Sta come Torre

865 km di costa pugliese reinterpretati da 7 artisti contemporanei

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Luigi Presicce – The transmitting tower

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Luigi Presicce

The transmitting tower

A performance that is intended to give center stage to an often-overlooked detail. The visit of Nembrot, King of Babylon, to the construction site where armies of workers were at work to build the immense tower of Babel in the Seinear – which occupies almost the entire painting and landscape – in the painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Our Nembrotto, as Dante calls him, arrives at the foot of one of our coastal towers which is about to be somehow “continued” and increased in its height. The performance does not celebrate successful completion of the works, but an ordinary phase of the construction process. The king, in the way of our days, has hired a company of developers to increase the height of the existing tower and thus its transmission capacity. The Tower of Babel has become a large relay antenna, a transmission tower. From the prototype that the architects show to the customer, we understand that the tower houses up to three transmitters. Behind them, the coastal tower still goes on serving its hundreds-year-old watching and signaling functions through the presence of human figures that make themselves heard through nautical smoke bombs.

Links

This venue is connected to the previous venue and the subsequent venue. It houses works by Gabriella Ciancimino (Taranto) and Pamela Diamante (Trani)

Luigi Presicce

Luigi Presicce (Porto Cesareo, 1976) lives and works in Florence. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lecce. He decided not to defend his final thesis. In Lecce he founded, together with other artists, Archiviazioni, to explore and reason on the Contemporary South. His research has been influenced by independent studies. He has participated in several artistic residencies in Italy and abroad, and has won numerous prizes and awards, including the Epson Art prize (Como) and the Emerging Talents Prize, CCC Strozzina (Florence). He has created and done several artistic performances in European and non-European festivals and events.

WIP

Opening

Work in progress

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Pamela Diamante – The origins, the land, the sea

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Pamela Diamante

The origins, the land, the sea

The large fragmented slabs of filetto rosso marble from Apricena belong to the neogenic period of the Gargano area, between the late Miocene and early Pliocene. Pamela Diamante places them inside tubular structures to fill the exhibition space vertically and full-height. A never-ending tower, a praise to creation and genesis, a praise to life. Pamela Diamante places them inside tubular structures to fill the exhibition space vertically and full-height. A never-ending tower, a praise to creation and genesis, a praise to life.

The sedimentation path of the stone, the result of millions of years of separation, like a sound wave: a white noise, the sum of all possible noises, interpreted by the artist in collaboration with composer Marco Malasomma in an audio track that retraces the geological eras of the stone, of the world. Underwater and muffled sounds surfaced and vital, the origins, the land, the sea in a dialogue with the sound flows of the environment now, enriched and blended with the sounds emitted by visitors. Two very distant times are meeting.

The soundtrack and the sedimentation path talk to each other, stone sheets will display frequency-intensity, Hertz and decibel graphs composing a minimal grammar. The stone, the material, stops taking on new forms but resonates with and speaks to us through its primordial signs. The stone, the material, stops taking on new forms but resonates with and speaks to us through its primordial signs.

Links

This venue is connected to the previous venue and the subsequent venue. It houses works by Luigi Presicce (Vieste) and Lucia Veronesi (Polignano a Mare)

Pamela Diamante

Pamela Diamante (Bari, 1985) lives and works in Bari, where she studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts. Before starting her studies, she served the Italian Army for five years. She focuses on the notion of complexity: systems theory, emerging phenomena, accidental events, all elements at the core of complexity. She recently won the Artists Development Programme of the European Investment Bank. She has exhibited in Milan, Rome, Tehran, Miami and also in Havana.

www.pameladiamante.it

WIP

Opening

Work in progress

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Lucia Veronesi – È successo il mare

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Lucia Veronesi

The sea has happened

For a sentinel on the shore, it’s like the sea isn’t there. His gaze seems to wipe out the landscape. Whoever looks at the sea for watching purposes is looking for only one thing: a threat, the danger of being attacked, the approach of the enemy. A sentinel’s gaze is like a veil that covers the landscape: against the real sea backdrop his assumptions, his moods, anxiety, need to check and send a warning, always seem to prevail.

If the horizon stays calm, nothing has happened for the sentinel. But actually “the sea has happened“, as the sentinel has never stopped looking at it intensely, without realizing it. So, Lucia Veronesi’s gaze captures what happens when we believe we are looking at something and we see something else. Well, that something does not stop happening, quite the contrary, it happens even more intensely, hidden as it is by our assumptions.

The fabrics used by Lucia Veronesi, superimposed and sewn together, symbolically and physically veil the sight of the sea. They superimpose on the sight of the sea with another sight made of the inner landscapes, desires and narrative devices of the observer.

Each of us is a sentinel, and to all of us “the sea has happened”: that sea we cannot see even if we have it before us, because we are too busy looking for something else.

Links

This venue is connected to the previous venue and the subsequent venue. It houses works by Pamela Diamante (Trani) and Giuseppe de Mattia (Brindisi)

Lucia Veronesi

Lucia Veronesi (Mantova, 1976) lives and works in Venice. She studied painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. In Venice she founded, together with other artists, a not for profit space: Spazio Punch. She is attracted by the domestic landscape, intimate and familiar, natural and urban, imbued as it is with the story of those who have been experiencing it. She has exhibited in Italy and abroad – Novate Milanese, Francavilla al Mare, Jerusalem and Sarajevo. She is part of the Board of Yellow, a research project on contemporary painting, and of the Atrii collective, also based in Milan.

www.luciaveronesi.com

WIP

Opening

Work in progress

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Coclite / De Mattia – Horizontal Towers

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Coclite / De Mattia

Horizontal towers

Hyper-visibility, crumbling towers, the horizon line being moved elsewhere. Coclite and De Mattia focus on what we see. To see and to be seen from a tower that has lost its defensive function, from where nothing can be seen. To see and to be seen through the web. Seeing, controlling. Being seen and controlled. And this, for Coclite. De Mattia has an impact on the horizon that is completely retraced. During a documented performance, on a net that does not hide but dissimulates, the horizon is framed and moved to the place of the exhibition.

In this displacement, the authors reason on what happens to the way we perceive a place, to the identity we grasp when what we see is mediated, filtered. Some scientific terms such as aberration and distortion are used to indicate what can naturally happen to our vision, and reveal the contradictions of the places we see, of the territories we explore, marking even more the inevitable fragmentation of our vision -the crumbling towers- because we are flooded by an endless and nonsensical flow of images. A flow that ironically impairs our vision, making it lose all of its meaning, just like horizontal towers.

Links

This venue is connected to the previous venue and the subsequent venue. It houses works by Lucia Veronesi (Polignano a Mare) and Elena Bellantoni (Tricase Porto)

Work in progress

Luca Coclite

Luca Coclite (Gagliano del Capo, 1981) participates in several artistic residency programs. He has been awarded an NCTM and Art scholarship to develop a research project at Experimental Intermedia in New York. He focuses on the contemporary image related to landscape and architecture. His works have been exhibited in Rome and Bologna and he has collaborated to several artistic and curatorial projects – Ramdom and Casa a mare – and founded studioconcreto with Laura Perrone.

www.lucacoclite.it

Giuseppe De Mattia

Giuseppe De Mattia (Bari, 1980) lives and works in Bologna where he collaborates with Home Movies, the Archivio nazionale dei film di famiglia and the Cineteca. He has worked alone or in collectives – Coclite/De Mattia, Casa a Mare (with Coclite and Claudio Musso). He focuses on the relationship between memory and the contemporary world using the languages of photography, video and sound. In his latest works he makes use of drawing and painting. In 2015 he put in place his publishing project “Libri Tasso” that is still in operation.

www.giuseppedemattia.it

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Opening

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Elena Bellantoni – Corpomorto

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Elena Bellantoni

Corpomorto

What can be seen from the many towers that guard and watch over the coastline of Puglia? And what can be seen from the other side, from the sea? Elena Bellantoni chooses this latter viewpoint to drop anchor, an anchor, a corpomorto(literally translated dead body: a marine term for a heavy object used as an anchor on the sea bottom of a buoy or a safety buoy). A gesture, a physical and symbolic effort to throw, to launch. Something about courage: the courage to dive and cross the sea.

