Lilium Bosniacum is a project that was thought to be realized in collaboration with scientists (e.g. botanist). It would include experiments in order to see if the Bosnian constitution - based upon the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995 - could be translated, one way or another, into “natural law”.
Dayton Peace Agreement was reached in November 1995 at USA Air Force Base near Dayton (Ohio), and formally signed on 14th December 1995 in Paris. It brought peace to the country torn up by war which started on 6th of April 1992. Today, this peace agreement which also serves as the Bosnian constitution has become a political nightmare. Its complex structure makes any kind of progress in Bosnia seem impossible.
Lilium Bosniacum (a.k.a. golden lily or Bosnian lily) is a lily native to Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian Lily is also a symbol that has been used in Bosnia since Middle Ages and it became especially popular during the rule of Bosnian king Tvrtko I Kotromanić. With the invasion of Ottomans into the region and the fall of Kotromanić Dynasty, the symbol went out of use. On 1st of March 1992, when Bosnia and Herzegovina gained independence from Yugoslavia, lilies were brought back onto the Bosnian flag. In 1998, after the protests of political representatives of the former Herceg-Bosna and Republika Srpska, the flag of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was replaced. The idea of the project is to try and create a set of rules and genetically modify Bosnian Lily in order that it complies with the complex structure of Dayton Peace Agreement. In collaboration with scientists (e.g. botanist), the project includes experiments in order to see if this specific “constitutional law” can be translated, one way or another, into “natural law”. All of the process would be photographically and video documented, in order to produce a book/herbarium and a short video documentary. Finally the goal would be to register this “hybrid lily”, if successfully created, to the EU database of registered plant varieties.
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[1] Metro Digital Resources Librarian, Before “Subway To The Sea,” There Was “Streetcar In The Sea”: Creating Artificial Reefs Off The Los Angeles Coast In 1959, Metro's Primary Resources, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, May 18, 2011, Available at: https://metroprimaryresources.info/before-subway-to-the-sea-there-was-streetcar-in-the-sea-creating-artificial-reefs-off-the-los-angeles-coast-in-1959/1324/
[2] M. Vecellio, The Water in you, in David Horvitz, nuvola, nuvola, oceano, nuvola, foschia, tu, Loom Gallery, Milano, 2018, s.p.
]]>This project, which has been presented directly by the artist with an e-mail, consists of just an idea: to pull one of the old trolly car of Los Angeles out of the ocean where they had been dumped, after the closure of this transport system. Reflecting on his native city, today completely dedicated to cars, on its past and on the processes of forgetting, Horvitz wants to brings back to light an episode – the throwing of the trollies into the ocean – that clearly becomes a metaphor.
The Los Angeles Railway was a system of streetcars that operated in Central Los Angeles and surrounding neighborhoods between 1901 and 1963 and there are several articles and photos that can confirm that during the Fifties a few of the discarded streetcars from the Los Angeles Transit Lines, created in 1945, were thrown into the ocean: in particular the July, 1959 issue of “Mass Transportation” magazine[1] featured an informative article about six ‘old’ Los Angeles Transit Lines streetcars being placed off the coast at Redondo Beach to create an artificial reef.
This work by David Horvitz can also be considered part of a wider reflection from the artist on the concept of water and time, which considers conceptual practices and applies “the fluid and impermanent dimension of the Fluxus movement and of Oriental culture”[2]. The search and recovery of a dumped trolly car then also become a poetic and surreal performative gesture, an ephemeral action that should have left several different traces, just like David Horvitz postal artworks, his stamps or his attempts to mimic the sound of the ocean using the human voice.
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[1] Metro Digital Resources Librarian, Before “Subway To The Sea,” There Was “Streetcar In The Sea”: Creating Artificial Reefs Off The Los Angeles Coast In 1959, Metro's Primary Resources, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, May 18, 2011, Available at: https://metroprimaryresources.info/before-subway-to-the-sea-there-was-streetcar-in-the-sea-creating-artificial-reefs-off-the-los-angeles-coast-in-1959/1324/
[2] M. Vecellio, The Water in you, in David Horvitz, nuvola, nuvola, oceano, nuvola, foschia, tu, Loom Gallery, Milano, 2018, s.p.
