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• The Looper (Jerusalem)

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  Performative installation.

  In  collaboration with Paolo Monti and Karin Pauer.

  Curated by Anat Safran & Tal Erez

  “The Looper” points at our complicated relationship with time and time efficiency in contemporary life.

  Concept drawings and neon works spread throughout the building and an interactive sonic and performative space offer various perspectives on the perception of time and views our existence as non-linear - a constant accumulation of repeated loops.

  The sonic and performative space invites visitors to participate in an accumulative sound structure. Using a looping device, a sound designer captures visitor's contributions turning them into a sonic collaborative manifestation of the now.  In addition, a performer engages in practices of repetition and transformation which takes visitors' traces into consideration, adding an element of embodied captivation of nowness.

  The black and white concept drawings strip ideas down to a pointed formulation in the shape of a concise statement, an unsolved question or a witty remark.

   

   

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• Safe and Sound

  ---

  Safe and Sound by Aldo Giannotti, conceived for MAMbo, is the artist's first anthological exhibition in an Italian institution, curated by Lorenzo Balbi with the curatorial assistance of Sabrina Samorì.

  Supported by the Italian Council, Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity, Italian Ministry of Culture, the exhibition contemplates notions of safety and security considered from different perspectives.

  Ranging from the fundamental, existential aspect of safety, to regulations of the social sphere, to the technological impact on the field of security, the exhibition invites visitors to reflect upon their own position towards these concepts.

  Regulations, laws, and given behaviour settings of different social contexts provide the content to Giannotti's confrontation with said notions.

  The exhibition welcomes visitors into a space for exercising potential alternatives and challenges them to bend their perception of regulations and their own behaviour and decision-taking processes within deeply embedded structures.

  Security is defined as the freedom of danger. Giannotti asks what freedoms we give up in order to obtain our safety and probes the paradoxical nature of this negotiation between freedom and security. Our current reality turns precisely such questions into a daily practice and forces us to find answers collectively. Investigating these topics, the exhibition merges the museum's microcosm with the broader social environment.

  Drawings lie at the core of Giannotti's artistic practice. However, the activation or realization of such concepts often take shape in the form of installations, performances, video works or the readaptations of spatial structures.

  Safe and Sound is partly set up as an intervention on the architectural structure of MAMbo itself in order to rethink the museum space and the way visitors interact with it. The paths created by Giannotti's structural interventions within the museum take account of the specific nature of the building whilst producing a completely personalized adaptation, which forced the museum institution itself to participate in the reshaping of norms, both conceptually and literally.

  Safe and Sound however is not just an intervention on the spatial structure of the building but also a way to explore the network of relations that define a museum experience as such. Starting from an exercise within the parameters of the museum space as a building but also as a social sphere with its inherent behaviour settings, visitors get to outline an alternative significance of the notion of security, which might differ from the one imposed by mediatic communication and political practices.

  Articles and reviews selection:

  en:

  https://www.yatzer.com/aldo-giannotti-safe-and-sound

  https://www.lampoonmagazine.com/article/2021/10/06/aldo-giannotti-safe-and-sound-bologna/

  ita:

  https://www.finestresullarte.info/recensioni-mostre/bologna-mambo-aldo-giannotti-sovverte-concetto-museo-recensione-mostra-safe-and-sound

  https://www.exibart.com/arte-contemporanea/da-museo-a-campo-di-sperimentazione-aldo-giannotti-al-mambo/

  http://www.stylelegends.com/2021/05/lattualita-di-aldo-giannotti-safe-and.html

   

   

   

   

   

   

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• Swing with It

  ---

  Performative installation in the frame of the exhibition Raumgreifen at Werksviertel-Miette, Munich

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• The Grandstand

  ---

  Installative performance at Kunstpavillion Munich

  photo : Lothar Reichel

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• security instructions

  ---

  Embedded in a post-COVID reality teeming with regulations and measurements, a performative intervention, considering conventions and behavior settings of the Museum Institution was developed.

  Performers disguised as Security Guards were blending in with real ones working in the institution.

  These guards passed on a set of reimagined instructions and rules to the museum visitors in the form of scripted micro-encounters.

  The heightened presence of guards turned the museum into a space of human interaction and shifted relationships.

