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– VISIONI – Interview with Simone Monsi by Mauro Zanchi on ATPdiary

☞ This is the transcript of – VISIONI – Conversazione con Simone Monsi, an interview by Mauro Zanchi published on ATPdiary on May 30th, 2020 (in Italian and English). Translated in English with the help of Andrea Williamson.

Mauro Zanchi: Quali rischi corriamo mentre il mondo si sta sempre più trasformando in un ambiente dominato dalle ITC (tecnologie dell'informazione e della comunicazione)? Simone Monsi: Il rischio principale che avverto è di essere perennemente distratti dal sovraffollamento di informazioni. Tuttavia, penso anche che i processi di trasformazione siano ciclici e inevitabili, e li interpreto positivamente. Oltre all’analisi dei rischi, cerco di avanzare proposte per migliorare il presente. Uno dei temi che sto approfondendo è la trasformazione degli stati nazionali in fattorie fiscali, sostituendo alla loro funzione primaria di fornire servizi quella di riscossione dei tributi. In Italia il livello di tassazione dei redditi è molto alto e allo stesso tempo lo stato fornisce solo una rendicontazione sommaria per macro-settori della spesa pubblica. Mi interessa l’idea di sostituire l’agenzia delle entrate con l’agenzia delle uscite, che si occuperà di rendicontare attraverso l’obbligo di fatturazione elettronica come vengono spesi gli oltre 800 miliardi di euro che lo stato incassa ogni anno dalle tasse dei contribuenti.

MZ: Quali conseguenze agiranno sugli individui avvolti nell'iconosfera? Quale direzione deve seguire una nuova filosofia dell'informazione in un mondo sempre più tecnologizzato? SM: La conseguenza di essere distratti dall’ascolto continuo di narrazioni esterne è di trovarsi a vivere in una dimensione immaginaria sfasata dalla realtà. La direzione da seguire è fare nostra la grammatica della sfasatura e utilizzarla per verificare la prospettiva di interpretazione degli avvenimenti. Creare narrazioni personali originali attraverso la riconfigurazione dei collegamenti tra i fatti che si osservano può riportare alla dimensione reale, percorrendo a ritroso il processo di sfasatura. Bisogna guardare meglio e sentire attraverso la luce, cioè focalizzare l’attenzione su ciò che si vede e interpretare le immagini attraverso la carica positiva o negativa delle emozioni che suscitano dentro di noi.

MZ: Le ITC ci costringeranno a vivere in spazi più limitanti o ci aiuteranno a risolvere problemi sociali e ambientali o innescheranno ulteriori problematiche ? SM: Dipende dalle intenzioni. Supponiamo che i padroni del mondo abbiano immaginato un futuro dove le persone debbano essere sempre controllabili; questi potrebbero sostenere l’esistenza di falsi problemi di carattere globale per poi proporne la soluzione attraverso l’implementazione di tecnologie invasive della privacy dell’individuo ma necessarie per il supposto bene comune. Allo stesso tempo però, la presenza capillare delle ITC apre a potenzialità di diffusione delle informazioni di strabilianti proporzioni.

MZ: Che ruolo ha l'indagine artistica della metafotografia nell'attuale realtà iper-storica, pervasa dalla cyber cultura, dal postumanesimo e dall'iconosfera? SM: Penso che dovrebbe astenersi dal semplice commento del momento presente per proiettarsi invece nella lettura trasversale dell’iperstoria, facendo riemergere archetipi universali ora sommersi, i quali potrebbero facilitare una comprensione più piena di una realtà che soffre dell’occultamento della sfera spirituale dell’individuo e della collettività.

MZ: Le ITC registrano e trasmettono attraverso l'evoluta capacità di processare. Hanno però anche prodotto un notevole deficit concettuale rispetto ai risvolti etici che le nuove tecnologie hanno prodotto su di noi e sull'ambiente. Come può la ricerca artistica aiutare l'antropologia filosofica che analizza l'informazione, l'iperstoria e l'infosfera? SM: Dovrebbe avere il ruolo di proporre prospettive alternative di interpretazione del reale. Comportarsi come il prisma fa con la luce. Approcciare il fascio di informazioni che viene proposto come narrazione della realtà e dividerlo nelle sue parti costituenti, verificando l’autenticità di queste e svelandone altre occulte.

MZ: Dopo le rivoluzioni messe in azione da Copernico, Darwin e Freud, la quarta rivoluzione che nuove sfide globali sta innescando? SM: La sfida della verità, verso la decodificazione delle spinte propulsive che hanno determinato questa e le precedenti rivoluzioni, nella ricerca di comprenderne gli scopi attraverso i risultati a cui hanno portato. Dopodiché, immagino di sfruttare il fatto di essere connessi globalmente attraverso una rete di comunicazione digitale per traslare la stessa struttura di trasmissione di informazioni su di un piano non materiale, per considerare la fattibilità di un’internet spirituale che possa supportare la partecipazione a una memoria universale condivisa.

MZ: Che azione si instaura tra il medium oltrefotografico e gli ambienti artificiale, digitale, sintetico e della naturcultura? SM: Immagino il medium oltrefotografico come un corpo in ascesa che attraversa questi ambienti di cui ne fa la sua pelle esterna, mentre i sistemi di funzionamento degli stessi si configurano come il suo sistema nervoso.

MZ: Come possiamo rinnovare e ridisegnare il nostro vocabolario concettuale e immaginale attraverso un oltremedium per ottenere una rappresentazione più chiare ed evoluta del nostro tempo e delle proiezioni sul tempo che verrà? SM: Penso a due modi: il primo è di svelare tramite la carica iconica delle immagini gli equilibri di potere che restano solitamente nell’ombra ma le cui intenzioni producono effetti che possono essere documentati visualmente. In secondo luogo, attraverso questo processo di svelamento, si potrà idealmente accedere a un registro alt(r)o, verso una comprensione dell’esistente evoluta, espansa, approfondita.

MZ: In passato il passaggio da un linguaggio a un metalinguaggio ha innescato nuove possibilità di senso e inedite letture della realtà. Nel panorama attuale della fotografia contemporanea, lo spostamento concettuale dalla scrittura di luce alla metascrittura di luce verso quali interrogazioni metalinguistiche si dirige? Siamo veramente indotti a svolgere un metadiscorso sul senso? SM: Sì, l’intento è quello di rendere visibili significati che di solito si intuiscono solo vagamente e spostare il discorso su un piano che possiamo chiamare “metavisivo”: rappresentare la realtà come evidenza materialmente visibile di forze e intenzioni che si muovono su livelli altri, spirituali.

MZ: Ammettiamo che il parlare metalinguistico dell'uomo sia soltanto una serie di menzogne e che la comunicazione sia soltanto una successione di malintesi. Anche la scrittura e la scrittura di luce sono, o sono stati, tradimenti rispetto al vero senso presente nel reale? SM: Più di un tradimento lo definirei se non altro un appiattimento. Forse la traduzione in scrittura e le rappresentazioni visuali del reale sono forme limitate per interpretarlo pienamente. Immagino che per comprendere appieno l’esistente, inclusa la sua parte spirituale, ci si debba rivolgere a metodi di lettura oltrelinguistici. Il silenzio è uno di questi.

MZ: Un modo fondamentale per descrivere un sistema complesso è quello di misurare la sua "rete": il modo in cui le singole parti si collegano e comunicano tra loro. I biologi studiano le reti geniche, gli scienziati sociali studiano i social network e anche i motori di ricerca si basano, in parte, sull'analisi del modo in cui le pagine web formano una rete. Nelle neuroscienze, un'ipotesi di lunga data è che la connettività tra le cellule cerebrali giochi un ruolo importante nella funzione del cervello. Nell'ambito dell'arte contemporanea, e nel nostro caso nella metafotografia (che porta dentro di sé altre discipline e tecnologie), come possiamo far evolvere il medium fotografico attraverso un sistema più complesso, ovvero non più solo individuale ma più espanso? SM: Una possibile evoluzione del medium potrebbe seguire la direzione che, parafrasando la teorica dei media McKenzie Wark, porterebbe verso uno spostamento dell’attenzione dell’artista dall’esperienza estetica della quotidianità a una ricostruzione della quotidianità, cioè passare da una rappresentazione mimetica della realtà a una descrizione figurata di una relazione tra cose che già esiste ma non è visibile. Inoltre, mi piace immaginare di poter espandere questo tipo di approccio anche alla nostra sfera interiore e allo spazio della coscienza in generale. Questa direzione di indagine potrebbe essere la forma-pensiero che accomuna gli elementi costitutivi (gli artisti e le loro ricerche) della rete di collegamenti alla base di un possibile sistema metafotografico.