This project started from the interest of the artists around the village of San Damiano, near Piacenza, the birthplace of Simone Bertuzzi and Simone Trabucchi. This area hosts both a NATO military base and a sanctuary dedicated to an apparition of the Virgin Mary during the early 1960s: this research was born from an attention focused both on the sound produced by the warplanes' exercises and the nature of the military space, and on the collective religious imagination, in search of a possible dialogue and common points, in the context of a small village alongside the Po Valley.
The first version of the project took the form of a documentary based on several interviews and filming of the surrounding landscape: at this stage just two trailers were produced, based on two interviews, and a parallel version was conceived as a live media performance composed of two video projections and a live soundtrack. In 2007, after a first stop decided by the artists themselves, the project was rethought as an installation on two screens, where they could have worked with loops and small variations, starting from shorter narrative models. This also included two structures for the vision of the films and an ambient soundtrack. In addition, during the research, the artists had the opportunity to confront themselves with the artist William Xerra - who was born in Piacenza too - who in 1976 staged Le Apparizioni (Verifica del Miracolo) in San Damiano, a piece related to the Marian apparitions in the area, which included as witnesses figures such as Pierre Restany, Renato Barilli and Vanni Scheiwiller.
While being used by Invernomuto in several presentations, publications, showcases and works - with images and references - Noises from Above has never reached a final form and has never been completed: still today the artists consider it stuck in a standby phase.
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This project started from the interest of the artists around the village of San Damiano, near Piacenza, the birthplace of Simone Bertuzzi and Simone Trabucchi. This area hosts both a NATO military base and a sanctuary dedicated to an apparition of the Virgin Mary during the early 1960s: this research was born from an attention focused both on the sound produced by the warplanes' exercises and the nature of the military space, and on the collective religious imagination, in search of a possible dialogue and common points, in the context of a small village alongside the Po Valley.
The first version of the project took the form of a documentary based on several interviews and filming of the surrounding landscape: at this stage just two trailers were produced, based on two interviews, and a parallel version was conceived as a live media performance composed of two video projections and a live soundtrack. In 2007, after a first stop decided by the artists themselves, the project was rethought as an installation on two screens, where they could have worked with loops and small variations, starting from shorter narrative models. This also included two structures for the vision of the films and an ambient soundtrack. In addition, during the research, the artists had the opportunity to confront themselves with the artist William Xerra - who was born in Piacenza too - who in 1976 staged Le Apparizioni (Verifica del Miracolo) in San Damiano, a piece related to the Marian apparitions in the area, which included as witnesses figures such as Pierre Restany, Renato Barilli and Vanni Scheiwiller.
While being used by Invernomuto in several presentations, publications, showcases and works - with images and references - Noises from Above has never reached a final form and has never been completed: still today the artists consider it stuck in a standby phase.
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stazione is the title of a public intervention conceived by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir for a collateral project of the 53rd Venice Biennale titled Palestine c/o Venice in 2009 but never realised. Jacir’s initial idea was to translate the names of each of the 24 vaporetti stops along route #1 of the water bus route into Arabic and to place the Arabic translations on all the stops next to their Italian counterparts.
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A series of frames of big size are overlapped in order to create a new shape, that goes beyond the content of the frames itself. The project was part of a series of works focusing on representation, but the artist abandoned it because he was busy on other works and moreover he saw at Venice Biennale 2013 a similar project, Still the Same Place by Petra Feriancová and Zbyněk Baladrán inside the Czech pavilion.
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City centre of Hamburg, Germany. Until the early 1990's there were still "empty places", brownfields, remains of World War II. One of these wastelands I loved very much. A square in the middle of the business centre. It was raw and unkempt, hardly used. Significantly, it had (unlike today) no name. It was so beautiful, because it was a rare place of the unresolved and unclear in the chic, rich inner city. On it the hidden traces of its past paired with the still unthinking possibilities of a future. I began to observe and document it closely. I went into archives and searched for everything that had ever been on this square in past years and centuries. Around 1990, new buildings began to be erected in the immediate vicinity and on the larger part of the square. Office, commercial and hotel buildings. Thus the inner city centre lost its last (aesthetically) open, disorganized area. I made two suggestions for the remaining part of the square. A) The remaining wasteland was to be surrounded by an extremely high fence. I should have the only key to the piece of land. B) A panorama building was to be erected on the square for my extensive archive on the fallow land and on "everything that had ever been there".
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The idea was to reflect on the art fair context which is a recurring impulse in the artist's work. Context is not neutral, and can sometimes be oppressive as in the case of an art fair.
