The conversation between Angelo di Bello and NONE collective continues, today with a more in depth focus on the relationship between art and the market, between creativity and working for commissioned projects.
… Angelo di Bello: Speaking about commissioned work, what different approaches do you take towards commissioned and non-commissioned work?
NONE: Sometimes, if the person who commissions the work is enlightened, willing to delegate and takes responsibility for it, all goes well when dealing with such a person. Often, however, you find people who cannot trust others and, in this case, the process becomes a lot more complicated because it has to go through internal approval and verification systems that ruin everything, the enthusiasm and ultimately the project itself…
… an opposite example of the Cannes work is a project we were commissioned to do by a company who told us at the beginning, “We want something completely artistic; we have seen your work and would like you to reproduce it in our space”. Theoretically speaking we were free but, in the end, every little move required someone’s approval and it was an endless, “Mmh, this music is too eerie; mmh, we must display that here”. All your enthusiasm is utterly ruined at this point and in the end you don’t even want your name to come up because you would’ve suggested something different…
… on the other hand, non-commissioned works also involve a lot of issues. First of all, you must confront yourself, make decisions and, precisely because these decisions are not the direct outcome of requests made by those commissioning the work, they are much more difficult to make. So these works are more profound, can take more time, but are much more satisfying when completed. Still, when we manage to get involved with the business and employment world, with companies, and can bring our research, our work, our message to these spaces, paradoxically it is even more satisfying when we achieve this…
… what we’re saying is it all depends on your interlocutor…
So, if we create a work for a company, attempting to include a critical perspective, artistic and aesthetic research – we can succeed or fail, it depends – any revenues made from this work would partly be used for non-commissioned works and projects such as Symposium; the sense of achievement is greater. This is how the space functions and it works 100% this way. We have never followed a business model based exclusively on profit, otherwise we would have made different choices…
… ultimately, the question we ask ourselves is this: are you freer when you create a work with money made from other works or when creating art with the knowledge that there is a demand on the market for that particular work? I don’t know!
So, you rightly conclude that it is more gratifying to work in a serious and rigorous way with an idea, for a large company, rather than getting involved in the sort of mess the art market represents, which tends to suffocate everything. I imagine this has led you to be somewhat ostracised by the market itself.
According to the art market, we don’t exist…
… because immersive installations don’t make their way into galleries…
… we try to show that we exist but if you work with companies you risk being considered “contaminated”…
Your argument is very rigorous. It is reminiscent of Gunther Anders’ position, who never – or almost never – accepted literary awards so as not to fall into the spiral of doing what is expected of you by the person giving the award. In this sense you remain free and, despite the criticism that you may encounter in the official art world, this allows you to take on some challenging projects.
… however, we don’t shut ourselves off from the art world, in the sense that there’s also a discourse of application: a world in which you can develop things on a minor scale and define the subject. After all, the power of the work is disruptive. In other words, if there’s content, people will listen and it will generate interest. We carry on working because this is also a way of promoting concepts that would otherwise be lost, also because immersive works have a very short life span…
… yes! They’re fleeting…
… just the time to set up and then, who knows. Deep Dream was only done once, No Strata, who knows if we’ll ever do it again; J3rr1, on the other hand, was made as a work of art, a museum exhibit, to be displayed in a gallery, and so it’s touring the world.
… to be continued…
(the conversation between Angelo di Bello and NONE will continue on Thursday February 14, 2019)
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).
images: (cover 1) NONE collective, «J3RR1 una tortura programmata», photo: NONE collective (2) NONE, Simposio, photo: Cristina Vatielli (3) Simposio, Ultravioletto. photo: Cristina Vatielli (4) Simposio, Luciano Lamanna. photo: Cristina Vatielli ( (5) Simposio, Otolab. photo: Cristina Vatielli (6) Simposio, Quiet Ensemble, photo: Cristina Vatielli (7) NONE, Deep Dream, ACT II. Digitalife, Romaeuropa Festival. photo: Cristina Vatielli