MZ: Alla luce di certe notizie apparse sui giornali in queste settimane, mentre stanno cercando di capire se il covid-19 sta in sospensione nell'aria e per quanto tempo - soprattutto nella pianura padana, che è la zona più inquinata in Italia - tu che hai studiato le questioni del particolato metallico e realizzato lavori su questo argomento hai trovato informazioni relative a un probabile collegamento tra inquinamento e trasmissione dei virus? SM: Anch’io ho letto dell’ipotesi che il virus SARS-coV-2 possa essere trasportato nell’aria dal particolato inquinante ma finora non ho trovato risposte che mi abbiano convinto. Mi pare strano però che tale informazione non fosse già nota alla scienza. Infatti, ci viene detto che il SARS-CoV-2 è una nuova mutazione di coronavirus, famiglia di virus conosciuta e presente sui libri di testo da diversi decenni. Se tale evenienza fosse realistica, non capisco come non si sia riusciti a dimostrarla già in passato. Quel che il buon senso mi spinge a pensare è invece che se l’inquinamento da particolato colpisce principalmente l’apparato respiratorio si può dunque immaginare come la popolazione che abita la pianura padana possa essere più vulnerabile a patologie che attaccano quello stesso apparato. Nondimeno, mi è parso di capire dai dati sulla mortalità diffusi dall’ISS che l’età media dei deceduti avesse un’età media superiore ai 70 anni e che più del 90% di questi soffrisse di una o più patologie pregresse. Quindi, indipendentemente dal fatto che il virus possa viaggiare nell’aria trasportato dal particolato inquinante, possiamo dedurre che questo si possa diffondere maggiormente fra una popolazione anziana, già malata di altre patologie e con un sistema respiratorio affaticato da una cattiva qualità dell’aria.

MZ: Cosa cambierà nel campo dell’arte contemporanea, dopo le conseguenze causate dalla pandemia da covid-19? SM: Il mio augurio è che l’operato degli artisti possa contribuire ad arginare la pandemia della perdita di senso critico da parte delle persone, le quali potrebbero ingenuamente credere che dietro le varie narrazioni provenienti da uno schieramento piuttosto che un altro non si celino interessi di parte. Per far questo, penso che l’arte non possa essere limitata a mero intrattenimento visivo, bensì debba essere stimolo di dibattiti intellettuali e contribuire a prese di coscienza, confermandosi presidio stabile di libertà di pensiero. Inoltre, sento necessario ribadire che, a mio avviso, l’artista debba trovare il coraggio di esprimere un’opinione sul presente! – che comprendo essere attività più faticosa di esprimersi su dibattiti del passato già archiviati nei libri di storia, ma che ritengo essere imprescindibile. L’arte contemporanea deve riconfermarsi avanguardia, di forma e soprattutto di pensiero, al fine di delineare i contorni del futuro attraverso un’oltre-lettura del presente.

__ English version

Mauro Zanchi: What risks do we face as the world is increasingly transforming into an environment dominated by ICT (Information and Communications Technology)? Simone Monsi: The main risk that I see is that we are perpetually distracted by the overcrowding of information. However, I also think that the transformation processes are cyclical and inevitable, and I interpret them positively. In addition to performing risk analysis, I try to make proposals to improve the present. One of the topics that I am investigating is the transformation of national states into tax farms, where the nation state’s primary function of providing services is replaced with that of collecting taxes. In Italy, the level of income taxation is very high and at the same time the state provides only a summary reporting of public expenditure by macro-sectors. I'm interested in the idea of replacing the revenue agency with the “agency of the outputs”, which will take care of reporting, through an electronic invoicing system, how more than 800 billion euros of taxes collected each year are spent.

MZ: What consequences will individuals wrapped up in the iconosphere face? What direction should a new philosophy of information follow, in an increasingly technologized world? SM: The consequence of being distracted by continually listening to external narratives is to find oneself living in an imaginary dimension out of phase with reality. The direction to follow is to make the out-of-phase grammar our own and use it to verify perspectives and interpretations of events. Creating original personal narratives through the reconfiguration of connections between facts that can be observed can bring us back to the real dimension, going backwards through the out-of-phase shifting process. We need to look better and feel through the light, meaning to focus our attention on what we see and to interpret images through the positive or negative charge of the emotions they arouse within us.

MZ: Will ICT force us to live in more limiting spaces and trigger further problems or will they help us solve social and environmental problems? SM: It depends on the intentions. Let’s suppose that the masters of the world imagined a future where people should always be controllable – they could claim the existence of false global problems in order to propose their solution through the implementation of technologies that invade individual privacy but supposedly help the common good. At the same time, however, the widespread presence of ICT opens up the potential for disseminating information with amazing proportions.

MZ: As we project ourselves towards the future, we negotiate a balance and try to adapt to the unprecedented conditions of life, where new technologies are always put on the market, each time redesigning our relationships with machines before the last ones have settled and matured. What role does the artistic investigation of metaphotography play in today's hyper-historical reality, a reality pervaded by cyber-culture, post-humanism and the iconosphere? SM: I think artistic investigation should avoid simply becoming a comment on the present moment. Instead it could project itself into a transversal reading of hyper-history, recovering forgotten universal archetypes, which could facilitate a fuller understanding of our reality. At the moment I believe our reality suffers from the concealment of the individual’s spiritual sphere as well as a communal one.

MZ: ICT records and transmits through the advanced ability of processing. However, they also produce a significant conceptual deficit with respect to ethical implications for us and the environment. How can artistic research help philosophical anthropology that analyzes information, hyper-history and the infosphere? SM: Artistic research should have the role of proposing alternative perspectives for interpreting reality, behaving like a prism does with light. It would approach the stream of information that is proposed as the official narrative of reality and divide it into its constituent parts, verifying the authenticity of those and revealing other hidden ones.

MZ: After the revolutions put into action by Copernicus, Darwin and Freud, what new global challenges is the fourth revolution triggering? SM: The challenge is one of obtaining truth, by which I mean working towards an understanding of the driving forces that led to the present and previous revolutions, decoding their actual aims from within their outcomes. After that, I imagine the next challenge would be to exploit the fact of being globally connected through a digital communication network in order to transmit information on a non-material level; to consider the feasibility of a spiritual internet that can support the participation in a shared universal memory.

MZ: What action takes place between the beyond-photographic medium and the artificial, digital, synthetic and naturcultural environments? SM: I imagine the beyond-photographic medium as an ascending body that passes through these environments of which it makes its external skin, while the functioning systems of the same environments are configured as its nervous system.

MZ: The new metaphotographic research should master the difficult art of swimming and thinking against the current to identify additional intellectual possibilities and to tackle other issues beyond the ebb and flow of more deeply rooted ideas. How can we renew and redesign our conceptual and imaginal vocabulary through a beyond-medium to obtain a clearer and more advanced representation of our time and projections of the time to come? SM: I think of two ways: the first is to reveal, through the iconic charge of images, the balances of power that usually remain in the shadows but whose intentions produce effects that can be documented visually. Secondly, through this unveiling process, it will be possible to access a different (upper) register, towards an evolved, expanded, in-depth understanding of the existing.

MZ: In the current panorama of contemporary photography, in which both the producers of works and the public live in a meaningful world (at least if we follow Algirdas Julien Greimas’ definition of meaning1), every question becomes metalinguistic. We are induced to carry out a metadiscussion about meaning, and, in the case of the medium in question, meaning becomes a transposition of one language level onto another (which in this specific case can be "metaphotographic"). SM: Yes, the intent is to make visible meanings that are usually only vaguely perceivable and move the discussion to a level that we could call “metavisual" – to represent reality as materially visible evidence of forces and intentions that operate on other levels, spiritual levels.

