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.

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.