21 december 2018—10 march 2019
rotterdam

work, body, leisure
het nieuwe instituut

exhibitionwith giuditta vendrame and giulio squillacciotti

21 february—3 march 2019
wellington

the performance arcade
experimental performance art festival

public installation
with giuditta vendrame

shore leaves

2-ch. video installation
with giuditta vendrame and giulio squillacciotti

delving into the invisibility of labor under automation, shore leaves offers an entry point to the everyday world of seafarers, when the pace of logistical handling slows down. shore leaves are vital for the health and wellbeing of seafarers and they represent the short moments when sailors can connect with their families and friends.

the video documentation was produced during fieldwork aboard bulk carrier and container cargo ships harbored for loading and unloading in the ports of venice and rotterdam, and at the seafarers organizations that in both cities provide practical assistance and support to seafarers of all nationalities.

focusing on the spaces and gestures of this waiting time, the project confronts a reality that is generally concealed. the machinic efficiency in the circulation of the goods on which our economies are highly dependent has a counterpart: while human presence and labor are still indispensable and of infrastructural importance, human bodies strive to adapt to remodeled times and spaces and descend further beneath a threshold of visibility.

fieldwork in european realism

research / open studio installation

acrylic glass [polymethyl methacrylate]; safety [toughened, tempered] glass; wood, formica; perforated aluminium, rockwool filling; limestone, plaster; marble. wax castings of the flooring of a public square.

fieldwork in european realism is weird corporate archaeology; a forensic display deprived of liability, accountability, answerability: what architecture might materialise the post‐national political contract? collecting and listing fragments/relics from the periphery of the field of view, aspects of a nondescript built environment emerge, challenged by gaps and holes.

one of the twelve stars formerly on display as part of the euro‐skulptur in frankfurt – a monument built in the late 90s and left behind by the european central bank – still shows traces of the paint once used by activists to colour it in red, as well as the signature of a german sportsman connected to a subsequent unsuccessful auction. desktops from the european commission in brussels, phono absorbent panels scrapped from a meeting room, decorative motifs featuring the euro sign, and security glasses recomposed into a glazed façade are all treated as equal and singular embodiments of physical matter and representation.

empirical and speculative, this account processes things found in the wrong place, slipped in time: they escape routine; they are doubled. post‐imperial melancholia and the evocation of a haunted aftermath are sidetracked by a political impulse inflected into the very materials, in the concurrent process of institution, constitution and destitution.

reset modernity!

modernity was a way to differentiate past and future, north and south, progress and regress, radical and conservative. however, at a time of deep ecological mutation, such a compass is running in wild circles without offering much bearing anymore. this is why it is time for a reset. let’s pause for a while, follow a procedure and search for different sensors that could allow us to recalibrate our detectors, our instruments, to feel anew where we are and where we might wish to go.

the layout of the exhibition itself offers a set of disorienting/reorienting procedures. no guarantee, of course: this is an experiment, a thought experiment, a gedankenausstellung.

bruno latour and his team organized a set of workshops called “reset modernity! shanghai perspective” in may 2017, which resulted in an exhibition. we concentrated on a set of issues that modernity encounters at a time of deep ecological mutation, emphasizing a comparative perspective between europe and china. the four-day program took place at the shanghai himalayas museum, and used documentations assembled specifically for the discussions, which speak to conceptions of science, our understanding of territory and sovereignty, and handling the role of technology. it a complex process of translating and negotiating differences that the team wishes to launch. the chinese participants are encouraged to bring documents, examples, sites, situations, and concepts to light, thus sharing a different view of what constitutes modernity. the purpose of these workshops is to embrace the process of reassessment to compare how european and chinese thinkers, artists, intellectuals, activists, and officials can handle new situations. the goal is not to reopen the tired cliché of an east/west comparison, but to use the formidable trial of ecological mutation to compare how two cultures react and furthermore, how they reassess their own trajectories of modernization. cooperating with two highly complex civilizations that were initially shocked by various forms of modernizations and then, more recently, endured an enormous counter shock as a result of the new climatic regime, offers an ideal situation for productive encounters.

always implicitly present in any public space, law tends to be algorithmic, quantitative and invisible. local and national regulations discretise human behaviour; sometimes they are rigorous and mathematical, other times loose and under-defined. here, they lend themselves to be represented visually, and through staged choreographies. friction atlas is an ongoing critical archive, where laws regulating behaviours and gatherings in public spaces, sampled from different contexts, are represented and collected.

addressing the issue of legibility of public space, it aims to make regulations explicit, through graphical devices. by drawing 1:1 diagrams, enacting laws on public surfaces, the project makes legal prescriptions and loopholes debatable. through the engagement of the public, the dynamics of authority become also physically discernible. the diagrams represent cases from different cities, including athens, genoa, cairo, washington, stockholm, sydney, new york, and rome.

we invite the public to participate in a choreographed debate, in a rereading of urban space, which will highlight some of its hidden aspects.