MZ: Let’s suppose that humans’ metalinguistic speaking is only a series of lies and that communication is only a succession of misunderstandings. Are writing and the writing of light also lies- or have they been, betrayals with respect to the true sense of reality? SM: More than a betrayal I would call it a flattening. Perhaps, the translation into writing and the visual representations of reality are limited forms to fully interpret it. I imagine that to fully understand the existing, including its spiritual part, one must turn to beyond-linguistic reading methods. Silence is one of them.

MZ: A fundamental way to describe a complex system is to measure its network: the way in which the individual parts connect and communicate with each other. Biologists study gene networks, social scientists study social networks, and search engines also rely, in part, on analyzing how webpages form a network. In neuroscience, a longstanding hypothesis is that connectivity between brain cells plays an important role in brain functioning. In the context of contemporary art, and in our case in metaphotography (which carries within it other disciplines and technologies), how can we make the photographic medium evolve through a more complex system – not just individual but more expanded? SM: A possible evolution of the medium could follow the direction that, paraphrasing the media theorist McKenzie Wark, would lead to a shift in the artist's attention from the aesthetic experience of everyday life to a reconstruction of everyday life. This entails at shift from a mimetic representation of reality to a figurative description of a relationship between things that already exists but are not visible. Furthermore, I like to imagine being able to expand this type of approach to our inner selves and to the space of consciousness in general. This direction of investigation could be the thought-form that unites the constituent elements (artists and their practices) within the network of connections forming the basis of a possible metaphotographic system.

1 Greimas, A.J. On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

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simomonsiwritings · 4 years

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POLLUTED SUNSETS | Simone Monsi, interview by Sara Benaglia and Mauro Zanchi

☞ This is the translation of an extended version of the interview Tramonti inquinati by Sara Benaglia and Mauro Zanchi, first published on La Balena Bianca (May 20th, 2019) and included in Metafotografia. Dentro e oltre il medium nell’arte contemporanea, exhibition catalogue, Skinnerboox, Jesi 2019 (Italian only). Courtesy the authors. Translated by Elena D’Angelo and Andrea Williamson. 📲 Read it on Tumblr !

MZ+SB: What do you mean when you use the word “photography” and what, for you, is an image? SM: Wow, this is a question that definitely takes us towards complex scenarios! What I can tell you is that I have always understood and appreciated photography because of its peculiar adherence to “reality”. And similarly, speaking of the term “image”, I cannot easily think of a univocal interpretation, but I am certainly interested in the relationship that images have with “truth”.

MZ+SB: Photography is also limited by its medium, which ties its production to a “classic” rectangular shape. How do you deal with this mandatory two-dimensionality? SM: Honestly, it has been years since I have thought of photography as a rectangular shape… My first visual memories are connected to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series, which aired on Italia1 (an Italian commercial television channel) at the beginning of the Nineties. Many other such visual memories followed. This is to say how much the two-dimensional approach to images influenced my way of “seeing”. When I think about it, I feel like today I still interpret my everyday reality through a two-dimensional lens. I do not think about two-dimensionality as a limit; it is my horizon, and the horizon is just an apparent limit.

MZ+SB: What do you mean by “relationship with truth”? I mean, in which sense can truth be produced in a “rectangular” way? SM: I often think about a quote that goes: “The image of the event is the event itself.” Think about 9/11 for instance – it seems impossible not to remember the iconic images portraying that day without reading them in the way they have been narrated by the media. And yet those same images can come to document different events if we analyze them through a different narration, or even more so, with no sound. I feel like this is the reason why alternative theories have so many followers. And this relationship is precisely what interests me – the one between images and the narration that is tied to them, and the way in which the same image can be a testimony to different truths, depending on the level of attention we give to them. I feel like we live in a world where the production of images is the basis for creating truth.

MZ+SB: You studied in England, right? What is the relationship between your work and English culture? SM: Correct, I attended the MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths after graduating from a BA in History of Art in Italy. During my two years in London, I barely scratched the surface of English culture. If we speak more specifically about my work though, I think that it could be positioned within a certain aesthetic movement of Western contemporary art, in which the author’s view is associated with a fairly synthetic formalization. This political view, despite being sublimated by the aesthetic of the work, still leaves many readable traces of itself. I’m thinking about Jeremy Deller, for example…

MZ+SB: Political views and images that produce reality… why sunsets? SM: My interest in photographs of sunsets took shape during my first year of college in London. It came from an intuition by anthropologist Michael Taussig, who refers to the “magic hour”: that moment during twilight when sunlight is naturally soft and warm; a moment particularly appreciated in photography. For Taussig, “magic hour” is a visual metaphor for humankind’s current moment of passage from an era in which human activities were in balance with the planet’s natural resources, towards the Anthropocene – a new geological era in which anthropogenic processes modify the biosphere to an irreversible point, and in which the very survival of humanity is threatened. However, because of its gravity, Taussig also sees this exceptional moment of “almost no return” as a chance for humanity to redeem itself; and a hoping for decisions that would shift human activities towards a necessary environmental sustainability. This hope would seem well placed, considering the immense popularity of hashtags such as #sunset, #sunsetlove and #sunsetporn on Instagram. As I was beginning to systematically collect images of sunsets, however, I had the feeling that they had become remarkably more “red” over the past few years. And I am not referring to the many Instagram filters that enhance color saturation. I am speaking of the actual sunset – the one we can see with our very own eyes, everyday. So, through a bit of research, it was not hard to figure out that the metal particulates in pollution and fumes from motor vehicles tend to reflect shades that go from pink, to orange, to red, when hit by sunlight. For me, this highlighted the fact that the most intensely colored sunsets – and possibly the most exciting ones – actually reveal a very high level of atmospheric pollution. This is how sunset photographs on social media became a defining element in many of my works. A visually appealing and emotionally engaging element that can be used as an entryway to a deeper debate on the realness of an image – one capable of unveiling the fragile balance between aesthetic beauty and the poisoning of the biosphere.

MZ+SB: There is an interesting story behind your work Can’t Wait For The Weather To Get Warmer (2018). Could you tell us about that? SM: Can’t Wait For The Weather To Get Warmer (2018) consists of six iPhone-sized fine art prints displayed on a steel structure, and is part of the discourse on sunset colors being indicators of atmospheric pollution. Looking through my collection of sunset photos taken from Instagram and Tumblr, I selected images that presented a common pattern in the shapes of clouds. Certain cloud formations are thought to be caused by the interaction of atmospheric water with electromagnetic fields (see clouds that form parallel and evenly spaced stripes…) I used these photographs as backgrounds for Instagram Stories advertising the fictional low-cost airline LF, which invites users to promptly book their flights, in order to increase temperatures as soon as possible! Although the name of the airline is fictional, the quotes are from a recent marketing campaign of an actual low-cost airline. This obviously caught my attention, considering that the metal particulate from fuels (not only from cars, but also airplanes) is known to have a strong impact on the greenhouse effect and therefore on global warming. So, was it a naïve marketing campaign or a reckless one? What we do know for sure is that the dispersion of such particulate matter in the atmosphere is not only causing rising temperatures, but also adds to the propagation of electromagnetic waves… and this is just the entrance to the “rabbit hole”.

MZ+SB: Would you consider your photography an “artificial photography” or a “natural photography”? Luigi Ghirri defined the two categories as follows: “The first, ‘artificial photography’, finds its place in a chain-like cultural production, forever repeating itself, trying to avoid stereotypes and is therefore reproduction. The second one enforces a suspension – a stop in the chain of reproduction, which is similar to the different moments of the natural gaze and its interaction with the outside world”. SM: My photography is found and borrowed. It is the photograph of a photograph, which reached me without me wanting it. It is like unwanted mail. I see the homepage of my Instagram profile just like a mailbox filled with unwanted letters. I believe that conceptually my photography was born with the supermarket flyers that are left in mailboxes. I think of it as a “natural photography” of an “artificial photography” raised to the power.