   

  Performative Intervention/ 2020

  Kunsthaus Graz

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• The Score

  Aldo Giannotti’s minimal black and white drawings serve as the backbone of this work, revealing the preconstruction of it, depicting it’s traces as well as offering instructions for the present moment.

  Through this score the artists invite you into a process-based experience which unfolds into a relational field of transactions, negotiations and deeply embodied concepts.

  Three performers mediate this situation offering strategies for empathizing with different positions of a social construct.

  ‚THE SCORE‘ questions what kinds of movements we want to undertake as a society, and how one can sculpt social bonds, organic solidarity and alternative encounters.

  Concept & Choreography: Aldo Giannotti & Karin Pauer

  Visual Concept: Aldo Giannotti

  Development & Performance: Lau Lukarilla, Arttu Palmio, Karin Pauer

  Sound: Andreas Berger

  Editing: Viktor Schaider

  Light: Sveta Schwin

  A co-production by Karin Pauer, Kunstverein Argo and Brut

  Full lenght - video: https://vimeo.com/482145093

  PW: thescore

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• This is where we draw the line

  a collaboration with Karin Pauer

  premiered at Donaufestival

  In this performance the gathering of the audience literally becomes a network in the art space, where new links with strings constantly generate and change various spatial constellations. The performers Karin Pauer and Arttu Palmio provide instructions, which are used to develop and discard divisions, connections, boundaries, and patterns. Based on black-and-white concept drawings by the visual artist Aldo Giannotti and his dramaturgical proposals, in combination with the ambient soundscapes of Paolo Monti, the audience is incited to conceive themselves as a choreographic community in which each constituent element is interconnected with the others and absolute autonomy cannot exist. A performative situation which takes notions of the collective body as its startingpoint.

  Choreography: Karin Pauer, Aldo Giannotti

  Visual concept: Aldo Giannotti
  Sound: Paolo Monti
  Performance: Arttu Palmio, Karin Pauer

  Objects: Peter Fritzenwallner

  Duration: 2 hours

  A coproduction by Karin Pauer and Donaufestival

  shown at

   Donaufestival Krems
   the mark, Bucharest
   fabrica de pensule Cluj
   MAMbo Museum, Bologna
   Communale, Eferding

  Vimeo-link: https://vimeo.com/356504523

  Password: theline

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• CoronaDrawings

  A series of drawings as a commentary and reaction to the current global events, realized in real time.  Published for various magazines, blogs and social media channels. E.g.: Mumok/ Vienna, White Cuib/ Cluj, Performance Homework

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• Olympia (reprise)

  ---

  Aldo Giannottis Augenmerk gilt der Beziehung von Menschen mit ihrer Umgebung sowie der physischen und symbolischen Infrastruktur des sozialen Raums. Für Olympia verwandelt der Künstler den Bildraum 07 in eine Arena für seine großformatigen Wandinterventionen.

  Die Ausstellung gewährt einen Einblick in Aldo Giannottis Gebrauch der Zeichnung als Instrument zur Ideenbildung. Dabei ist der Künstler ein scharfsinniger und kritischer Beobachter, der seine Ideen mit schwarzem Tintenroller visualisiert. In den für seine Kunst charakteristischen, auf das Wesentliche reduzierten Grafiken finden sich pointierte Formulierungen in Gestalt knapper Aussagen oder ungelöster Fragestellungen, von Aphorismen oder entwaffnenden Witzen. Voller Ironie deckt der Künstler Widersprüche sozialer Normen und Verhaltensweisen, des Konformismus und sozialer Machtgefüge auf.

  Aldo Giannotti tut dies, indem er die BesucherInnen der Ausstellung zu Mitspielenden bei seiner Olympiade macht. Durch Gebrauch und Rekontextualisierung von Inhalten und Elementen, die im Sport geläufig sind, untersucht der Künstler, wie menschliche Interaktionen mit einer kulturellen Institution auf unterschiedliche Weise inszeniert und gelenkt werden können. Im Erkunden privater, kollektiver, aber auch im weiteren Sinne nationaler sowie globaler sozialplastischer Konzepte eröffnet Aldo Giannottis Kunst neue Wege der Reflexion, in der auch die Elastizität und Veränderbarkeit des sozialen Raums erfahrbar werden.