The proposal for Frieze London made reference to ambition and the competitive, attention grabbing motivation behind many projects for these art fairs. It would point to the competition for limited places and the curators’ power. The artist, caring very little about making a name for herself, uses the abbreviated 'G. Küng', which is meant to encapsulate a stance of resistance.
The project would consist of really oversized photographic prints on the theme of "stairs.” She would photograph models in board or plaster, variations on the stair form. They would be difficult stairs, treacherous ones or impossible to climb stairs: their shape would mean that if you tried to climb them, they would topple over, or a step would have a broken part, or they would get taller and taller as you climbed. Enlarging the photos hugely, the images would be too tall for the pseudo-walls of the art fair, and the prints would stick out above the walls.
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This work, that has never been realized, could be seen as part of a series of practices through which the artist “examines how we come to know and speak about the conflicting geographies and temporalities of power”, investigating the map as way to measure, represent and control a territory, that contains in itself several contradictory truths and is strictly connected with an ideology, a vision or a point of view. In particular the use of metaphors and representations to study political and social environments here is declined through the potential multiple authorship of the tattooists that could have drawn the maps, and through the introduction of a technique usually connected with the idea of traveling and with the concept of identity. The tattoo, here a personal interpretation of something usually considered fixed, could have been another mean aimed at “the investigation of the historiographic, geographic and mathematical models that helped to ensure the colonialist domination of the world by Western modernity”.
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This project moves from the interest of the artist in the map - a recurring theme inside his research - and wants to explore this form of historical representation with tattoos, a declared fascination of Runo Lagomarsino: in fact his idea was to invite several tattooists from all around the world to draw a world map, and in particular “a personal interpretation of the world map”, without any limit or rule.
This work, that has never been realized, could be seen as part of a series of practices through which the artist “examines how we come to know and speak about the conflicting geographies and temporalities of power”, investigating the map as way to measure, represent and control a territory, that contains in itself several contradictory truths and is strictly connected with an ideology, a vision or a point of view. In particular the use of metaphors and representations to study political and social environments here is declined through the potential multiple authorship of the tattooists that could have drawn the maps, and through the introduction of a technique usually connected with the idea of traveling and with the concept of identity. The tattoo, here a personal interpretation of something usually considered fixed, could have been another mean aimed at “the investigation of the historiographic, geographic and mathematical models that helped to ensure the colonialist domination of the world by Western modernity”.
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This project was born in the aftermath of HH Lim's car accident which occurred on the highway on March 26th in 2005, while he was on his way from Rome to Naples for the opening of the inaugural exhibition of the PAN - Palazzo delle Arti di Napoli, The Giving Person. Il dono dell'artista, curated by Lóránd Hegyi, invited by the artist Yan Pei Ming who had visited Lim's exhibition at Fondazione Volume! in Rome a few days earlier. Despite the severity of the accident, Lim was unharmed and decided to proceed his journey abandoning the destroyed car on the side of the highway. The project was inspired by a series of events that occurred before the departure and during the trip, as well as a work of art by his friend Yan Pei Ming on display in the exhibition - a large red figure of a Buddha, similar to the one Lim has always been wearing on his neck - and ultimately the death of the pope a few days later. The project was never actually developed as it remained a mere thought, an idea the artist had. Lim imagined a large public exhibition to thank the Pope: the work would have consisted of a series of montages made using Photoshop, showing some drawings of Lim – linked to the series of Words - superimposed on the front pages of the newspapers and posted during the funeral of Wojtyla, which took place on April 8th 2005 in the St. Peter's Square.
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Daniel Maier-Reimer's art is travel. Most journeys are summarized in a single photo, some in a small group of pictures. There is no picture of some journeys. Since 2013, Daniel Maier-Reimer leaves it to others to determine how his travels appear in exhibitions and publications.
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David Maljković's unrealized work was a reconstruction of the American Pavilion designed and built by John Johansen for the 1956 Zagreb Fair. The pavilion was meant to represent American presence at the fair, which had for many years, symbolized a bridge of exchange between Yugoslavia, Europe, the USA, USSR, Eastern and Western Bloc and non-alligned countries.
David Maljković decontextualized the pavilion and proposed rebuilding it as part of a public art project in the city of Lyon, GrandLyon Habitat.
