Public Programme #2

Post-Studio practices in/with video Lecture

Talk curated by Kelman Duran
2 December 2020
Live on meet

Post- studio practices have always been a critical practice in art from the mid 1960s when conceptual art made the traditional notion of the studio
at least partly obsolete and the artists moved to other locations to create and produce. But how is it that post studio practices disrupt major canons in art? The talk by Kelman Duran highlights some critical historical projects and shows examples of these practices through video to analyse the critical strategies of artists who have used the expanded field of production as a new form of the studio according to the artist's role in a changed context.

Starting from these theoretical references and some video excerpts Duran talks also about his work at Cripta747 during the residency.

Public Programme #1

Writing Workshop

Led by Caterina De Nicola
12th, 13th, 14th November

The interdisciplinary workshop conceived by Caterina De Nicola as part of her residency at Cripta747 revolves around the topic of speculative horror, an elusive concept whose critique can be read as a kind of unconscious dramatisation and overstatement of the confrontation between social conservatism and the corrosive powers of social culture, media and entertainment. In this crisis and insecurity scenario, the artist suggests resorting to a theory-fiction stage to escape from history and reality. The workshop takes form in a shared stage to perform and discuss a familiar story through different mediums and approaches. It develops in several phases: in the first step, the theory fiction is used to guide the creative writing to compare the diverse practices of the people involved; after that, the participants write down the plot of the story and, as performers of a choreography, deciding how to read and interpret the various parts; finally, the theatrical play is translated into a collective musical score, a sort of communal solo that merges into an audio recording designed to be broadcast on the radio.

OPEN STUDIO

Caterina De Nicola
Kelman Duran

Opening 5th November 2020 from 12am to 9.00 pm
Opening time: 6th – 14th November

Cripta747 is pleased to present the outcomes of the research developed by the Italian artist Caterina De Nicola (1991) and the Dominican musician and filmmaker Kelman Duran (1984) during their time in residence over the past two months.

In her practice Caterina De Nicola resorts to fiction, sound investigation and object design, to shape formal and discursive patterns, by developing an analysis of cultural symbols and motifs, as well as their circulation in a larger cultural system. The proliferation of styles and artistic approaches since the 1960s - conceptual, minimalist, performative, etc. - and the accelerated obsolescence of most of the art, has led the "postmodern" era to a shift of the formal "purism" of modernism through a continuous eclectic remix of past stylistic results.

At Cripta747 De Nicola has developed a new project in a series of levels obtained by successive additions of texts, images, external inputs and compositions of others. The work is inspired by the libertine novel Le Sopha, conte moral (1742) by the French writer Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon. The book tells the story of a young courtier, Amanzéï, whose soul is condemned to inhabit a series of sofas and not to reincarnate in a human body until two virgin lovers have consumed their passion for a sofa that "lived".

De Nicola has designed a series of sofas presented for the open studio in the form of  speaker-sculptures. The sofas have different looks and shapes. The shapes of the speakers are inspired by the structures of custom-made artisan sofas, as unfinished pieces, without upholstery and without padding. These forms host on their surface sound exciters, used and operated as a speaker, which diffuse the audio by transforming the object on which they are mounted into sound generating devices. The sculptures function like the soundboards of a guitar, spreading the sound across their surface and disseminate a collection of samples of sounds.

Another element of the project is an EP that will be published in the next months with the label Sonic Belligeranza, an independent electronic music label born in Bologna in 2000 and directed by Dj Balli. 

The musical production is influenced by subgenres of Noise music such as Speed-core and Shit-core, characterized by a very fast and violent rhythm. According to different aspects Shit-core is in a world of its own, just like post-post-postmodernism (or performatism), simply because it exists outside the normal perception of noise, creating a transcendent genre that is in a certain way beyond above the dichotomy between music and noise.

Through a speculative and imaginary approach, the sound product will interrogate aesthetic topics, problematizing how these generate social, political and economic mechanisms that influence our opinion and taste. While the texts, through techniques of mythopoiesis, in a mix of theory fiction and speculative horror, generate a story between extreme horror, sex and gore. A critique of the construction of the subject which it methodologically and semantically opposes through techniques of fiction, disorientation, listlessness, crisis and immobility.

Kelman Duran's research is based on the intersection between architecture and social control for populations in border towns or marginal groups living in contemporary cities. As in his previous work To The North (2012 - 2016), a long-term project conceived at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Duran work is contingent upon the place where the process is taking shape. Especially his video work is tied to creating an archive of places. In his artistic practice Duran collects and expands a specific text in order to translate it through multiple mediums, image, sound, speculative text, etc.

What interests the artist is the way in which language becomes malleable and meaningless when it comes to stabilizing the concept of the human. That is for Blacks and the people of African diaspora since they have already been codified into materials.(black>coal>slavery) – to become human, the world must begin again. Until then they/us will have to practice an anti-humanist aesthetic , position and attitude.This is a conceptual position from which Duran started amassing sound and images while in residence.

The starting point of Duran's research at Cripta747 is a still from Afrique 50 (1950) by Rene Vautier, a film that was censored in France since it dealt with French colonialism. In fact, in 1934 the decree of ministers of colonies forbade any filming in the colonies unless accompanied by the presence of an administration official.

In addition to the photographic enlargement of that still, for the open studio, the artist presents a short form video of a person walking around Turin with a print. He is from Morocco and like many have migrated here to Italy. 

The 3rd element in the studio is a letter from Italo Balbo, a high ranking Italian army official, to Alberto Fassini, a manufacturer, politician and film producer.

Before leaving the studio Duran invites the public to take with an envelope which contains some writings and the reproductions of archival materials that the artist found during his research.

Cripta747 Residency Programme is a project by Cripta747, supported by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Fondazione Crt.

A special thanks to Marilivia Minnici Circolo del Design, Fulvio Ferrari Museo Casa Mollino, Alan Stefanato, Nicolò Foglia, Alessandro Baroni, Alise Vaivode.