  Photos: Pablo Chiereghin, Eva Kelety, Aldo Giannotti

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• Hall of the muses

  permanent drawing intervention in the hall of the muses of Albertina Museum

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• You and Me

  ---

  You and Me  marks the beginning of a collaboration project by Aldo Giannotti and Michikazu Matsune. You and Me is a performative work that explores the dynamic relationship between body and language, image and action, oneness and togetherness.

  Performance took place in the LLLLL exhibition room

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• Olympia

  The exhibition “Olympia” borrows its name from the ancient side on Greece’s Peloponnese penincula that hosted the original Olympic Games in classical times. Aldo Giannotti forces the legacy of this ancient sport site into the institution itself, enableing through his drawings not only the possibility of a phisycal engagement but a “take on” thematics that are driven out of sports such as competition, national representations and power structures on a global scale. Through his work the instituion becomes a stadium of possiblities, engagements and sarcastic comments – a look at our society from the individual up to the collective, national, global and universal.

   

  Aldo Giannotti has developed „Olympia” in the last couple of months and on site during his stay in Sofia. By using and re-contextualising materials and devices often found in sport arenas, such as podiums, running mates and sport items, it explores how human interactions with an institution for art can be staged and enacted differently, in ways that emphasise and disrupt the binaries of social behavior we are expected to demonstrate when entering a museum. Giannotti does this by making us all become active players in his Olympics, both in a physical and a conceptual manner.

   

  (Martina Yordonova)

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• the Sketch wall

  ---

  Eine temporäre Gestaltung des

  „artstripe“ im Wiener Büro von Accenture

   

  Beim artstripe handelt es sich um einen Ort des Gedankenaustausches. Jährlich werden in Wien lebende Gegenwartskünstler eingeladen, sich mit Accenture auseinanderzusetzen und einen Blick auf dieses Unternehmen zu werfen. Dahinter steht die Idee, dass Künstler als genaue Beobachter in besonderem Maße in der Lage sind auch Aspekte zu bemerken, die der Selbstwahrnehmung des Unternehmens mitunter entgehen. Mit dieser Ausstellungsserie wird ein Dialog auf Augenhöhe initiiert, der sonst kaum zustande käme, da die Sphären Kunst und Wirtschaft üblicherweise voneinander getrennt sind. Accenture setzt mit diesem Projekt die Tradition des Auftragswerkes fort mit der Besonderheit, dass den Künstlern keine einschränkenden inhaltlichen Vorgaben gemacht werden. Gleichzeitig sollen diese Impulse von Außen das „Out of the box“ Denken innerhalb des Büros fördern. Wie aber sieht so ein Denken ohne Scheuklappen aus? Beziehungsweise, wie sehen die Scheuklappen aus, die ein freies, kreatives Denken blockieren?

   

  Mit seiner Arbeit „The Sketch Wall“ beschäftigt sich der Künstler Aldo Giannotti unmittelbar mit den Denkprozessen, die er aus dem Selbstverständnis von Accenture und den Tätigkeitsbereichen des Unternehmens ableitet. Der Titel ist Programm insofern als es sich um eine genau komponierte Sammlung von Gedankensplittern handelt, die der Künstler als Serie von Skizzen auf der Fläche des artstripe arrangiert. Während die Zeichnung sein bevorzugtes Medium ist, bilden der Raum und die Architektur seine präferierten Motive um die einzelnen Gedanken zu visualisieren. Paradoxie ist ein zentrales Stilmittel seiner Kunst, wie sich an den einzelnen Zeichnungen ablesen lässt: die beiden Zeichnungen unter dem Titel „Alternative Thinking“ zeigen zwei Hochhäuser. Beim einen dreht sich die Tür und das Haus bleibt stabil, beim anderen dreht sich das ganze Haus und die Tür bleibt fixiert. Wie immer man es dreht und wendet, die dahinterstehenen Denkmechanismen bleiben gleich. Auch die Zeichnung „This Building Full Of People Without The Building“ ergibt wieder die Konturen eines Gebäudes, während sich die Skizzen zu „Place Of Work“ und „Place Of Relax“ nur graduell voneinander unterscheiden. Aldo Giannottis Beobachtungen sind ironisch aber nie belehrend und machen vor der eigenen Position nicht halt: Auch die Kunst bleibt nicht selten gefangen in Konventionen und Ideen sind nicht immer völlig neu.