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Monolite in bilico consists of a block of slate or lava stone resting on its edge on top of an egg made of travertine from Trapani, and placed on a pedestal of white cement destined for an open space in the city of Gibellina. The exact placement and measurements were yet to be determined. The artist donated his project to MoRE and – given the occasion - recounted the complex history of his work: "After visiting the new town of Gibellina way back in December of 1979, invited by the mayor Ludovico Corrao, I thought of erecting a large monolith made of slate or better yet of volcanic lava, balanced on top of a travertine egg, which was then to be placed in one of the city squares as a symbol of rebirth and a representation of the force of nature. The egg is an archetype of mysterious and symbolic significance, the Sun in the yolk and the Moon in the glare, gold and silver, a reassembled dualism. From this union life is born and perpetuated. The egg prevails over the force of nature by holding up the monolith. That's why it is in the balance. Enthusiastic about the idea, the mayor immediately ordered works to be carried out on the egg. I even had the chance to see it finished, but I never got an answer about the monolith itself, which therefore remained unexecuted. Each time I inquired about the project, I've been given excuses and evasive answers. Thus I ceased to insist because I realized that something or someone was hindering the project. They even went so far as to deny that the egg had ever been made."
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arte arte arte (art art art) should be considered as an element of the artistic process, and the project documentation for some of a group of works not (yet) realized.
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Mislim na umjetnost (I think of art) should be considered as an element of the artistic process, and the project documentation for some of a group of works not (yet) realized.
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Pjesma se ne vraća u abecedu (Poem is not coming back into the Alphabet) should be considered as an element of the artistic process, and the project documentation for some of a group of works not (yet) realized.
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Prazno miesto [Empty mind] should be considered as an element of the artistic process, and the project documentation for some of a group of works not (yet) realized.
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Project for a book (2017) consists of three A4 sheets of paper, the draft for a book which was never published, donated as source of inspiration and research.
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This project for an unrealised film was based on a Reiner Werner Fassbinder 1975 piece, Der Muell, die Stadt und der Tod (Garbage, the City and Death), an adaptation of Gerhard Zwerenz's novel Erde ist unbewohnbar wie der Mond (1973). The film's working title, Degna di Goebbels, is taken from one of the signs exposed during the violent protests that broke out in Germany and prevented the show from being staged in the country until 2009, due to accusations of anti-Semitism, linked to the character of the rich Jewish businessman, one of the main character of the representation, and the violent monologues on this theme. MASBEDO's work consisted in staging and shooting a performance with an actress, Silvia Calderoni, in a wood performing the theatrical text with a megaphone, until she reach a tombstone where the title phrase has been engraved, surrounded by a pack of wolves. The film should have had an original soundtrack composed by Carlo Boccadoro. This project is particularly significant inside the research of Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni between video and performative, and can now be reconstructed through some photos from the set - -, several e-mails excerpts which reconstruct the various processing and - also graphic - design phases of the tombstone. As declared by the same artists, "The shooting was interrupted during the first day, and the tombstone thrown into the trash”.
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The idea behind Cartoneros, which came to him whilst travelling to Argentina in 2006 to implement the project on the Fasinpat ceramic factory (Fabrica sin patrones), an example of corporate self-management among the most significant of the country. Mele had been following the labor movement since 2000, after attending a demonstration staged by local workers, until he decided to return to Argentina in 2006. On this occasion he noticed the reality of the “cartoneros”. The economic crisis of 2001 caused the foreclosure of thousands of industrial plants and shops in Argentina, with a subsequent dramatic increase of 3,500 improvised workers for the collection of waste paper and cardboard around the cities. These workers seamlessly blended in with the blind frenzy of the metropolis, rummaging through the trash or dragging stacks of cartons. The project was supposed to include a large installation made of cardboard, stacked from and compressed between the floor to the ceiling, along with some paintings that the artist had painted during his stay in Argentina’s capital as well as an extensive photographic documentation of the workers’ lives, often carried out in secret among the city's neighborhoods.
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Proposed as part of the Monuments for the USA exhibition in 2005, the project involved the construction of two monumental ears, respectively placed on the East and West coasts of the United States.
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This project consists in a proposal for the redevelopment of the Gorbals Partnership, Glasgow. Inspired by the lyrical settings in which Ingmar Bergman often placed his romancing youth, isolated in nature, protected from judgement and convention, the artist aimed at creating a site that could encompass all stages of a lifetime and maintain the same soft touch and beauty throughout.
The artist statement was: “I would like to propose the creation of a wildflower meadow. For children to play, for teens to have sex, for adults to take walks and for seniors to remind them of their youth”.
