Notes and impressions from Marrakesh continues today with the Delphine Valli’s memories from from Marrakech continues today with notes and impressions about her period of residency at Le 18 Derb el Ferrane, part of The Impossible Present, the winning project of the 10th Italian Council edition, where she researched and reflected on the important comparison between Western and Eastern visual culture, two cultural boundaries that have been embracing the life of the artist who lived in Algiers from 3 months to 16 years, and in Rome, where she lives and works. The letter concludes with some reflections that stem from Mechanical Absence, a work realised in Rome for an exhibition that opened at Curva Pura when the artist was in Marrakech, and finished on her return. It acted as a bridge between the two worlds together with all the people who dialogued and collaborated with her on several levels, exchanges witnessed in the notes of this exchange. (For the first part see: Delphine Valli. The Impossible Present: Travel Notes. Pt I, Arshake, October 29, 2022)
Marrakech, October 6, 2022
Mechanical Absence, a work realised in Rome during this period of research, was born from the ashes, among the elements, there is the fusion of embers from the daily fires lit during the lockdown period
Verticality had already imposed itself
It was realised for Quel che resta del fuoco: Elena Bellantoni | Arianna De Nicola | Delphine Valli, curated by Nicoletta Provenzano, at Curva Pura (Rome), now completed and inaugurated while I was in Marrakech, whose premises derive from Derrida’s text, Feu la cendre
Starting again from the ashes meant seeing in the disaster a fertile core
To consider the ashes of a world and recognise in them the potential treasure of ‘not removing’ the disaster
The starting point for The Impossible Present was the relationship of my work to the invisible, which I consider on a par with the material elements
Melania Rossi judiciously pointed to the influence that culture, Islamic art, had probably had on me and on my work, giving my research its present shape
This dialogue between us catalysed the concreteness of the current research by heralding the reunion with a missing piece for me, the culture in which I grew up
Awareness of the current crisis – environmental, climatic, social, political – depresses me less than my own and others’ ability to remove it to act ‘as if there were no tomorrow’, as they say, with unsuspected adherence to what is actually happening
Arbitrariness makes the present prevail at the expense of the future – ‘which someone will live’, always in the present tense though
Highly depressing and above all morbid, it is a world that always needs to turn its back on what is most essential, trivially, life, in order to constantly and futilely produce, at any (very high) cost
As Aurélien Barrau suggests when asked What to do? in the face of the environmental situation, Even Not Doing can be a beginning of an answer, ‘stopping to reflect’ has perhaps become revolutionary
Change paradigm and eradicate within oneself the adherence to involution, to mechanical absence
I am reminded of Byung-Chul Han’s The Burnout Society, which I read here:
“This essay culminates in the treatment of a fatigue that heals. It is that weariness which does not come from unrestrained rearmament, but from a cordial disarmament of the self.” “The negativity of non-doing (nicht-zu) is also an essential trait of contemplation. In Zen meditation, for example, one attempts to attain the pure negativity of non-doing, i.e. emptiness, by freeing oneself from something that looms and imposes itself. It is an extremely active practice, far from passive. It is an exercise aimed at achieving a position of sovereignty within the self, to place oneself at the centre of the self. If we had only the positive power, on the other hand, we would be handed over entirely passively to the object. Hyperactivity is, paradoxically, an extremely passive form of doing, which no longer admits of any free acting.”
From all these points of view, I find myself in total harmony with the LE 18 crew, with Laila Hida, Elisa Zorzi and Amine Lahrache, Francesca Masoero whom I have only just met and all the others, Oumaima Abaraghe, Sofia Fahli… and Pierre Coric, artist in residence, with whom we are exchanging a lot and who is making the models of my project
I think of the essential Italian links for me to the reality of Marrakech: two artists, Anna Raimondo and Angelo Bellobono and Cristina Cobianchi with AlbumArte.
(Delphine Valli, Marrakech, October 6, 2022)
images: (2) Mechanical Absence (One morning I turned on the radio and heard a voice say that the mystic is not the one who has visions but the one who has one vision, Brass, silver, acid and flame, brass casting of embers and lava stone from Etna, variable dimensions, 2021- 2022. ph Giorgio Benni | Luis Do Rosario (3) Ritrovamenti / Findings / Portrait, ph. Melania Rossi, Marrakech, 2022 (4) Modelling, Blender, by Pierre Coric, Le 18, Marrakech, 2022
Delphine Valli, The Impossible Present, Le 18 Derb el Ferrane, Marrakech, Marocco
Curatorial support: Melania Rossi | Cultural Partners. Marseille: Mucem, Department of Research, Opera Mundi, FAI-AR at Cité des arts de la rue, Les Ecrans du Large at La Friche Belle de Mai; Rome: AlbumArte | Cultural sponsor: Parallelo42 Contemporary Art
Project supported by the Italian Council (10th edition, 2021), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture
