Today, the last part of the conversation between NONE Collective and Angelo di Bello, concludes with the perceptual ecstasy of their work Genesi, presented in the evocative space of the desecrated Santa Rita Church as part of the Romaeuropa Festival 2018.
… Angelo di Bello: Let’s assume what you’re saying is true, meaning each spectator discovers what they’re looking for in your installation, depending on individual experiences and memories. I belong to a time when there were sit-ins, politics was being rediscovered, the G8, etc., and when I immersed myself in Genesis, for example, I experienced a “mystical immersion” which immediately led me to sense the sea that swallows migrants; maybe, given my education and training, I see the political in everything that surrounds me, but in an art work this aspect is either present or it isn’t. What is admirable in your works is that the significance, the final recognition, the reason or the meaning – whatever we want to call it – is layered and hits you on many levels. This is why I think the political element of your work is very important. How do you actually experience this relationship between art and politics?
NONE: Not everybody gets it…
…some curators have come here and told us, “Yes, fine, you create installations but there’s no content”…
…so what do people do when they don’t have your background? You can do this because you have a background that allows you to interpret your experience in this way. Unfortunately, this background – more often than not – is missing and it’s not easy to find political aspects, an engaged analysis. In other words, things should not be taken for granted because it is not an immediate experience and one must make an effort to explain and share these messages a little more.
Certainly. And the fact that I’m here interviewing you is the outcome of my participation in the last Symposium. What you’re saying reminds me of an old expression by Goffero Fofi which goes more or less as follows, “The only thing you can do is create small groups of people who are a pain in the arse and have a project in mind”. In a context such as Italy’s, but not exclusively – you come from Brazil where they have elected a President who makes Salvini look like a lamb in comparison, Bolsonaro’s Brazil – in a historic moment such as this, if you don’t act you share part of the responsibility for what is taking place. Therefore, in one way or another, you must always act and this call to action is not only felt in your work but is implemented in Symposium. With regard to the experiences a person may have that allow them to interpret (or not) a work in a certain way, this is absolutely true but let’s imagine a completely different context: the first time someone laid eyes on Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of Saint Matthew in San Luigi dei Francesi. We might imagine that people saw everything in it, were able to see but didn’t understand, or that they understood and recognised something, which is what you also do and this is something that is very personal. In the end, though, when people saw Caravaggio’s self-portrait in the background of the painting, there was an aesthetic identification; if this identification isn’t there or if it’s not present today, this only means that people have no compassion. That is to say that the work is striking not only when you possess the background to analyse it or interpret it, but the viewer is affected because the aesthetic form is based on a powerful subject – it affects the spectator because it could not be otherwise. You are on this path. What else needs to be done?
This is undoubtedly what we’re trying to do. It’s not enough, however, because there’s a dimension where the aesthetic sense is gratified and experience, emotion, life, affectivity, even the act of sharing is exalted, as well as all this narcissistic world that leads to the cult of the self and the beautiful moment when you’re there, inside the work, and this is perfectly fine. In the current historical moment, however, there is only one space and whoever plants the flag first claims it and if artists, leftists or humanists withdraw to a contemplative and aesthetic dimension, this space is claimed by Bolsonaro. We have described what going along this path means – from The Mirror of Our Nature (Lo Specchio della Nostra Natura) to Genesis, J3rr1 and No strata – to accompany all this with Symposium satisfies our need to actively intervene in politics. This doesn’t mean we have to establish a party or a movement…
…a movement based on experience…
…in the field of digital arts, it is the case that the aesthetics of errors, as you were saying earlier, the technical aesthetics – technique for technique’s sake – wins; nowadays the content has been reduced solely to a superficial discourse which is intentionally complicated and that’s it; sometimes, that too is missing. The only thing that’s left is the category in which you operate: a connection between numbers and nature, a connection between classicism and the digital world, but the true content we are referring to isn’t there at present. We don’t like this, but there are plenty of digital artworks in galleries and museums which express themselves along these lines.
Symposium is part of an activist project that creates something beyond aesthetics and the market. To a certain extent, the symposium is also an experience; can this be counted among your work, perhaps a less technical one?
In a certain sense, yes.
One last question, referring back to what you said previously, that the immersive experience is immediate. In a way, if you try to leave earlier you interrupt the process and you can’t fully understand the work. How important is time?
To be clear, we previously talked about speed in the sense that people are used to looking for the immediacy of experience whereas in our immersive works you must stop, reflect…
…leave your mobile phone behind…
…taking part also measures, to a certain extent, interest. Anyway, yes, time is essential because working with perceptions, feelings are articulate and they’re not only a snapshot! In other words, we need to change the mood of the space in which spectators move from one thing to another, like what happens in the theatre…
…each person behaves differently inside the installation: there are people who rush, those who stand still and visitors who perform a certain number of circuits…
…you recognise a person’s receptiveness.
A person’s receptiveness. This sentence, together with the thoughtful brow, the bright eyes and the kind reserve of NONE, stays with me as I return to the outside world. The sun is still shining, but the summer has long gone. You can sense the cold, feel it. It’s not winter yet and I find myself thinking that the “mid-season” really exists and I’m right inside it. But what has changed from an hour ago? The last statement mentioned in my conversation with NONE comes to mind: “a person’s receptiveness”. And this is what has changed: my receptiveness. It’s like entering one of their immersive works; this hour spent chatting about the world, their world, has prepared me to listen, see and be receptive to what surrounds me, to the world, my world.
The NONE Collective, rigorous and playful, gentle and decisive, is full of an irrepressible force which it manages to channel into its members’ work, all their works. The only thing asked of spectators is a fair dose of receptiveness, a commitment to being curious and open-minded. Their works allow us to enter the world of our sensations – a world that, as a magic lens, reveals something more than the real one because the world that these works expose is closely connected to the real one; as long as we are willing to make the effort. This is a pact similar to the one made between Alice and the Unicorn once Alice has gone through the looking glass: “If you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you”. It may seem paradoxical, but this is the reality pact.
It’s as if NONE were saying to us, “We will show you a different aspect of reality through a game of perception, your perceptions, IF you are ready to be involved”. And it’s better to answer in the affirmative because as the great art master, Antoni Muntadas, teaches us, “Warning: perception requires involvement”.
NONE is an Italian collective of multi-talented architects interested in exploring identity boundaries, the relationship between man and machine, between cinema and art and anything that history and progress offers to their attentive gaze. NONE’s work covers a wide range of fields, from immersive installations to the organisation of symposia with diverse professionals, critics, artists, producers, organisers and thinkers. Guided by the spirit of research and experimentation, the identity of the collective reveals itself as the work develops and its creativity is called on to intervene in different fields and disciplines. Angelo Di Bello has interviewed the members of NONE in their studio. Their conversation is published on Arshake in four parts, and this is the third one. As a start (A chat in NONE’s House.Part I), the collective described its working methods and introduced two important projects, Hybrid Space, created for Toyota, and No Strata, realised for Farlo Santander in Sao Paulo (Brazil). In the second part (A chat in NONE’s House.Part II ) the collective talked about its relationship with matter and its search for a balance between storytelling and the means with which it is realised. The conversation focused on the creation process behind The Mirror of Our Nature (Lo Specchio della Nostra Natura), a work created for the Italian Pavilion in Cannes (2017). The third part of the conversation (A Chat in NONE’S House. Part III) revolved around the collective’s different creative approaches when working at commissioned projects.
images: (cover 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 ) NONE collective – GENESI, BLOOMING FESTIVAL (2, 3) NONE collective – GENESI, La festa di Roma. Piazza SantAnastasia