MZ+SB: Penelope Umbrico’s Suns from Flickr (2006) is a work which seems to resonate with your research. What is the relationship between production and the aesthetic of access? SM: I think Suns from Flickr is a great “appropriation work” where the artist’s action is fulfilled through the gathering and re-presentation of images. However, I have the feeling that on the internet, an eternity has passed since 2006… Today, the standard on our social media dashboards is to be immersed in infinite sequences of images grouped by type. They are the omnipresent background of our personal visual “echo chambers”… In my practice, in fact, I perceive the act of collecting images as a starting point for the creation of a background that later turns into a sort of skin for various “bodies” (two-dimensional and three-dimensional). Or these backgrounds could be experienced through visual filters, like digital interfaces, and associated to written texts. Twelve years ago, Penelope Umbrico was reflecting on the proliferation of online image archives; considering them to be a constantly developing collective action of unprecedented size. I think that today, the next step in analysing this phenomenon, would be to explore the psychological effects of this collective action on prosumers. Is such collective action implying the direct creation of a collective psychological situation? And if so, what rules does it follow? In the specific case of my use of sunset images, my intention is to take part in a collective psychological situation of appreciating twilight from a purely aesthetic point of view, which then becomes an attempt to systematically liberate twilight’s potential to convey issues of atmospheric pollution.

MZ+SB: The studio or art setting can remove everyday, banal materials from a purely domestic context. How do you choose the materials used in your work and why? What is the relationship between your materials and “domestic” consumption? SM: The materials I use in my works are often mass-produced and of common use. However, I do not use only physical materials, but also digital ones, like the Instagram interface, for example. So if we take into consideration this kind of “material” as well, there is no real selection – they naturally enter into my artistic practice thanks to their massive presence in everyday life. I am interested in the content gatherers and interfaces through which we can consult them- visual grids with which we sift through and understand online content. The need for a studio as a neutral environment comes exactly from the necessity to take out of context those elements whose formal characteristics could not be fully appreciate if they remained immersed in the visual chaos of our daily lives. A urinal in a museum becomes a uterus, doesn’t it? In the same way, a smile drawn on a balloon and left on the studio floor becomes a digital avatar filled with frustration and ready to burst. In this way, the relationship of the material (also thought of as an object) to its domestic environment is transformed by the artist’s action, so that the object’s hidden formal and evocative potentials are unveiled.

MZ+SB: What happens to a “warning” when it enters an artwork? I am thinking about the images of pink pollution. What happens in the art context when an image is shown in order to expose a problem or to highlight an emergency? SM: In my case, it doesn’t happen much, if at all. Honestly, I don’t see people worrying that much. Actually, I don’t see them worrying at all. Don’t get me wrong though – I don’t feel like our tendency to alienate ourselves from our problems, shun responsibilities, and make blind decisions, is related to a lack of compassion. Instead, I think alienation overpowers compassion because, even though everyone is tragically worried about the fate of humankind (both in spiritual and material terms), we are paralyzed by feelings of impotence and the apparent lack of possible alternatives. Obviously, I hope to plant a small seed of doubt within every person that comes into contact with my work; encouraging them to question why certain topics are taboo within general debate. I hope that one day, all those “seeds” will come together and move towards a common critical awareness. However, I often feel that most of the public isn’t even familiar with the grammar or language they would need to understand such a critique. The exchange of information is very slow, and most of the time is spent introducing basic concepts of a discourse that has potential to unfold in more complex ways. Despite finding it ever more difficult to trust my contemporary peers- something that causes me such intense pain that I have no words to describe it – I take comfort in the idea that within two generations, someone who may be wondering why the world evolved in the way it did, will be able to find documentation of my thoughts through my works. Finally seen in perspective, the works will be fully decoded. This way one day, when new gas and oil deposits are made accessible by melting that annoying layer of ice covering the poles, and when telepathy via Elon Musk’s Neuralink is fully implemented, someone will come across a testimony that helps them to reflect on these changes and their technological foundations. They will see that these foundations were put in place during an era of mass distraction and spiritual annihilation. It is a testimony to the idea that innovation (not only technological) is not a neutral force, but follows certain directions and objectives defined by superior and convergent interests.

MZ+SB: We are interested in investigating the relationship between the photographic medium and the artist’s creation of intimate space. In some way, could this relationship be understood as having a sculptural dimension, or a further space for consciousness? For you, is photography a sculpture (metaphysical and ultradimensional)? SM: Yes, your definition sounds appropriate to me: photography is a “sculptural dimension of consciousness”. A quick reflection gives me the feeling that my photographic images come from an intimate place that I would call “generative visual consciousness”. This is like a sort of process that draws images from the archive of my visual memory, and then filters and re-models their content into new images. However, your question also reminds me of another thought that I have been cultivating for a while, in which my actions and role as an artist are to be a sculptor of thoughts… In other words, I sense that an aspect of my artistic practice tends towards sculpting thoughts (other people’s? Yes, but also my own). Seen through this lens, photography certainly has a sculptural dimension for me: it is through images that I produce and sculpt thoughts. A metaphysical sculpture but not yet ultradimensional.

MZ+SB: Let’s imagine the idea of “beyond-photography”: an intimate structure that overcomes conceptual and ideological limitations, lying behind/inside/beyond photography. Who do you imagine transports or moves photography towards its beyond- using more than one medium at a time? This time-changing passage would investigate what photography was not able to show or summon by itself. How do you place yourself in relation to this new phase or possibility? SM: Well, if you ask me to imagine, I will let my imagination go. Forgive me, but from now on my reasoning might not be fully linear. First of all, I think of Mark Zuckerberg. There are public talks from a few years ago in which he said that Facebook’s final goal would be to enable telepathy between its users. I don’t know if we should forget about photography as a static image, but what I am thinking about is a photograph produced by binary-code impulses on a neural level. Concerning this, I have been imagining shooting images into people’s heads – projecting images into their minds – and in this sense, sculpting their thoughts. A while back, I heard someone saying that after WWII – I think it was in the US – there were experiments done with electromagnetic machines that allowed a person to learn a foreign language in their sleep. I honestly think this is quite an interesting rabbit hole to get into!

MZ+SB: What could be the operational-conceptual relationships and possible developments between photography and telepathy? SM: Well, I would bet my two cents on the following hypothesis: Since the atmosphere is full of metallic nanoparticles from motor vehicle exhaust, of which we breathe huge quantities that sediment over decades between the apex of the nasal septum and the cerebral cortex, it is possible that we could become transceivers of electricity – since metal is conductive. And if you consider thoughts as exchanges of electrical impulses between neurons, the telepathic scenario begins to take shape… In an environment filled with highly electrically conductive metal particulates, it would be possible to propagate and receive electromagnetic impulses directly from one cerebral cortex to another. At that point, perhaps photography will become outdated. However, if I think carefully about it, I feel like photography would survive through a shift onto a different support, as has happened before. Such a support could be made of neurons this time. I am thinking of “neural screenshots” which could be produced without the need for an external device. Our brains will be the new smartphones.

MZ+SB: What do you think of authorship concerning human-machine relationships? SM: If we look at this issue from the perspective of bio-tech systems, in which we may be capable of integrating image-producing devices within our bodies, the matter of machine authorship would be marginal. We would again be fully “human” (although slightly evolved, “augmented”). However, this is actually a debate that I have always considered rather boring. At this moment in history, when everyone seems to be part of a flock that thinks and does the same thing, the debate on authorship becomes quite uninteresting. In a world where people behave as if they were pre-programmed machines, I would provoke that I rather prefer machine authorship (assuming such a thing exists) to human authorship. At least it would have its own elements of originality, in a certain way…

MZ+SB: In an age of overproduction of images and artworks on social media and in general, how can an artist work with visual saturation in a constructive way? (Take for example Photography in Abundance by Erik Kessels, who in 2011, poured one and a half million photographs in the rooms of the FOAM museum in Amsterdam within 24 hours.) Is this surplus of images, in which we could easily drown, actually smoke in our eyes, hiding something that is purposefully hidden and kept out of sight? SM: Firstly, I believe artists should channel their energies towards making the public aware of the current situation – showing how the contemporary overabundance of images is neither natural, nor neutral. Our behaviour comes from a specific social model based on consumerism, which produces desire for products through images. I think a difference can be made by attaching useful content onto images. Useful for what, though? This is where the social role of the artist comes into play – creating devices (objects and other things) that are not functional, but that help an individual’s spiritual growth. And it is exactly one’s spiritual essence that suffers the most from the visual (and therefore emotional and mental) overcrowding; that is overwhelmed and kept “out of sight”. Let’s think for a second about the four fundamental units that make up our being: physical body, emotions, mind and spirit. Now think about how many times you happen to talk with other people of the first three, and how many times you talk about the last one. Bingo.

