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SENSITIVE CITY
Work by Studio Azzurro Promoted by the Commission General of Italy for Shanghai World Expo 2010 Sensitive City is an interactive work dedicated to an ideal and counter-utopian city, set up based on the relations, the memories, but also the dreams and fears of its inhabitants. Sensitive City is a city that cannot be conceived as an abstraction, or be casually superimposed over a certain territory or be created based on an idea produced by a single mind. Instead, it is constructed and deconstructed every time it is described, it goes beyond the visible spectrum, it is deep, layered, full of hidden deposits of memory and emotion. This city is polycentric, and it is shaped before one’s eyes by the stories told by different people who present the visitor with maps of their own personal experiences, their memories of these places they are so fond of and their views on their imagined lands. The only way to explore it is to stop a passer-by and follow their instructions, by touching the virtual figures which dissect the space and by observing the images that lead to the place where the story is told. The relationship born of this gesture changes and shapes the city’s representation. Sensitive City is born and transformed by following the scheme of the relations that originate out of the environment in which the work is displayed. Conversely the scheme also depends on the relationships that the town’s inhabitants have set up with the places they hold dear to them. Gesture upon gesture the city appears like a place of light and shadow where the water and the earth intermingle, emptiness produces form, silence induces listening, the centre forms an organic whole with its surroundings and the wind defies all boundaries. For a number of years now Studio Azzurro has been addressing issues related to the values pertaining to memories, places and communities by engaging in the creation of a cycle of open air works termed Portatori di Storie (Story Bearers) in which the visitors are required to take a very active part in discovering the different territories through the stories of their inhabitants. The first works along these lines were presented at the Espace d’Art Actua in Casablanca and at the International SITE Santa Fe Biennial. Even the more specific issue of urbanisation and cities has been addressed through a number of projects including Megalopoli for the VII Biennale di Architettura in Venice and La città degli occhi, (The city of eyes), loosely based on Italo Calvino's "Città Invisibili”, for the Milan Triennale. STUDIO AZZURRO In 1982 Fabio Cirifino, Paolo Rosa and Leonardo Sangiorgi began an experience which, over the years, has explored the poetic and expressive possibilities of new technological cultures; in 1995 they were joined by Stefano Roveda. Through the creation of video environments, sensitive and interactive environments, museum exhibitions, theatre performances and films, they have developed a broad artistic experience which cuts across traditional disciplines, forming a team which is open to various contributions and other significant collaborations. Its artistic research was, at first, directed toward the creation of video environments, in which the electronic image became a part of the physical environment in order to give central importance to the spectator and the surrounding context. Video environments are narrative devices based upon a highly evocative scenario, upon recorded video sequences of short repeated events and upon an arrangement of monitors which makes it possible to avoid the limitations of the screen. Works such as Il Nuotatore (va troppo spesso ad Heidelberg, 1984) and Vedute (quel tale non sta mai fermo, 1985), involving the human figure and nature as their elements, are projected according to the spatial and social context in which they are to be viewed. Various works during this period, such as Camera astratta (1987) – commissioned by Documenta 8 in Kassel and winner of the Ubu Prize – took their research into the area of theatre and performance, finding an original way of bringing together theatre action and video image with the invention of the double scene, based on the live interaction between the body of the actor and the virtual space of the video. Experimentation continued over the following years through theatre dance and musical, in which The Cenci (1997), presented at the Almeida Theatre, London, represented an important moment. During the same period, Studio Azzurro’s cinema activity was further developed with L’osservatorio nucleare del sig. Nanof (1985), culminating in the release of the feature film Il Mnemonista (2000), a voyage into the labyrinths of memory, freely adapted from a clinical case described by Alexander Luria. In 1995 they developed an important new interest in questions of interactivity and multimedia, with the creation of a series of works described as sensitive environments, including Tavoli (Perchè queste mani mi toccano?, 1995) and Coro (1995). These are environments which are capable of responding to a human action, in which technology is combined with narration and space, where the effects produced derive from choices and from the presence of people and systems, through “natural interfaces”, reacting without the use of technological controls but through ordinary means of communication, such as touch, foot contact or sound. In 2002, after two years of travel and research, an exhibition entitled Meditazioni Mediterraneo was presented at Castel S. Elmo, Naples, and at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, consisting of five “unstable landscapes”, interactive installations on the theme of Mediterranean identity. This work was to mark the beginning of a new investigation into place, with its memory and identity, using the results of earlier experiences in order to design multimedia museum exhibitions, including Il Museo della Resistenza at Sarzana (2000) and the Montagna in Movimento museum (2007) in the Fortress at Vinadio. The strong narrative and immersive content, the relational and interactive approach, make these museums into ecosystems of learning, narrative habitats which form a dialogue with visitors and with virtual communities. This contact with the values of memory, of places and of communities was also to have a notable influence on their artistic experience, with the production of a new cycle of works called Portatori di storie in which a highly participatory form of interactivity was tried out, involving the visitor, in order to explore the local area through the accounts of its inhabitants. The first works in this project, which is still being developed, are being presented in Casablanca, with Sensible Map, at the International Biennial at Santa Fe, with La quarta scala, and at Shanghai World Expo 2010, with Sensitive City. Studio Azzurro works with a single mind, though it includes many people who have contributed over the years, for shorter or longer periods, with their ideas and their own personal skills and sensibilities, in order to build up a single creative atmosphere in which to develop this type of experience, making it possible to maintain a direction and a coherence of meaning in its widely varied activity. Those currently working with Studio Azzurro in various roles include: Marco Barsottini, Elisa Bolis, Reiner Bumke, Matteo Cellini, Mario Coccimiglio, Daniele De Palma, Elisa Giardina Papa, Francesca Gollo, Tommaso Leddi, Carmen Leopardi, Chiara Ligi, Chiara Longo, Mauro Macella, Alberto Massagli Bernocchi, Daniela Mezzela, Elisa Midali, Alessandro Pecoraro, Silvia Pellizzari, Giulio Pernice, Sonia Ragno, Lorenzo Sarti. |
