In the sacred silence of an ancient church covered with medieval frescoes, traces of the historical memory of the city of Spoleto, the imperceptible sound is amplified and the depth of space and time is measured. Multimedia installations recreate immersive environments that require the participation of the visitor, surrounded by the magic of the place and the alchemy of the artistic elements. Opera Celibe is a satellite project of PALAZZO COLLICOLA, a cycle of digital sound art installations that develops research on sound and memory, through three site-specific works by Donato Piccolo, Vincenzo Core and Daniele Spanò, who alternated in former Church of SS Giovanni e Paolo over the course of a year.
The title “Opera Celibe” is freely taken from the Duchampian concept of “celibate machine”, which was applied to the Large Glass, one of the most important works in the history of modern art, which has given rise to various interpretations. In the digital age, the Celibe Machine can be thought of as a set of mechanisms, electrical wires, sensors, amplifiers and motherboards, working simultaneously towards the artist's purpose; an incomprehensible set of elements, which follows the rules of the imagination and is an end in itself; a machine that produces meaning and disperses it, dealing with contemporary uncertainty.
Like celibate machines, the digital installations designed for the former SS Giovanni e Paolo church in Spoleto are like autonomous works that breathe on their own, like independent organisms in the space that hosts them. All the works of the cycle, in fact, start from the study of the place and are grafted onto it with total respect, but then activate an unsolvable paradox. As in Duchamp's Large Glass, the space that is generated in the former church through the coexistence of past and present seems divided into two parts: the upper part, which develops vertically on the walls covered with frescoes on which History flows; and the lower part, where the contemporary work is inserted. It is what Lyotard in "Les Transformateurs Duchamp" defines as the opposition between classical art and modern art. The first, indispensable to the "religious function", had a system of representation harnessed to classical schemes; the second, modern art, inaugurated by Duchamp, breaks the ancient codes and becomes an opportunity for criticism of society, with a highly experimental character. This "double discourse" (from the disoi logoi of the sophistic art to which Lyotard refers), which is unlikely to reach a conciliatory conclusion, is staged in the former church SS Giovanni a Paolo, where the medieval frescoes dialogue with the last generation of contemporary art. The dialogue of strength and tension that is generated between the place and the work aspires to an impossible union, which results in an unconsummated atmospheric marriage, a polyphony in which past and present flow together without ever touching.
"Celibe” because the union and totality of the place with the work is not achieved. The place, in fact, i.e. the former church, does not lend itself to interpenetration with other elements extraneous to its history, on the contrary, it remains intact over the centuries and retains its own aura, limiting itself to welcoming contemporaneity into its womb. And, even if it wanted, this place could celebrate a sacred union of any kind, because the church was deconsecrated years ago; thus the secular spirit of past and present history is preserved. The celibate work rebels against the idea of society that sees everything aimed at procreation, at the production of something new, salable and commodifiable. Celibacy therefore becomes the reclamation of the autonomy of art, the rediscovery of creative activity as a source of pleasure as an end in itself and an aesthetic, playful and, if we want, also political response to our times.
OPERA CELIBE / Digital Art in Saints Giovanni and Paolo's former church
Spoleto, Italy / 2015 › 2016
Starting from the beating of a butterfly's wings on a drum, a modular sculpture takes shape, a sort of enormous still, which penetrates the space of the church in its entirety, carrying the sound up to the apse, to finally marry with the place. It is said that the slightest flap of a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. This metaphor contains one of the postulates of chaos theory, which explains how the smallest variation in a system is capable of causing a chain of events generating a much greater physical and emotional effect. In this sculpture by Donato Piccolo the movement of a butterfly with taxidermied wings, artificially revitalized thanks to electronic impulses, produces a noise that travels along the entire tubular structure, until it reaches the opposite end where a speaker cone amplifies and diffuses it in the space. Here the sound, which in the artist's research has the fundamental role of activating the perceptive state, "does not have an aesthetic purpose, but is a mental impulse, like a spark trying to generate an explosion"; here in the alchemy of the elements, a holistic vision of art makes its way whose essential function is to explore physical processes and transmute them into mental states. The sparks that give life to Donato Piccolo's works activate the mechanisms that make them move and breathe, as if they were alive and had their own soul and will, in pursuit of probabilistic laws that bring chaos back to its origins: within us . Thus, those machines which from Duchamp onwards have become celibate due to their inability to marry the functional order imposed on things, now respond only to the creative impulse of the artist, placing themselves on the imaginary border between art and science, sculpture and machine, form and process.
DONATO PICCOLO / Butterfly Effect
25 June › 30 July 2016
A carpet, which by definition is two-dimensional, becomes as profound as one's awareness of oneself in the world; as much as the ability to interact and delve into the work, putting oneself and the concept we have of Art into play. A carpet as deep as the memory of coal, made up of burned, lived moments, of which only a fragile black profile remains. “Deep Carpet” is a point of arrival and mystical and sensorial meditation, where the soul rises on the ethereal notes of Hildegard of Bingen, one of the most interesting female figures of the 11th century (the same century of which the former church of SS John and Paul is testimony); nonconformist nun, revolutionary, writer, poet and musician, Hildegard of Bingen composed symphonies that have traveled through time and have survived to this day, like charred pearls. It will be our steps, recorded and disseminated, misrepresented and betrayed as echoes of a presence, that will modify the music in real time, causing distortions in the atmosphere. The public, in fact, is invited to step on the charcoal carpet to listen to the sound imprint of their own body and become aware of their responsibility towards Art and History. Vincenzo Core's expressive research focuses on the relationships between multiple sound materials to trace paths of meaning; the artistic process that leads him to give substance to his compositions, starts from his studies in electronic music, passes through many collaborations with visual artists, which take him far with numerous awards including the "International Computer Music Association European Award" (2012) , and arrived in 2014 at the environmental art festival Seminaria Sogninterra in Maranola, where Vincenzo Core, as a soloist, was invited to create a site-specific sound installation. Thus was born "Imprints on the path of memory", the prologue of "Deep Carpet", a sound crossing that translated the collective vibration of bodies in transit into music. In Spoleto, the installation changes place and feeling, it is no longer an indefinite dreamlike path, but a point of arrival in which to pause and listen.
VINCENZO CORE / Deep Carpet
7 › 27 November 2015
Pneuma is a dialogue between sound and wind where, without interruption, one generates the other and vice versa. In ancient Greek pneuma meant soul, an original vital principle, impalpable and invisible, therefore immaterial but also material, as demonstrated by the swelling of a tent in the blowing of the wind. It is the breath of the place and of the history that flows through it; it is the sacred that takes plastic form under the voluptuous folds of the curtains; the comparison between uncertainty and unpredictability, with the entirely human need for control and predictability. Here in the former church of SS Giovanni e Paolo, the contemporary artistic intervention activates new visions and becomes a living sculpture. Wind instruments and drapes give body to the invisible; the careful calibration between the sound wave and the blowing of the wind - implemented thanks to a specially developed multimedia program - allows the orchestration of the original music by Pino Pecorelli. Pneuma is the development of a design journey that begins with Atto primo in the Church of the Artists in Piazza del Popolo in Rome, where sound and movement were accompanied by the dimension of video. In Spoleto, a further process of synthesis to go beyond the physicality of the image and create not so much an object, but an environment, so close to the natural one, as to catapult us into the former church as if into a boat ready to leave.