Aleksandra Mir should have worked with a botanist to develop a meadow in five years, planting local species and restoring the traditional cycles of mowing and grazing.
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In 1997, Aleksandra Mir proposed to the Public Art Fund to collect trees thrown away from the streets of New York City after the Christmas holidays and replant them in a common area until they had dried out completely. The project, while welcomed, was blocked by the city's fire department.
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This project, commissioned by the Narvik City Council and Artscape Nordland, proposed to realise a star in the pavement for every child born in during the next 5-7 years in Narvik. This Norwegian city threatened to become vacated, with this work the harborfront would have been covered in stars, made by the same company that provides those for Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and every year a ceremony would have been held to reveal the new ones. The goal of the project is to turn the exclusive into the popular through a local recycling of the "star culture", where every newborn baby will become a star in its own life. Simultaneously the project represented a local mobilization to increase the population of Narvik. Due to budget cuts, the project was cancelled in 2006.
Stonehenge II is a proposal for a work in a public space by Aleksandra Mir.
Originally presented to the Artangel/Times open commission in 1998 (and subsequently rejected), the proposal was to build a Stonehenge replica close to the original, to reduce the volume of pedestrian traffic and save this piece of cultural heritage from further destruction. To compensate for the necessary limited access to Stonehenge I, Stonehenge II would allow full access and promote a wide range of activities on its grounds. The project was proposed a second time to students on the Royal College of Art curating course, who were asked to join the artist in the production of the project over the summer of 2001 (also rejected). The scale model was constructed in 2002–03. Aleksandra Mir continues to further her ambition to realize this work and hopes to make contact with interested parties who wish to assist.
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Die Kristallader (The Crystal Vein) is a project in public space that Helen Mirra developed in 2014 as part of a competition for the city of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
The assignment of the competition was that the artistic intervention should connect the newly built Natural History Museum, which is located in the periphery, with the city center.
Helen Mirra's project proposal was an irregular "line", a crack in the asphalt filled with a shiny metal that leads from the city center to the Natural History Museum on a path carefully defined by the artist. The shiny crystal vein guides the visitors on a 3 km long walk through St. Gallen, allowing them to perceive the surroundings, time and movement in a different way.
The jury ultimately chose another submitted project, so that the Crystal Vein was never realised.
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In bocca al lupo – (ed. “in the mouth of wolf” that is a way to wish good luck in Italian) isan artwork proposed by Liliana Moro for the 3rd International Sculpture Award of the Piemonte Region in Italy, promoted by the Piemonte Region and organized by the Association Piemontese Arte.
The project included the creation of a large sculpture in the shape of a wolf in the public park of Savigliano, which could be accessed through a spiral staircase.
Like Testa di Pinocchio (the Pinocchio's Head), in this work Moro referred to an iconographic repertoire linked to the world of childhood, combining it with a reflection on public space and with the relationship between interior and exterior.
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Testa di Pinocchio è il progetto proposto da Liliana Moro in occasione della mostra itinerante Playgrounds and Toys, organizzata dall’associazione con sede a Ginevra Art for the World e curata da Adelina von Fürstenberg, con l’intento di sensibilizzare il pubblico sul gioco come diritto fondamentale, spesso negato, di ogni bambino. In particolare la rassegna invitava artisti, architetti e designer di tutto il mondo a proporre progetti di parchi giochi e giocattoli destinati a bambini costretti a vivere in condizioni di ingiustizia sociale. Il progetto, proposto in occasione della tappa all’Hangar Bicocca nel 2005, prevedeva la realizzazione di una “casa gioco” per bambini a forma di testa di Pinocchio, con un’apertura sulla bocca da cui sarebbe dovuto partire uno scivolo, delle altalene realizzate con pneumatici pendenti dalle orecchie e dei finti mattoncini sulle pareti laterali per permettere ai bambini di arrampicarsi.
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Viene e va is an installation by Liliana Moro that won the 7th edition of “Premio ArteGiovane – Torino incontra l'arte. Una porta per Torino” – conceived for the Iveco roundabout in Corso Giulio Cesare, Turin. The roundabout - that already presented two commas made of stone chippings on the grass – would host two groups of street lamps with a fixed light, one yellow and one white, with two street lamps with intermittent light at the centre, representing two lighthouses, whose function is to serve as a navigational aid for the sailors.
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