MZ+SB: Do you believe that the contemporary iconic flood is a consequence of capitalism? SM: I am sure of it. We have become the marketing managers of ourselves. Work and private life have melted together – fully turning us into emotional workers. But I do not feel that the daily non-stop self-branding activity is a marketing strategy only for one’s followers. Rather, it is marketing targeted towards ourselves. This flood of images follows a merely materialistic logic, producing an enormous emotional racket that makes us forget that our real essence belongs to another registry. On this matter, there is a sentence that I always like to recall: “Inner silence is the door to infinity”.

MZ+SB: Do you think a possible alternative for this time of iconic metastasis could be to step back from the creation of more images? SM: Yes, within the general debate, this is one of the possible solutions that has been considered. However, I think we should not stop creating. I would prefer to both produce less images, and to produce images with a much more refined quality. On top of this, I think that our own particular feeling of drowning (in images) is not dissimilar to that felt by all humans throughout time. Perhaps what really counts as the real and ultimate filter is time – selecting the images that will last and those that will be erased from future memory. The real question then, is not whether, or how, to change the world by creating (or not creating) images, but why we perceive this iconic metastasis as a condition of unease?

MZ+SB: Speed prevails over the decisive moment, quickness over refinement, transitory becoming over essential durability. Superficial immersion in the mediasphere prevails over the capacity to draw deeply from the archetypes of a universal memory. What new scenarios could be opened up by beyond-photography? SM: You are reminding me of this quote: “Shakti, see all space as if already absorbed in your own head in the brilliance.” This is the 60th of 112 ways, gathered in the text “Finding the center”, that Shiva enunciates when Devi questions him about the nature of divine reality and how to fully experience it. The scenario I aspire to, the ideal to pursue, is not material. The change of register is spiritual, towards what you call universal memory.

MZ+SB: Charlie Brooker, the creator of the British tv show Black Mirror, imagines scenarios and characters of a future reality, which presents issues related to current events and the challenges of new technologies. Various episodes include: machines that let you re-watch in real time past moments from your private life; relive memories; transfer an individual memory that is about to die onto a giant hard disk; transfer someone’s consciousness into another person’s brain; bring a loved one back to life, and many other things. A possible future outcome for photography has not been investigated. If Brooker had asked you to get involved in the writing of an episode on photography, how would you imagine a camera? SM: If they don’t have an episode on photography, it might be because the medium as we now know it, will become obsolete within the very near future. If we think about photography as it is normally conceived – namely, not as an artistic medium – I would say that the episode suggesting a possibility to re-watch past events through a memory implant represents a rather plausible technological outcome of our present. If so, I think we could say that the matter of documenting past events has been addressed rather satisfactorily by the series. What I imagine personally, would closely resemble that vision. It would be a whole different matter if we were to talk about photography as an artistic medium. In that case, it would be a matter of addressing the evolution of all artistic forms that have to do with vision, and the fruition or production and dissemination of images at large. It depends on how we want to imagine it. I like to think that everything will flow in front of our eyes, meaning “inside our eyes”. Screens will be contact lenses; membranes applied directly to our corneas. The next camera could be the blink of an eye. Click. Save picture? Yes. Archive it in the Cloud.

MZ+SB: What effect do you think the act of placing yourself in a collective psychological situation, has had on those experiencing your work? Have you had any feedback in relation to the rising awareness of pollution? According to your experience, are people who populate the contemporary art world (and who therefore feel at ease in the society of spectacle) merely interested in aesthetic and conceptual matters of ideas and intuitions- or have they actively moved something on a social and political level? SM: We don’t have to rush. The scale we use to measure the time it will take to implement certain changes is not the same as the one with which we measure our lives. Changes today are imperceptible, but within two generations we will understand everything better. I am committed to moving a tiny grain of sand everyday. And I can assure you, I see the grains are moving.

#english version #english #translation #simo monsi #2019 #2020 #mauro zanchi #sara benaglia #interview #metafotografia #photography #telepathy #sunsetporn

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simomonsiwritings · 4 years

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MAPA SUNSET BAOBABS by Aurélien Lemant

☞ These are the transcript and translations of MAPA SUNSET BAOBABS by Aurélien Lemant, first published in French for the exhibition And A Thousand Spirits Stray: Simone Monsi & Marta Riniker-Radich, One Gee In Fog, Geneva, June-July 2019. Courtesy the author and One Gee In Fog. Translated in English by Andrea Williamson and in Italian by Ilaria Brianti. 📲 Read it on Instagram in English or Italian !

MAPA SUNSET BAOBABS

| Ils s’essuient les yeux contre le paysage comme d’autres leurs pieds sur le paillasson. | Nous avons violacé nos orbites jusqu’à l’iris à force d’obliger le ciel à la beauté. | Avec le smartphone, je peux scruter mon astre sans ciller: ce n’est pas lui qui brûle sous mes pulpes. | La lumière bleue adopte toutes les températures du spectre si tu veux – enfin, chacun est libre de le croire. | L’ écran total ne peut rien contre l’électro-sensibilité. Le cerveau cuit dans la boîte crânienne comme un agneau de 50.000 heures. | L’horizon badigeonne la pupille d’infrarouges sans que personne là-haut ne capte rien. | Il y avait cette chaîne de télévision où, à toute heure du jour ou de la nuit, tu pouvais contempler le crépitement d’un beau feu de bois dans l’âtre d’une cheminée incrustée en ton moniteur 2 pouces. Le chargeur faisait radiateur et la batterie bouillotte. Ton hiver nucléaire n’appartenait qu’à toi. | Les radiations émises par l’appareil rejouaient la même scène que le soleil. | À échelle domestique, tout paraît dérisoire et imposant. Le panorama familial fatigue l’usager, il y faut des couleurs et de l’impermanence, comme renouveler la lumière deux fois par jour à heure presque fixe. Mais le papier se corne et se jaunit si facilement, à force d’être exposé aux rayons du soleil ou de la lampe d’architecte, qu’il vaut mieux réitérer l’expérience par jpg plutôt que via carte postale. |

Les gants MAPA© ont été conçus pour toucher l’intouchable. Mettre le doigt là où ça ne peut plus faire mal, plonger des mains dans l’autrefois interdit. Comme une star qui laisserait son empreinte hollywoodienne boulevardière dans le soleil couchant sans s’y ronger les ongles. | Chimie merdique des substances nocives, qui nagent le long des environnements critiques sans augmenter la prime de risque. | Javéliser les étoiles en torchant la vitre à pleines paumes, pour inviter l’espace à se rincer l’œil contre la lentille du téléphone, juste retour des choses. | Le soleil ne nous regarde que quelques heures par jour, mais non-stop, de face, et ce quelle que soit la gueule que nous lui offrons, sa main de feu nous écorchant à travers les mailles du t-shirt et les filtres anti-UV. Quid de la protection des opérateurs en situation de vulnérabilité? | Deux de mes phalanges distales sur l’image, je fais défiler les couchers de soleil jusqu’à voir apparaître une telle main sous la mienne. L’isolation thermique est maximale. Le centre de la galaxie ou à peu près tient dans mon appareil. | Si l’on parle de sunset porn, quelqu’un, à l’autre extrémité de la problématique, se masturbe devant le moiré des nuages, le rougeoie- ment des gaz, les illusions d’optique miragineuses de même que les camaïeux accoucheurs d’orgasmes – avec ou sans gant chloriné, flocké ou non. |

