Temporaneo

Temporaneo

Various venues, Rome, Italy

Claire Fontaine, Siamo con voi nella notte (We are With you in the Dark, 2011)

The press tour for the ‘Temporaneo’ (temporary) project – comprising five works of art installed on Rome’s periphery – held one Saturday in late October was part magical mystery tour, part pilgrimage. And if hallucinations weren’t induced either by drugs or fatigue, a near delirium was felt by the time we reached the fifth and final art work, signalling that we had come far from the comfort of the Saturday brunch-style gallery openings that have become de rigueur in the Eternal City. Craft beer? Cake? A selection of salamis? Alas, not a sausage. For once the art was left to fend for itself – and with profound results.

Petrit Halilaj, They Are Lucky to be Bourgeois Hens II (2009)

Indeed, the aim of ‘Temporaneo’, which was to present site-specific public art in unusual architectural settings with a view to provoking reflection away from Rome’s historical centre, was well conveyed by the five participating artists – drawn from across Europe – and the Italian curatorial team, comprising Ilaria Gianni and Cecilia Canziani of Nomas Foundation, who hosted the entire project in conjunction with the IMF Foundation. Each artist spent a number of days at their location, chosen to reflect the notion of architectural contemporaneity in a city and country that are widely and unjustly believed to be culturally stagnant.

Hans Schabus, Appostamento (2011)

Those locations included the Arts Faculty at Rome’s Sapienza University, where Italian artist Flavio Favelli covered the concave windowed entrance to its courtyard with blown-up titles taken from banned 1970s pornographic film posters (Supervietato, 2011), Roma Tre University where Austrian born Hans Schabus rearranged objects in its courtyard (Appostamento, 2011), and the Ponte Della Musica, a new footbridge connecting two of Rome’s northern boroughs. The latter work – entitled simply Roma – which was viewed at the tour’s end by assembled critics, featured Romani music played through speakers mounted within permanent openings in the floor of the footbridge, which offer a view of Rome’s river Tiber and its banks. The music was performed by Romani violinist Adrian Bilteanu and recorded by Italian born, Holland-based artist Andreotta Calò, who befriended the musician whilst staying in Rome.
The issue of the Romani in Italy attracted close artistic scrutiny that weekend, with Rome-based centoxcentoperiferia (100% Periphery) – a project that aims to display art in places normally deprived of cultural activity – displaying the results of an arts education programme for the child inhabitants of the Campo Nomadi di Via Salone Romani camp on the capital’s outskirts. That project – curated by Donatella Pinocci, Donatella Giordano and Simone Martinelli in collaboration with American artist Lisa Wade – who made two stop-motion videos with the children – is subject to the same unavoidable problems faced by Calò’s work. Namely, the difficulty in squaring the desire for art to contribute to society with the minimal impact that it can actually have in reality. That impact is often inverse to the grand symbolic gestures that the artist evokes. On Saturday 22 October, as the press looked on, Adrian Biltenau walked beneath the Ponte Della Musica, miming (though not obviously so) to the music he had recorded, as it played through discreetly placed speakers. Traditional Romani songs were mixed with musical phrases from the Italian national anthem, inviting the press audience to reflect on the poor living conditions and prejudice that the Romani people – some of whom have set up shelter along the river’s banks – live with daily. Yet such a statement served more than anything to confound rather than solve any of the problems inherent to the integration of the Romani across Europe. For example, the violinist was way out of reach of the audience: a distant, separate being who had been chosen to perform specifically because he wasn’t Italian, whereas all but one of the press were. In this sense the violin, heard across the backdrop of the Tiber, situated close to the Milvian Bridge – where Emperor Constantine won over his rival before putting an end to the persecution of the Christians – mourned after a potential promise perpetually offered by art, but never delivered upon. Upon the Milvian bridge, and at the Campo Nomadi di Via Salone one day later I experienced the novel sensation of guilt for having dedicated so much time over the years to writing about art in its political capacity – a turn in perception which is yet to be fully played out. But for now it seems clear that if anything positive resides in art, it must be sought not in its political capacity, but perhaps in the gap between what it promises and what it actually offers. In this space art’s true potential might be leveraged, however limited and off-centre its concrete scope might be.
Indeed, ‘Temporaneo’, which translates as ‘temporary’, alludes not only to the one-month duration of the show but to a de-centring tendency bought about by the lack of a concrete central point around which the show might revolve. Navigating its five works in itself presents something of a hunt, for which the reward is the invocation to reflect for a while. Visitors who make it to the Auditorium Parco Della Musica specifically to look at Kosovan-born Petrit Halilaj’s They Are Lucky to be Bourgeois Hens II (2009) – a chicken coop in the form of a large wooden space rocket, replete with its flightless inhabitants – are encouraged to consider with due seriousness what they might otherwise have passed flippantly in a museum. For it is possible to pass anything more or less flippantly in the generic art-institutional setting, given the crowds, the shops, the cafès and above all, the museum’s obligation not to reflect, meditate or engage but to educate. It’s a word which evokes Tony Blair at his popular zenith posturing as if personal development could be packed into a sound-bite. Education moves neatly via carefully construed steps that aim towards a given end. Reflection is less predictable and more in keeping, arguably, with the nature of artistic creation. In reflecting, new discoveries can be made.
It is in this spirit that the contribution of Claire Fontaine – the Paris-based artist collective – best delivers its message. Consisting of an illuminated tube light sign spelling out its title, Siamo con voi nella notte (We are With you in the Dark, 2011), can be found on the grounds of the Teatro India (Theatre India), in a crumbling former industrial area of Rome. The work, best seen at night, is a demonstration of solidarity for activists and socially engaged people the world over, but was conceived in particular as a show of support for the occupiers of Rome’s Teatro Valle, which continues to push for new legislation to enable the Theatre to become a commonly owned entity, free from State and private intervention. ‘We are with you in the dark’ is perhaps what art ought to be saying to the Romani, the Palestinians, the Libyans, the Afghans, the Iraqi and Iranian people, those camped at Wall Street and at St Paul’s. Though art must not stop there. It must be seen to be there in the dark with them. ‘Temporaneo’, like so many politically motivated art projects, is testament to this fact.
Mike Watson