   

  Mit „The Sketch Wall“ öffnet der manische Zeichner Aldo Giannotti sein Skizzenbuch und präsentiert Einfälle zum Verhältnis Gegenwart und Zukunft, Mensch und Maschine, analoger und digitaler Welt aber auch vom Ausstellungsraum artstripe zum Arbeitsraum Vienna Office als riesiger Notizblock. Auch wenn die vielzitierte „box“ letztlich immer eine viereckige Schachtel bleibt, so zeigt diese humorvolle Arbeit, dass ein Denken außerhalb von Routinen und Zwängen möglich und die Kunst ein gutes Mittel dafür ist.

  Project by liquid frontiers

   

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• the staircase

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• Buildings on Buildings

  ---

  Buildings on Buildings nennt sich das neue Projekt des Künstlers Aldo Giannotti. Dies beinhaltet drei bis auf weiteres permanente Interventionen im Stadtraum Wien.

  In seiner künstlerischen Praxis verwendet Giannotti Zeichnungen als Anleitung zur Erkundung sozialplastischer Konzepte. Diese werden in einem weiteren Schritt auf Widerständigkeit und Potenzial geprüft, indem sie – mittels performativer Ausführung, Installation oder skulpturaler Gestaltung – in die raue Oberfläche des Realen einbettet werden.

  Dieses Arbeitsverfahren liegt auch dem Projekt Buildings on Buildings zugrunde. Die Idee besteht darin, Zeichnungen, die räumliche Verhältnisse und Architektur zum Gegenstand haben, mit eben diesem Gegenstand in direkten Kontakt treten zu lassen. Zu diesem Zweck verwendet Giannotti Fassaden sowie kahle Seitenwände von Wohngebäuden als materielle Erscheinungsflächen für seine Zeichnungen. Sein Anliegen ist es, eine Feedbackschleife zu erzeugen zwischen dem Sujet der Zeichnung und dem Kontext, in welchen die Zeichnung eingebettet ist.

  Aus dem Zusammenspiel von großformatiger Zeichnung und urbaner Umgebung sollen »produktive Redundanzen« entstehen, deren Resonanzkörper der Stadtraum ist und deren Nachhall bei den BewohnerInnen die Reflexion über unsere Lebensform verstärkt. Der Titel Buildings on Buildings soll als Beispiel einer solchen produktiven Redundanz dienen, und zwar in der Doppelbedeutung von ‚auf Gebäuden (gemalte) Gebäude’ und ‚über Gebäude (nachdenkende) Gebäude’.

  "Flying House" produced by KÖR

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• Domenica

  ---

  site specific drawings and interventions at the italian embassy in Vienna.
  Pitch invasion in collaboration with Pablo Chiereghin
  a project by Marcello Farabegoli

   

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• Godspeed you! Architecture

  EN
  

  “The artist’s imagination is a world of potentialities that no work will succeed in realizing”. These words by Italo Calvino definitely hold true for Aldo Giannotti. Rather than with the work, indeed, he seems to be concerned with the working of ideas, with their capacity to affect and to effect – or even better: with the operativeness and actuality of possibilities. His drawings serve as instructions to explore social-architectural concepts, which are tested for resistance and potential by means of performative execution, installation or sculptural arrangement. The focus is constantly on the relationship of individuals with their surroundings as well as on the symbolic infrastructure of social space.

  In the exhibition at the STRABAG Artlounge Giannotti applies his sense of possibility to the realm of architecture in its broadest definition. Familiar architectural concepts are subjected to a reductio ad absurdum, shaken in their obviousness and literally turned upside down. In this respect, the exhibition title Godspeed You! Architecture, which is at the same time a blessing and an ironic warning, provides a vital clue to what is at stake here: May the idea of architecture be pulled back and forth between real possibilities and possible realities without getting lost completely.

  Aldo Giannotti (IT) has been living and working in Vienna since 2000. His most recent works have been shown in renowned institutions (Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Kunsthaus Graz, Albertina, MUSA) as well as in the public space (KÖR).

