings at blank during the month of May 2018, three Italian artists will each present a work of particular significance within their own creative journey. In one case, the work was carried out many years ago and deserves to be re-proposed for its particularity and its strength. In the two other cases, the works are very recent, made between 2016 and 2017, and one of them will be presented in public for the first time.

During the central hours of two consecutive days in the summer of 2016, Giovanni Morbin went up and down an alpine path in an attempt to counteract the inexorable action of gravity that, with the complicity of a torrent, incessantly pushes towards the valley whatever has weight, especially stones. Through the obstinate repetition of this oppositional gesture, Morbin attempted to reverse an incontrovertible tendency, by refusing to adapt to it. Once he had filled his backpack with stones collected downstream, he would bring them back upstream, more or less where they had once been located before the torrent pushed them down. And then he'd start again, doing it over and over for as long as his stamina lasted.
The video Rock and Roll, documenting the tiring, desperate, and noble intervention by Giovanni Morbin, who will be present, will be screened on Thursday, May 10 at blank.

In the summer of 1998, Luca Vitone published Rock Suite in Y, a CD of about 20 minutes containing a collage of about one hundred of fragments extracted from as many rock music recordings, after having worked on it for about three years. Each time – in each of these fragments – a very short word is said and heard, and also repeated: a word that is affirmative, vital, potentially able to seduce, excite, and incite the listener. This is an act – not seen but perceived and imagined through hearing – that intends to create through an objective destruction and disintegration. Vitone has slowly dismantled, and disintegrated, complex musical constructions, each time using precise parts of the original structure to build a new one, with a free but dense and solid form.
Wednesday, May 16 at blank, Luca Vitone will commemorate the genesis and creation of his work twenty years ago by proposing a listening to his CD and commenting on it. A work he made in 1995-98, Greatest Hits, which in a seemingly disordered way, contains all the notes that were used to create Rock Suite in Y, will be exhibited in the same room.

Thursday, May 31 at blank, Gaia Carboni will talk about a particular experience she recently had on her creative path, studded with violent incidents that have left indelible marks on the surface of a ceramic work that she worked on intensely in the summer of last year (in Crissolo, as part of the Mun Ange project). She first shaped it, then baked it, finally amending its various parts destroyed by the action of fire, an element that always acts on the border between destruction and creation. During the meeting, her work will finally be shown for the first time ever – absolute, whole, and alive after its accurate and loving reconstruction by the artist herself.

(translated by Laura Culver)

All the meetings will take place at blank at 6 pm.