Arbete pågår: Melin,Goldiechiari 17-18 nov
Under några veckor i november upplåter vi vår studio åt fritt arbete i residensform och bjuder in till dessa arbetsprocesser i form av öppna redovisningar. Först ut är Lotta Melin och den italienska konstduon Goldiechiari
—————————————-
Lotta Melin, Goldiechiari (IT) och dansaren Henrietta Wallberg visar work in progress.
Lotta Melin återkommer ofta i sitt koreografiska arbete till att föreställa eller mediera starka historiska personligheter, för att genom dem visa oss något om de mänskliga betingelserna. Hon tillhör de konstnärer som hänger sig till fiktionens kraft, där representation inte är en frågeställning utan en utgångspunkt.
Goldiechiari är en italiensk konstnärsduo som är känd för att ständigt undersöka, kritisera och skapa konst kring det italienska samhällets konstruktion. I deras undersökning ifrågasätter de just samhällets mekanismer som förträngning och söker lyfta upp dessa i en kritisk och oväntad belysning.
Denna gång tar de tillsammans med Lotta Melin en närmare titt på fenomenet och utbrytarkungen Houdini. Medverkar gör också dansaren Henrietta Wallberg.
Konstnärernas beskrivning av residenset
“Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth” Theodor Adorno
Background
The collaboration between goldiechiari and Lotta Melin began in 2007. The artist duo asked the choreographer Lotta to participate in the art video Dump Queen (5’, 2008). She was playing the role of the 1940s Brazilian artist Carmen Miranda in the context of a dump in Guidonia, near Rome, dancing and singing Chica Chica Boom Chic, main theme performed by the actress in the movie That Night in Rio (1941). In the stenography of a rubbish mountain surmounted by a flight of hungry seagulls, the performer executes a crazy, parodistic and happy dance of repression in a context of decay, ruin and abjection.
In may 2011 Lotta Melin and goldiechiari run a three week long residence at Konstnärsnämndens international dance program in Stockholm, to start working on a new project together.
goldiechiari has since 2009 been working on Italian historical issues with the series Genealogy of Damnatio Memoriae, ( carved trees) and in particular the influences of Italian secret services in the terrorist attacks occurred from the 1969 till the 1980s in Italy, called the strategy of tension (right now exhibited at the Castello di Rivoli Museum, Tourin, Italy).
Project
From the interest on secret services international practices and the focus on the character and tricks of the magician Harry Houdini , the new collaboration between Lotta Melin and goldiechiari started.
During one month in Stockholm, may 2011, we begun to shoot some pictures and to make some studies to realize a performance, using the magic tricks showing the relation between the idea of hiding reality and create an illusion in magic representation and the secret services politics devices of perform reality for the “stability and democracy” of States.
From this first reflections came out the storyboard for the video The Stay Behind Trick. A video inspired by the famous needle trick by the magician Harry Houdini. In the video the actor, playing the role of the magician, helped by his assistant will eat the writings of all the Stay Behind secret operations in Europe during The Cold War. It’s a project about the metaphor of disappearing and illusion used by the secret services to hide their undercover operations, that deeply influenced european politics during the cold war.
In October 2012 we all met in Roma to continue our work and develop our first ideas. Inspired by the magician Houdini, we decided to go deeper into the way that magicians focus the attention of the spectator away from what is really going on on stage.
Our research also focused on the first dada movies like: Georges Melies, Jean Coucteau, Renè Clair and others, related to the first way of manipulating and represent reality. We are very interested in the idea of invisibility, irreal, immateriality, hiding and disappearance. We want to go on with this research and connect these issues with the idea of irreality and magic, related to the new medias.
At the studio residence at WELD we will begin to produce these ideas on a more practical point of view. Start filming the first magic tricks and to have the chance to experiment and work on a live performance.
The most interesting thing with this collaboration is the interdisciplinary way of collaborating and the mix of different languages. We are finding out a new way of working, enriched by the experience of the three of us.
During the period at Weld, we also have the opportunity to work with the dancer Henrietta Wallberg.