   

  DE

  „Die Phantasie des Künstlers ist eine Welt der Möglichkeiten, die zu verwirklichen keinem Werk je gelingen wird“. Diese Worte von Italo Calvino treffen auf Aldo Giannotti durchaus zu. Vielmehr als um das Werk scheint es ihm in der Tat um das Wirken zu gehen, um das Einwirken und Auswirken von Ideen – oder noch besser: um die Wirksamkeit und Wirklichkeit von Möglichkeiten. Seine Zeichnungen dienen als Anleitung zur Erkundung sozialplastischer Konzepte, die mittels performativer Ausführung, Installation oder skulpturaler Gestaltung auf Widerständigkeit und Potential geprüft werden. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei immer die Beziehung von Menschen mit ihrer Umgebung sowie die physische und symbolische Infrastruktur des sozialen Raums.

  Bei der Ausstellung in der STRABAG Artlounge übt sich Giannottis Möglichkeitssinn am Thema der Architektur im weitesten Sinne. Vertraute architektonische Konzepte werden ad absurdum geführt, in ihrer Selbstverständlichkeit erschüttert und buchstäblich auf den Kopf gestellt. Insofern liefert der Ausstellungstitel Godspeed You! Architecture, der zugleich als Segenswunsch und ironische Warnung zu verstehen ist, einen wichtigen Hinweis darauf, was hier auf dem Spiel steht: Möge die Idee der Architektur zwischen wirklichen Möglichkeiten und möglichen Wirklichkeiten hin- und hergezogen werden, ohne dabei ganz abhanden zu kommen.

  text by Giorgio Palma

   

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• Spatial Dispositions : Albertina

  Inviting Aldo Giannotti to conceive an intervention means viewing its location—in this case Vienna’s Albertina and its different collections, which are complexly structured for historical reasons—from completely new perspectives on the basis of his highly imaginative drawings. The artist, who was born in Genoa, Italy in 1977 and has lived in Vienna for some years now, mostly relies upon black felt-tip pen drawings reduced to concentrated outlines on A4 paper as his primary means. The drawings are documents, feasible suggestions or fictitious instruc- tions, grounded, in his research-related working and reflection processes. They capture concepts of performative-installative as well as purely intellectual approaches in a humorous, sometimes socio- and institution-critical way. The basis for his concepts and associative and intuitive pictorial solutions are literary research and conversations with people working at the Albertina, who, because of their different fields of activity, have developed different views of their workplace. Especially for those people who have worked at the Albertina for many years, or even decades, Giannotti’s “investigations” and “interviews” have marked a pause in their everyday routine and offered an opportunity for informative self-reflection. (more…)

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• The museum as a gym

  Fitness trail at the Kunsthaus Graz

  Drawings instructions

  ---

  The project The Museum as a Gym was developed by Aldo Giannotti to open up new socio-architectural perspectives for Kunsthaus Graz. Inspired by the idea of a museum of art as a mind gym as well as by the Latin phrase mens sana in corpore sano (“a sound mind in a sound body”), the artist has designed a gym-like environment within the museum building using only existing infrastructural features.

  In a series of drawings that serve as instructions, visitors of all ages are invited to experience the museum as a gym, not only for the mind, but also for the body. In line with the multi-purpose, open nature of Kunsthaus Graz, the project enables a dynamic and collaborative encounter with a museum of contemporary art as a space for public engagement. As one of the designers of Kunsthaus Graz put it, “like a human personality, a building can become more and more intriguing as we delve inside and get to know it” (Peter Cook). With this in mind, Giannotti invites the audience to engage with the institution and to conquer its space through a familiar, physical experience.

  Like a red thread running through Giannotti’s whole body of work, here again his main concern lies in the relationship of individuals with their surroundings. Indeed, there is a functional correlation between the way a space is arranged and the tendency to behave in a particular way within it. In accordance with the notion of Umwelt as developed by Baron von Uexküll*, Giannotti explores the museum space as a set of orientation marks which work as instructions for use and turn the physical, objective space into a system of significance or living environment. In order to turn a museum into a gym, it is necessary to alter those “bearers of significance” (Bedeutungsträger) that delimit the extent of actions within the museum space in such a way that the audience is tempted to do gym exercises in it. By doing so, the artist investigates the structure and functioning of the museum as a social space.

