SHELTER ISLAND that unfolds between the spaces of the Marina Bastianello Gallery in Mestre and Venice and the institutional ones of M9 – Museo del’900 and the M9 District. The project, which involves the intergenerational collaboration of two artists – Fernando Garbellotto (Portogruaro, 1955) and Luca Pozzi (Milan, 1983), was born from the urgency of traveling in the space and time of languages by hybridizing artistic and scientific research through the new format of the Meta-Conference in a historical period particularly sensitive to issues of peace.
The Exhibition ideally reconnects the public to an event that occurred in 1947 on the island of the same name near New York which brought together the most famous and visionary theoretical physicists of the time – names of the caliber of Richard Feynman, John Archibald Wheeler, Edward Teller, David Bohm, John von Neumann, Hans Bethe, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Freeman Dyson – to discuss the fundamental problems of quantum mechanics at the dawn of the invention of the atomic bomb. The Summit, remembered by history as the legendary Shelter Island summit, was the first after the resolution of the Second World War and gave rise to that attitude of sharing scientific knowledge on which today’s delicate global balances still rest.
In a post-pandemic present characterized by geopolitical tensions of an energetic, ideological, economic and religious nature, the project comes to life from the regeneration of a relational network focused on the importance of collaboration and dialogue as a modus operandi and Sine Qua Non condition. Through the works of Garbellotto and Pozzi we are called to take an active part in the Summit of ’47 which, teleported to 2024 and converted in form and substance, becomes a cross-disciplinary installation with many voices, among which those of Carlo Rovelli, Roger Penrose, Shoini Ghose, Raymond Laflamme, Katie Mack, Hildign Neilson, Savas Dimopoulos, Pedro Vieira and Neil Turok, who, with their contribution, update the assumptions from an ecosystem perspective.
Starting from these assumptions, the Meta-Conference takes place on a digital comet of 4 km in diameter, inside a GAME ENGINE in Virtual Reality called “Rosetta Mission 2024”, designed by Luca Pozzi, which, welcoming the audio contributions of the researchers, presents them simultaneously not only to the public in attendance at the Museo del Novecento in the form of a visual installation, but also on the digital megascreen of the Hybrid Tower in Mestre and on the satellite monitors of the M9 District, building a delocalized network of access platforms to content produced for a broader, non-specialist audience.
Network which includes, in its links, the two locations of the Marina Bastianello Gallery where we find respectively in Venice a large wall installation by Fernando Garbellotto, inspired by the theories of Benoit Mandelbrot and centered precisely on the concept of Fractal “The Network as an idea of the world ”, while Luca Pozzi occupies the Mestre gallery with an interactive environment composed of magnetic wall devices, sculptures engineered with particle detectors and a Virtual Reality station to access the contents of the “Rosetta Mission 2024” remotely.
(from the press release)
Shelter Island, Marina Bastianello Gallery (and different venues), Venice, 22.05.2022 – 24.08.2024
images: (cover 1) Luca Pozzi, «Rosetta Mission», 2024, Screenshots from VR Game Engine in 4K, 2024. Neil Turok / On the simplicity of nature, extract from Conversations at the Perimeter (2) Fernando Garbellotto, «Rete Frattale», 2024. (3) Luca Pozzi, «Rosetta Mission 2024» , VR station, printed carpet from digital collage, Oculus Quest, game engine unity. Photo credits: lucapozzi & marinabastianellogallery (4) Fernando Garbellotto, «Rete Frattale», 2024 (detail).