Dans l’ancienne Egypte, la déesse Sekhmet, fille de Râ, incarne la puissance destructrice du soleil, armée de rayons fléchés. | Les cycles solaires sont d’environ vingt-deux années terrestres, et consistent en une longue explosion (longue d’un point de vue humain, une décennie) de flammes irradiantes ou de taches à la surface du globe en fusion, suivie d’une tout aussi longue rétractation, surnommée minimum solaire, qui voit l’activité électro-magnétique de notre étoile se résorber. | Il a beau avoir rejeté sa théorie initiale, Iain Spence a formulé à l’orée du vingt-et-unième siècle, avec l’hypothèse Sekhmet, un modèle de prévision des modes et courants artistiques calqué sur le cycle du soleil. | Si l’on s’amuse à appliquer à l’histoire de l’art récente ce raisonnement sans fondement scientifique aucun – n’était l’observation de l’activité de l’astre concerné –, l’on se rend compte que de grands bouleversements politiques s’accompagnent de changements vestimentaires, capillaires, chromatiques, musicaux et ainsi de suite, épousant une cadence métronomique pouvant laisser perplexe. | 1933. | 1944. | 1955. | 1966. | 1977. | 1988. | 1999. | … | Réfléchissez à toutes les variations de coiffures et de longueurs des cheveux, de coupes de pantalons, de styles de drogues récréatives, associées aux accélérations/décélérations des musiques populaires du moment, corrélatives aux tendances belliqueuses ou pacifistes des nations, et vous apercevez le camembert du cycle solaire, avec ses déflagrations menaçantes puis ses contractions apaisées, et ainsi de suite. Après une période de psychédélisme barbu et multicolore débutée en 2010, saturée de crépuscules fleuris et réminiscente des sixties ou nineties, en toute cohérence avec l’hypothèse de Spence, 2021 réinaugurera une ère de conflits et de violence. | Elle sera clairement édictée par l’esthétique qui lui sera contemporaine. | Quelque part dans l’univers, quelqu’un éjacule contre l’écran tactile de sa tablette.

| Sur les baobabs de l’artiste, des racines, telles des trompes d’éléphants ou des jambes atrophiées de bébés, protubéraient du tronc. | Semblables à des sexes privés de corps, les excroissances promettaient, selon une logique darwinienne contestable, de devenir des mains. Elles bandaient vers nous. | Selon une perspective d’invagination de l’architecture propre à notre monde en trois dimensions, ce que nous expérimentons face auxdits baobabs est l’exploration d’une cabine de glory hole retournée sur elle-même. | Nous sommes le performer dans la cabine. | Quand le visiteur serrera ce rayon de soleil sexué pour le saluer, geste amical du membre qui a reconnu son prochain, son pareil, il se fondra dans le firmament photographique, touchant le ciel par un bout. Voire idéalement plusieurs. | Comme tout arbre en caresse le projet, ce visiteur fera soleil à son tour. | Un jour les télé- phones seront mous. L’air sera le support de référence. La lumière sera notre principale source d’énergie. Nos organes seront interchangeables à volonté, en fonction des besoins de l’imagination, et à l’écart du marché. | Ce jour n’est pas encore arrivé. |

Aurélien Lemant, Saint Aignan, juin 2019

MAPA SUNSET BAOBABS

| They wipe their eyes against the landscape like others wipe their feet on the mat. | We purpled our orbits up to the iris by forcing the sky to beauty. | With the smartphone, I can stare at my star without blinking: that is not what burns under my pulp. | Blue light adopts all the temperatures of the spectrum if you like – well, anyone is free to believe it. | Full sunblock can do nothing against electro-sensitivity. The brain bakes in the cranial box like a lamb cooked for 50,000 hours. | The horizon bastes the pupil in infrared without anyone up there noticing. | There was this television channel where, at any time of day or night, you could contemplate the crackling of a beautiful wood fire in the hearth of a fireplace embedded in your 2-inch monitor. The charger was the radiator and the battery the heating pad. Your nuclear winter belonged to no one but you. | The radiations emitted by the device replayed the same scene as the sun. | On a domestic scale, everything seemed ridiculous and imposing. The family panorama bores the user, there needs to be colors and impermanence, like renewing the light twice a day, almost on schedule. But the paper folds and yellows so easily, from exposure to sun rays or the architect’s lamp, that it’s better to convey the experience by jpg rather than postcard. |

MAPA© gloves were designed to touch the untouchable. Putting your finger where it can no longer be hurt, plunging one’s hands into the once forbidden. Like a star who left her Hollywood Blvd footprint in the setting sun without biting her nails. | Shitty chemistry of harmful substances, which swim along critical environments without increasing the premium of risk. | Bleach the stars by wiping the glass with full palms, to invite space to rinse its eye against the phone’s lens, a fair returning of things. | The sun only looks at us a few hours a day, but non-stop, from the front, and whatever pout we offer it, its hand of fire scorches us through t-shirt mesh and anti-UV filters. What about protecting operators in vulnerable situations? | Two of my distal phalanges on the image, I scroll through sunsets until I see such a hand appear under mine. Thermal insulation is at maximum. The center of the galaxy or just about fits into my device. | If we are talking about sunset porn, someone, on the other extreme of the problematic, masturbates in front of the moiré of clouds, the glowing of gases, the optical mirage illusions as well as the obstetrician’s palette of orgasms – with or without chlorinated glove, flocked or not. |

In ancient Egypt, the goddess Sekhmet, daughter of Ra, embodies the destructive power of the sun, armed with arrows of rays. | The solar cycles are about twenty-two Earth-years, and consist of a long explosion (long from a human point of view, a decade) of irradiant flames or spots on the surface of the molten globe, followed by an equally long retraction, nicknamed the solar minimum, which sees the electro-magnetic activity of our star subside. | Despite having rejected his initial theory, Iain Spence formulated at the dawn of the twenty-first century, with his Sekhmet hypothesis, a predictive model of artistic modes and currents based on the sun’s cycle. | If we allow ourselves to apply this reasoning without any scientific basis to the recent history of art – but the observation of the star’s activity concerned –, we realize that major political upheavals are accompanied by changes in clothes, capillaries, chromatics, music and so on, espousing a metronomic cadence that can leave us perplexed. | 1933. | 1944. | 1955. | 1966. | 1977. | 1988. | 1999. | … | Think about how all the variations in hairstyles and hair lengths, trousers cuts, recreational drug styles, associated with the accelerations/decelerations of popular music of the moment, correlates with the bellicose or pacifist tendencies of nations, and you see the pie chart of the solar cycle, with its threatening deflagrations and then its appeased contractions, and so on. After a period of bearded and multicolored psychedelism beginning in 2010, saturated with flowery twilight and reminiscent of the sixties or nineties, in all consistency with Spence’s hypothesis, 2021 will reinaugurate an era of conflict and violence. | It will be clearly dictated by contemporary aesthetics. | Somewhere in the universe, someone ejaculates against the touch screen of their tablet.

| On the artist’s baobabs, the roots, like elephant trunks or atrophied baby legs, protruded from its stump. | Similar to sex organs deprived of bodies, the outgrowths promised, according to a questionable Darwinian logic, to become hands. They got hard towards us. | According to a perspective of invagination particular to our three dimensional world’s architecture, what we are experimenting with, with respect to so-called baobabs, is the exploration of a glory hole stall turned in on itself. | We are the performer in the booth. | When the visitor squeezes this sexual ray of sunshine to greet it, friendly gesture of the member who recognized his neighbor, his fellow, he will melt in the photographic firmament, touching the sky at one edge. Ideally several. | Like any tree wanting to realize that project, this visitor will become the sun in turn. | One day phones will be soft. Air will be the reference medium. Light will be our main source of energy. Our organs will be interchangeable at will, according to the needs of the imagination, and at a distance from the market. | This day has not yet arrived. |