  By shifting from one significance system to another and crossing the border between them, the functional relationship with the environment, which guides the audience’s behaviour, is temporarily suspended and deactivated. This “being-held-in-suspense” between different semantic worlds lets those sets of rules, inherent to a museum or a gym, appear in their contingency and plasticity. Ultimately, by way of this disarming artifice, Giannotti is able to hint with ease and irony at those common marketing strategies which, with regard to the audience and membership development, link the museum to the gym.

  The Museum as a Gym can also be considered as a stress test, in which Kunsthaus Graz is examined for its functional capacity and social elasticity. Through an active exploration that doesn’t shy away from physical strain and personal commitment, the institution’s infrastructure opens up as its symbolic musculature. This musculature points in different directions of contraction and, thereby, suggests its potential extension. Measuring such extensibility by using the museum as a gym, the visitors can activate untapped possibilities of dealing with the museum environment and, at the same time, question the role, which a museum of contemporary art plays in the interaction between different social bodies.

  Giorgio Palma

  * For Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt, see the brief but accurate overview by Giorgio Agamben in The Open. Man and Animal (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 39–43).

   

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• italian square

  installative performance plywood, italian citizens /mp3-player, sound boxes 400 x 400 x 20 cm

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  Italian square is a sculpture and performance in the same time. The square platform installed in the exhibition space remindes of a forum, a space that represents public communication, disscussion and representation. This forum functions as a cultural stereotype of italian urban architecture, historical simbol and in this occasion – literaly beamed into the exhibition space in another country - turns upside down the roles of the native and the foreigner. The work is playing with rules and habits of a given space and is possible coexistance or parrallalities.

   

   

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• the medium is the message

  drawings instructions and activations for the Pomilio Bumm Prize (sky arte)

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• b27- spatial dispositions

  Site specific concepts and interventions at Viennacontemporary 2015  (booth 27 - projektraum Viktor Bucher)

   

  
  
  
  

  
  

   

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• Spatial Dispositions : Ar/ge kunst (bolzano)

   

  disposition: 1) a person’s inherent qualities of mind

  and character; an inclination or tendency to behave

  in a particular way; 2) the way in which something is

  placed or arranged…

   

  In 2015 ar/ge kunst celebrates thirty years since its foundation in 1985. To mark this anniversary the entire annual programme will serve as a critical reflection on the history of ar/ge kunst and on the Kunstverein as the institutional model that has characterized it since the beginning.

  Through the various practices of the participating artists, this process of self-examination will centre on the exhibition as a mode of research, production, collaboration and restitution; a space and time conceived to facilitate reciprocity and mutual influence between the exhibitions and the accompanying program of public discussions, workshops and performances.

  The first exhibition project of 2015 is entitled Spatial Dispositions and has been devised by Italian artist Aldo Giannotti (b. 1977, lives and works in Vienna). As a progressive examination of ar/ge kunst itself, Spatial Dispositions will operate as the introduction to the anniversary program. Beginning with a series of spatial observations on the planimetry and architecture of ar/ge kunst, Giannotti’s research expands into the broad field of relations that have defined and continue to shape it as an institutional space. The history and economics of ar/ge kunst, its mission statement and ambitions, its responsibilities towards members and visitors, its relationship to its cultural and political context are here translated into projects for potential installations and performances.

  Presented as a ‘programmatic’ series of ideas or concept drawings, the outcome of Giannotti’s intervention is a kind of cartography that evolves in line with the research and dialogue of all the visitors, members, staff and artists who are and have been involved in making ar/ge kunst what it is today. Drawing, as a planning tool, has always been integral to Giannotti’s artistic practice. He uses it as an occasion or medium for liberating an imaginative, anticipatory practice that gathers up countless interventions and possible ‘exhibitions’ in one and the same space. His ideas function as a commentary, critique and contribution, perpetually reconfiguring the representation of the space. As such, Spatial Dispositions provides an approach to the institution as a system that can be read and altered according to both senses of the word disposition: as a pre-existing quality, tendency or behavioural pattern on the part of the subject, and as the possible organisation, distribution and arrangement of things in space.

  In these terms, Giannotti shifts what might be called the ‘affordances’ of the institution (properties inherent in the form or design of an environment and capable of conveying the possibility of its use) beyond immediate perception; ar/ge kunst becomes an object/subject that strives to perform a multiplicity of roles and functions in response to the actual or potential contexts it chooses to engage.

  more info : argekunst.it

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