Your browser does not support the video tag.
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Marco Cadioli - The Whirlpool
  • © ARSHAKE | ISSN 2283-3676
  • CONTACT
  • Login
Arshake
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
    • All
    • focus
    • From the Past
    • Interview
    People Make Television at Raven Row

    People Make Television at Raven Row

    The Transparency of Time

    The Transparency of Time

    Un presente indicativo

    Un presente indicativo

    Abe Sugarman at Arebyte Gallery in London

    Abe Sugarman at Arebyte Gallery in London

    Tanti auguri e saluti

    Tanti auguri e saluti

    EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art

    EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art

    Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

    Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

    Federica Di Carlo at PostmastersROMA

    Federica Di Carlo at PostmastersROMA

    Jonas Mekas. Images are Real

    Jonas Mekas. Images are Real

  • FRAME
    FRAME > Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)

    FRAME > Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)

    FRAME > Nenuphar de Molitor

    FRAME > Nenuphar de Molitor

    FRAME > Mondi sommersi

    FRAME > Mondi sommersi

    FRAME > Frozen Flowers

    FRAME > Frozen Flowers

    FRAME > THE PROPHETS

    FRAME > THE PROPHETS

    FRAME > Photonic Empathy

    FRAME > Photonic Empathy

    FRAME > WoodArc

    FRAME > WoodArc

    FRAME > SWARM

    FRAME > SWARM

    FRAME > Round Balance

    FRAME > Round Balance

  • VIDEO POST
    VIDEO POST > Navigating Noise

    VIDEO POST > Navigating Noise

    VIDEO POST > Fractured

    VIDEO POST > Fractured

    VIDEO POST > Hi! I Got Hacked!

    VIDEO POST > Hi! I Got Hacked!

    VIDEO POST > Spambots

    VIDEO POST > Spambots

    VIDEO POST > Tape Pull-out Ensemble

    VIDEO POST > Tape Pull-out Ensemble

    VIDEO POST > Parallels

    VIDEO POST > Parallels

    VIDEO POST > Tales of Entropy

    VIDEO POST > Tales of Entropy

    VIDEO POST > Vague Boundaries

    VIDEO POST > Vague Boundaries

    VIDEO POST > JAZZ POP CORN

    VIDEO POST > JAZZ POP CORN

  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • ARSHAKE’S BANNER
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
    • GAME OVER
      • GAME OVER • Loading
      • GAME OVER • CALL FOR IDEAS (5.0)
    • EXTERNAL PROJECTS
      • BACKSTAGE | ONSTAGE
      • PERCORSI • 6 years of the Terna Prize
      • TEMPO IMPERFETTO
  • RESOURCES
    • CALLS
    • ARCHIVE
    • ONLINE RESOUCES
  • it IT
  • en English
No Result
View All Result
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
    • All
    • focus
    • From the Past
    • Interview
    People Make Television at Raven Row

    People Make Television at Raven Row

    The Transparency of Time

    The Transparency of Time

    Un presente indicativo

    Un presente indicativo

    Abe Sugarman at Arebyte Gallery in London

    Abe Sugarman at Arebyte Gallery in London

    Tanti auguri e saluti

    Tanti auguri e saluti

    EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art

    EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art

    Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

    Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

    Federica Di Carlo at PostmastersROMA

    Federica Di Carlo at PostmastersROMA

    Jonas Mekas. Images are Real

    Jonas Mekas. Images are Real

  • FRAME
    FRAME > Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)

    FRAME > Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)

    FRAME > Nenuphar de Molitor

    FRAME > Nenuphar de Molitor

    FRAME > Mondi sommersi

    FRAME > Mondi sommersi

    FRAME > Frozen Flowers

    FRAME > Frozen Flowers

    FRAME > THE PROPHETS

    FRAME > THE PROPHETS

    FRAME > Photonic Empathy

    FRAME > Photonic Empathy

    FRAME > WoodArc

    FRAME > WoodArc

    FRAME > SWARM

    FRAME > SWARM

    FRAME > Round Balance

    FRAME > Round Balance

  • VIDEO POST
    VIDEO POST > Navigating Noise

    VIDEO POST > Navigating Noise

    VIDEO POST > Fractured

    VIDEO POST > Fractured

    VIDEO POST > Hi! I Got Hacked!

    VIDEO POST > Hi! I Got Hacked!

    VIDEO POST > Spambots

    VIDEO POST > Spambots

    VIDEO POST > Tape Pull-out Ensemble

    VIDEO POST > Tape Pull-out Ensemble

    VIDEO POST > Parallels

    VIDEO POST > Parallels

    VIDEO POST > Tales of Entropy

    VIDEO POST > Tales of Entropy

    VIDEO POST > Vague Boundaries

    VIDEO POST > Vague Boundaries

    VIDEO POST > JAZZ POP CORN

    VIDEO POST > JAZZ POP CORN

  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • ARSHAKE’S BANNER
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
    • GAME OVER
      • GAME OVER • Loading
      • GAME OVER • CALL FOR IDEAS (5.0)
    • EXTERNAL PROJECTS
      • BACKSTAGE | ONSTAGE
      • PERCORSI • 6 years of the Terna Prize
      • TEMPO IMPERFETTO
  • RESOURCES
    • CALLS
    • ARCHIVE
    • ONLINE RESOUCES
No Result
View All Result
Arshake
No Result
View All Result
Home News focus

Memento. The Obsession of the Visible

Elena Giulia Rossi by Elena Giulia Rossi
02/03/2017
in focus

With Memento, recently published by postmediabooks, Pietro Gaglianò takes the reader through the power of language, the one that, through words and images, commands memory in the architecture (both visible and invisible) of power, whether it’s the architecture constructed by European totalitarianism – discussed with meticulous care in the first section of the book – or that shaped ‘by’ and ‘in’ the incessant rhythm of the power of media, whose entire hypnotic strength is transferred into the emptiness of its shell. The monument is the formal synthesis of this power, of a message conveyed by collective memory, which builds and is built around the public sphere. Language and form unite in the power of their impact on memory, a link summed up in the word chosen for the book’s title. Monument and memento therefore find themselves occupying common ground: memory, the one that becomes the accomplice of the structuring of society in a given direction. “Memento”, Gaglianò specifies, “with its etymological proximity to ‘monument’, is the future imperative form of the Latin memini, and literally means ‘you will remember’, you will keep in mind’, and by extension, ‘remember to remember’.” (Gaglianò p. 123)

The spotlight is then turned on the image-creating power of language – either in its pure form or the language of art – on its transverse nature; in a nutshell, on its power of resistance. “Resistance and its faithful symmetry in the area of the visible, the imagination, are manifested where the tight knit of hegemony loosens, and before the control of another (rival or more often coordinated) system begins” (Gaglianò, p. 155).

The book opens with an analysis of a monument to fascist leader Costanzo Ciano, planned by the city of Livorno and left unfinished. This “open-heart” monument, which leaves power visible in its completion (and its dismantling), lends itself beautifully to the start of a discourse which moves backwards and forwards in time, extending its range to everything encompassed – not always predictably – in the ranks of the image (like, for instance, urban design).

Today the monument extends to other forms of collective memory, born outside the hotbeds of power and finding expression in the most varied of forms (or non-forms), often geared to a resistance to the homogenisation of the systemic power of the economy and of art. With this interpretation, Gaglianò travels through the vastness of Italian endeavour, a territory always inclined to the establishment of a particularly solid link between aesthetics, power and urban design, which manifests itself in the politics of consensus or the tensions of dissent. The rhythm intensifies in an extremely dense account of Italian art, in particular art which is actively committed in the public sphere and can thus be included in an open and modern definition of ‘monument’.

The book concludes with interviews with Jochen Gerz and Thomas Hirschhorn, artists who express two different conceptions of a modern idea of the monument, both rooted in plurality, dialogue, openness and uncertainty as an added value, all geared to opening a channel in which vitality and independent thought can flow.


Pietro Gaglianò, Memento. The Obsession with the Visible, postmediabooks, Milan 2016 (It/Eng), 228 pp.
Share110TweetShareSend
Previous Post

Tom Ireland at Arebyte

Next Post

VIDEO POST > DESC

Next Post

VIDEO POST > DESC

CALLS

Driving Energy Terna Award 2023
Calls

Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

22/02/2023
S+T+ARTS Prize 2023
Calls

S+T+ARTS Prize 2023

04/02/2023
RE:HUMANISM Art Prize: SPARKS AND FRICTIONS
Calls

RE:HUMANISM Art Prize: SPARKS AND FRICTIONS

01/02/2023
Terna.  Driving Energy Prize
Calls

Terna. Driving Energy Prize

13/06/2022

CRITICAL GROUNDS

Critical Gounds #13 – Massimo Maiorino, The Artist as Archaeologist.
Critical Grounds

Critical Gounds #13 – Massimo Maiorino, The Artist as Archaeologist.

08/07/2020
Critical Gounds #12 – Filiberto Menna «PROGETTARE» IL FUTURO
Critical Grounds

Critical Gounds #12 – Filiberto Menna «PROGETTARE» IL FUTURO

26/11/2019
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Arshake is a collaborative artistic project, blurring the borders between art, science and technology, information and production.

  • Focus
  • Video post
  • Frame
  • Special Project
  • Interview
  • Calls
  • Exhibitions

One more step - Check your email and click the confirmation link

© 2012-2022 – ARSHAKE

No Result
View All Result
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
  • FRAME
  • VIDEO POST
  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • ARSHAKE’S BANNER
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
    • GAME OVER
      • GAME OVER • Loading
      • GAME OVER • CALL FOR IDEAS (5.0)
    • EXTERNAL PROJECTS
      • BACKSTAGE | ONSTAGE
      • PERCORSI • 6 years of the Terna Prize
      • TEMPO IMPERFETTO
  • RESOURCES
    • CALLS
    • ARCHIVE
    • ONLINE RESOUCES

© 2012-2022 – ARSHAKE

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.