Aurélien Lemant, Saint Aignan, June 2019

MAPA SUNSET BAOBABS

| Loro si asciugano gli occhi sul paesaggio come altri fanno coi piedi sullo zerbino. | Abbiamo colorato di viola le nostre orbite fino all’iride, a forza di obbligare il cielo alla bellezza. | Con lo smartphone, posso fissare la mia stella senza battere ciglio: non è ciò che brucia sotto la mia polpa. | La luce blu assume tutte le temperature dello spettro se vuoi – ognuno è libero di crederci, alla fine. | La protezione solare non può niente contro l’elettro-sensibilità. | Il cervello cuoce nella scatola cranica come un agnello cucinato per 50.000 ore. | L’orizzonte pennella la pupilla di infrarossi senza che nessuno là in alto capti niente. | C’era questo canale televisivo dove, a qualsiasi ora del giorno e della notte, potevi contemplare il crepitio di un bel fuoco a legna nel cuore di un camino incassato nel tuo monitor a due pollici. L’alimentatore faceva da radiatore e la batteria da borsa dell’acqua calda. L'inverno nucleare apparteneva a te soltanto. | Le radiazioni emesse dal dispositivo riproducevano la stessa scena del sole. | A livello domestico, tutto sembrava derisorio e imponente. Il contesto familiare stanca l’utente: servono colori e precarietà, come rinnovare la luce due volte al giorno quasi in tempi prestabiliti. Ma la carta si incurva e ingiallisce così facilmente, esposta ripetutamente ai raggi del sole o della lampada da architetto, che è meglio ripetere l’esperienza in jpg anziché in cartolina. |

I guanti MAPA© sono stati pensati per toccare l’intoccabile. Mettere il dito là dove non può più far male, tuffare le mani dove un tempo era proibito. Come una star che al calar del sole lascia la sua impronta sul boulevard hollywoodiano senza mangiarsi le unghie. | Chimica merdosa di sostanze nocive, che nuotano in ambienti critici senza aumentare il premio per il rischio. | Sbiancare le stelle pulendo il vetro a piene mani, per invitare lo spazio a sciacquarsi l’occhio contro la lente del telefono, come è giusto che sia. | Il sole ci guarda solo per qualche ora al giorno, ma non-stop, frontale, e qualsiasi faccia gli porgiamo, la sua mano di fuoco ci brucia attraverso la trama della maglietta e i filtri anti-UV. Che ne è della protezione degli operatori in circostanze di vulnerabilità? | Due delle mie falangi distali sull’immagine, e faccio scorrere i tramonti fino a che non vedo apparire una certa mano sotto la mia. L’isolamento termico è al massimo. Il centro, o quasi, della galassia si trova nel mio telefono. | Se parliamo di sunset porn, qualcuno, dalla parte opposta della questione, si masturba davanti al moiré delle nuvole, al rosso acceso dei gas, alle illusioni ottiche di un miraggio e a camaieu ostetrici di orgasmi – con o senza guanto clorinato, rivestito o non. |

Nell’antico Egitto, la dea Sekhmet, figlia di Ra, incarna la potenza distruttrice del sole, armata di raggi-freccia. | I cicli solari sono di circa ventidue anni terrestri, e consistono in una lunga esplosione (lunga dal punto di vista umano, un decennio) di fiamme irradianti o di macchie sulla superficie del globo in fusione, seguita da una altrettanto lunga ritrattazione, denominata minimo solare, che vede riassorbirsi l’attività elettromagnetica della nostra stella. | Salvo aver poi rifiutato la sua teoria iniziale, Iain Spence aveva formulato all’alba del ventunesimo secolo, con l’ipotesi Sekhmet, un metodo di previsione delle mode e delle correnti artistiche basato sui cicli solari. | Volendo divertirci ad applicare alla storia dell’arte recente questo ragionamento senza alcun fondamento scientifico – non essendo interessata l’osservazione dell’attività dell’astro –, ci rendiamo conto che i grandi stravolgimenti politici si accompagnano a cambiamenti di abiti, capigliature, colori, musica e così via, sposando una cadenza metronomica che lascia perplessi. | 1933. | 1944. | 1955. | 1966. | 1977. | 1988. | 1999. | … | Pensate a come tutte le variazioni di capigliature e lunghezze di capelli, tagli di pantaloni, stili di droghe ricreative, insieme alle accelerazioni/decelerazioni della musica pop del momento, si correlano alle tendenze belligeranti o pacifiste delle nazioni, e scoprirete il grafico a torta del ciclo solare, prima con le sue esplosioni minacciose e poi con lievi contrazioni, e via di seguito. Dopo un periodo di psichedelismo barbuto e multicolore iniziato nel 2010, saturo di tramonti fioriti e reminiscenze dei sixties o nineties, in totale accordo con l’ipotesi di Spence, il 2021 re-inaugurerà un’era di conflitti e violenza. | Questa sarà chiaramente sancita dall’estetica che le sarà contemporanea. | Da qualche parte nell’universo, qualcuno eiacula sul touch screen del proprio tablet.

| Sui baobab dell’artista, le radici, come proboscidi di elefanti o gambe atrofizzate di bambini, sporgono dal tronco. | Simili a organi sessuali deprivati del corpo, le escrescenze promettevano, secondo una discutibile logica darwiniana, di diventare delle mani. Protendevano verso di noi. | Secondo una prospettiva di invaginazione dell’architettura propria del nostro mondo in tre dimensioni, ciò che sperimentiamo di fronte ai suddetti baobab è l’esplorazione di una cabina di glory hole rigirata su sé stessa. | Noi siamo i performer dentro la cabina. | Quando il visitatore stringerà questo raggio di sole sessuato per salutarlo, gesto amichevole del membro che ha riconosciuto il suo simile, il suo prossimo, si fonderà con il firmamento fotografico, toccando il cielo da un’estremità. O idealmente anche diverse. | Come qualsiasi albero ne accarezza il progetto, così quel visitatore sarà a sua volta il sole. | Un giorno i telefoni saranno molli. L’aria sarà il nostro mezzo di riferimento. La luce sarà la nostra principale fonte di energia. I nostri organi saranno intercambiabili a piacimento, in funzione dei bisogni dell’immaginazione, e al di fuori del mercato. | Questo giorno non è ancora arrivato. |

Aurélien Lemant, Saint Aignan, giugno 2019

#simo monsi #2019 #2020 #catpr #aurélien lemant #ogif #one gee in fog #mapa sunset baobabs #geneva

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simomonsiwritings · 4 years

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Simone Monsi: Final chapter, interview by Zizhuo Zhang

☞ This is the translation of Simone Monsi: Capitolo finale, an interview by Zizhuo Zhang published in VADA 01 - Proxy Lovers, Link Editions, Brescia 2018. Available on Lulu.com via POD or free PDF download (Italian only). Translated by Elena D’Angelo. 📲 Read it on Instagram !

Zizhuo Zhang: When did you decide to become an artist and why? Is it a dream that came true? Simone Monsi: I dream of being able to share my points of view on the world with other people and at some point in the past, I realized that I am better at translating thoughts into images rather than writing or speaking about them.

ZZ: On your website, I have seen that your first work is titled irl. What does this word mean and where did you get the idea from? SM: irl is an acronym used on the web to highlight the difference between online and “in real life” experiences. The idea for that work came to my mind when I was looking at a close-up of a model on Vogue magazine and I noticed a paper ripple right on her cheek…

ZZ: Yes! Something physical… SM: …it was a weird feeling, because in the picture, the model’s make-up and the studio lights were used to give a sense of depth to a flat image… but that crack looked like a scar on her face, and suddenly my feelings about that image became physical. From that moment on, I started to think about how representations of reality behave when they are given back to the material world, and to the ways in which these two aspects can interact with each others in unexpected ways.

ZZ: In your works #skyponcho, Like Mops on the Beach, Capitolo Finale and Sunset Hand Pouf you used images of sunsets. Why? SM: A few years ago I became interested in the research of anthropologist Micheal Taussig, who uses the sunset as a metaphor for contemporary times. I do not know if you have heard of the Anthropocene: according to certain philosophers, we live in an era in which humans have modified the environment to a point that we cannot go back, because even if humanity became extinct, the natural environment has been modified so much that would not be possible for it to get back to its primitive state. According to Taussig, the sunset could be a good visual metaphor for the end of our age. The final moment of the day can cause nostalgia but it could also be considered in a positive way: the beauty traditionally associated with sunsets might help us to feel emotionally closer to Nature and reconsider a more sustainable approach towards it.