This gesture lies at the very heart of Corpomorto: placing something on the bottom of the sea that turns into a safe anchorage and at the same time requires an element of courage (from the Italian an-coraggio). Semantic implications recalled by seafaring terms. The term corpomorto suggests the presence of many dead bodies in the seas making reference to the weight of cement (the heavy and cheap material of which a corpomorto is actually mainly made up). An-courage emphasizes the action of jumping into the sea, the courage to approach a dock and reach the mainland.

The artist as an anchor during a documented performative action whereby letters made of concrete at the bottom of the sea compose the nominal phrase anchor corpo-morto (dead-body) between the sky and land-courage. Even without a predicate, this sentence becomes a warning, a poetic, politically coded message. From the sea does emerge a vision of the tower, a phrase that can be enriched with new syntagms, a new discourse always susceptible to change and transformation. Even without a predicate, this sentence becomes a warning, a poetic, politically coded message. From the sea does emerge a vision of the tower, a phrase that can be enriched with new syntagms, a new discourse always susceptible to change and transformation.

Links

This venue is connected to the previous venue and the subsequent venue. It houses works by Luca Coclite (Brindisi) and Gabriella Ciancimino (Taranto)

Elena Bellantoni

Elena Bellantoni (1975) lives and works in Rome. She teaches “Body Phenomenology” at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. After graduating in Contemporary Art History, she continued her studies in Paris and London. Video, photography, performances, drawing and installations: all languages through which BELLANTONI explores identity and otherness. In addition to numerous artistic residencies – Belgrade, Mexico, Beirut – her most recent projects include “On the bread line”, -on display in a focus event at MAXXI in Rome-, with which she won the IV edition of the Italian Council and “Ho annegato il Mare” for Manifesta 12. The artist is present in several public and private collections in Italy and abroad.

www.onthebreadline.it

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Opening

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Gabriella Ciancimino – Radio Fonte Centrale_Stazione Puglia

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Gabriella Ciancimino

Radio Fonte Centrale_Stazione Puglia

Specimens of Centaura pumilio L., known as Crete Cornflower, found on the southern Ionian coast (a “wandering plant” according to Gilles Clément’s definition, found in Crete and North Africa from to Egypt to Syria and Palestine). Shipwrecked migrants who accidentally land on the coasts of Puglia, but also those who today are in a state of social, cultural, political and economic disorientation. A Mediterranean landscape observed from the land of Puglia and metaphorically depicted as a combination of plants and people. A landscape of interweaving narratives -of historical resistance(s) for humans and biological resistance(s) for plant species-, that has brought to life previously unknown or little known local stories and legends recovered by Gabriella Ciancimino. Local stories that Ciancimino returns to us by means of her graphic works on paper of Radio Fonte Centrale_Stazione Puglia. A parallelism between what is endemic and what is not: meeting the Other, men, shipwrecked people, plant species. Contemporary art can become a catalyst for change.

Centaura pumilio L. is the iconographic protagonist of the drawings, mounted on shaped metal frames recalling Art Nouveau writing and decorations. The drawings are made on original papers, seed paper, handmade paper, superimposed and cut with a scalpel. This plant species is at risk today, its graphic rendering blends with the textures of ink and metal buttons, with the imaginary maps of Ottoman captain Piri Reìs (Gallipoli, 1470 c. – Cairo, 1554) and other elements. A dense interweaving of signs emerges from the background, a reference to both the plant and human roots of the narrative.

A soundtrack – composed by the Sicilian reggae group Shakalab – adds to the graphic and sculptural elements. A track conceived as a song celebrating a time of reawakening that, aired from a tower in Puglia reaches Gibraltar through the sea currents, and from there spreads across the oceans to “conquer” the entire globe. A reawakening to experience Oneness and not separation, the law of contemporary world.

Links

This venue is connected to the previous venue and the subsequent venue. It houses works by Elena Bellantoni (Tricase Porto) and Luigi Presicce (Vieste)

Gabriella Ciancimino

Gabriella Ciancimino (Palermo, 1978) chooses a nomadic lifestyle, participating in numerous artistic residency programs on the study of relational dynamics and communication. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, a city where, in the same years, she worked as a democratically engaged journalist. She has participated in exhibitions in Moscow, Barcelona, Turin, Milan and Venice.

www.ciancimino.it

WIP

Opening

Work in progress

#stacometorre

#custodiamolaculturainpuglia

#weareinpuglia