ZZ: You have covered textile hands with images of sunsets. Why the hands? SM: I decided to introduce the hand as a visual element to my practice when I had the feeling that the hand was beginning to transform from a tool of interaction between physical beings to something that connects us to the digital world.

ZZ: In your works you use elements taken from Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE), a Japanese anime. I am Chinese, and I was influenced by this cartoon during my childhood. Why do you like it and why did you choose to work with this cartoon? SM: I do not know if you have read Hiroki Azuma’s book Otaku: Japan's Database Animals: it talks about the “otaku” community, people that prefer to retire into a psychological world, populated only by anime and manga characters, rather than taking part into the rigid social costumes of Japanese society, and of how this cultural phenomenon evolved through the Nineties…

ZZ: In the Nineties, Japan had an actual social problem connected to the “otaku” community, and NGE aimed to help this people go back to real life! SM: Exactly! I feel like today we have a similar problem: people interpret the world through smartphones, internet 2.0 and Facebook, in the same way “otaku” interpreted social relations through fictional characters and narratives. Exactly as it happened twenty years ago in Japan, I believe that today NGE could help us remember the importance of having a healthier psychological relationship with social structures and the “real” world.

#simo monsi #2018 #2020 #interview #zizhuo zhang #link art center #link editions #vada 01 #proxy lovers #ied milano #translation #english version #pdf #evangelion #english

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simomonsiwritings · 4 years

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METAFOTOGRAFIA. DENTRO E OLTRE IL MEDIUM NELL’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA

A cura di Sara Benaglia e Mauro Zanchi

Con opere di Giulia Flavia Baczynski, Alessandro Calabrese, Paolo Ciregia, Giorgio Di Noto, Irene Fenara, Simone Monsi, Maurizio Montagna, Caterina Morigi, Alberto Sinigaglia, Lamberto Teotino, The Cool Couple, Alba Zari.

Catalogo edito da Skinnerboox.

Mostra promossa dalla Fondazione MIA di Bergamo, col patrocinio del Comune di Bergamo e col sostegno della Fondazione ASM-Gruppo A2A.

Metafotografia è un progetto espositivo che coinvolge l’avanguardia fotografica contemporanea italiana. Gli algoritmi di correzione dell’immagine, il deep web, la codificazione dell’immagine in stringhe di numeri, l'archivio, l’utilizzo delle telecamere di sorveglianza e dello scanner invece di un obiettivo sono solo alcuni dei metodi e delle modalità di ricerca adottati. Dalla vittoria dello Spettacolo predetta da Debord, attraversando il postfotografico di Fontcuberta, due generazioni si pongono il quesito di quale sia la natura dell’immagine alla luce di un cambio di paradigma visuale combinato con i cambiamenti sociali e tecnologici che lo hanno accompagnato. Gli artisti coinvolti nel progetto sono: Giulia Flavia Baczynski, Alessandro Calabrese, Paolo Ciregia, Giorgio Di Noto, Irene Fenara, Simone Monsi, Maurizio Montagna, Caterina Morigi, Alberto Sinigaglia, Lamberto Teotino, The Cool Couple e Alba Zari.

La fotografia è in continua evoluzione, come tutto del resto. Ma ancora oggi non è stato fatto un grande cambiamento rispetto alla fotografia tradizionale e alla sua capacità di trasformare lo spazio tridimensionale in una forma bidimensionale ridotta, attraverso il controllo dello spazio, della luce e del tempo. Le nuove tecnologie hanno solo accelerato il processo di rinnovamento del linguaggio fotografico. Qualche artista ha ibridato la fotografia con video e computer grafica, con linguaggi non visivi e con piattaforme informatizzate, con metodologie in uso alle scienze etno-antropologiche. Ma siamo ancora molto distanti da un’oltrefotografia, ovvero da una via per comprendere più in profondità la nostra natura e i nostri sviluppi futuri. La macchina fotografica sarà il corpo stesso, l’atmosfera che lo contiene, una preveggenza, una visione estatica indotta dall’interno? La tecnologia è necessaria per estendere la visione, o tutto parte dall’interno senza bisogno di induzioni esterne? Dovremmo andare oltre l’area di interazione della computational photography, quella predetta dal film Blade Runner nel 1982, con la macchina fotografica Esper. Per evolvere servirà un medium più sottile. Il visibile è già stato tutto mappato e nulla è rimasto da fotografare ormai? Google e gli innumerevoli archivi del mondo mostrano tutto ciò che esiste ed è visibile? Sarà vero che noi umani fino a ora siamo riusciti a vedere solo il 4% della materia esistente? Abbiamo miliardi di fotografie eppure non è ancora stato individuato e colto il restante del mondo. Il 96% è classificato in parte come materia oscura, in parte con l’energia oscura. Cosa intendiamo allora quando parliamo di fotografia? Ci riferiamo al 4% del visibile o anche a qualche percentuale dell’invisibile o dell’energia oscura? Esiste una possibilità di cogliere una realtà esistente ma non evidente ai mezzi basati sull’utilizzo della luce? Il medium da utilizzare per cogliere e rendere visibile queste altre possibilità dell’esistente è il pensiero stesso o è il cuore o altro? O dovremo prima riuscire ad attivare le parti del cervello che abbiamo dimenticato di utilizzare? Lanciamo uno slogan, parafrasando quello della Kodak di molti anni fa: «Voi non premete il pulsante e la metafotografia farà il resto». Che cosa è dunque il resto? Cosa potrebbe rappresentare? Innanzitutto, questo “resto” è ciò che conta realmente, ciò di cui abbiamo bisogno ma non è ancora rivelato. Cerchiamo di lavorare su quel resto, sul rimasto inesplorato. Un agire su qualcosa che ha lasciato una traccia, come il fondo del caffè nella tazza, inteso come un correlativo oggettivo di un detrito della fotografia, reinterpretato alla maniera degli aruspici. Mettere in luce un processo, anche, decifrare una sorta di funzione che è visualizzata pure dalla fotografia. Rappresenta parte del mondo (sia interiore sia esterno) e alcune dimensioni sconosciute, che non abbiamo ancora intuito o individuato. E non mi riferisco a nuovi oggetti e soggetti fotografici ancora non identificati ma il tentativo di creare opere e situazioni che prescrivano un senso, nuovi spazi di possibilità. La metafotografia è dunque anche una modalità che cerca di andare più in là della mera estetica dell’istante privilegiato. È necessario andare oltre la superficialità della “bella foto”, e anche oltre la postfotografia, oltre la furia delle immagini che già esistono – già scattate, prodotte, trovate, accumulate, ritagliate, classificate, archiviate -, e rivedere l’immagine, il suo potere evocativo, ampliando i confini, dilatando le sue qualità profetiche, indagando anche le tracce di una realtà visibile e invisibile al contempo. È necessario rapportarsi con l’immagine anche con un’altra prospettiva, intendendola come porta utile per tornare a vedere ciò che non vediamo più o che non abbiamo ancora intuito. Perché l’immagine non vale solo come superficie delegata a testimoniare un referente reale, ma può essere medium per comprendere ciò che ancora non vediamo e che ci contiene. La metafotografia cerca di far affiorare i meccanismi percettivi di un’immagine, lo spostamento fisico mentale che un’immagine visiva mette in azione. È un'alterità enigmatica. Si cerca di uscire da un punto spaziale preciso, oltre la pellicola o il sensore, per coinvolgere il fruitore, così da farlo diventare parte integrante dei meccanismi devianti, dove persistono incontrollabili elementi, anche casuali. La metafotografia intende manifestare in modo tangibile la presenza di una seconda o ulteriore realtà, parallela a quella vivente ma non meno importante di quella reale.

Nell’immagine guida della mostra, la fotografia tiene in equilibrio la metafotografia - "in palmo di mano" (come direbbe Franco Vaccari) o sopra le spalle di un gigante (usando un'immagine della tradizione) -, la spinge verso l'alto, verso l'alterità della sospensione, per tentare di farle vedere nuovi orizzonti, altre possibilità, ulteriori connessioni.

[Comunicato stampa di Metafotografia. Dentro e oltre il medium nell’arte contemporanea, BACO, Bergamo, 2019]

#simo monsi #2019 #baco #bergamo #metafotografia #catpr

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