Download Catalogue - Paola Anziché

Paola Anziché
The body consumes objects, leaving traces of
its passage.
Movement, thought, ideas, transform and consume
the object, offering an indefinite, open interpretation,
a structured movement.
Movement writes spaces, marks the passage
of time, opens the mind to thought associations,
guiding us as we move on from a set of starting
conditions.
Rebecca Solnit writes that the lack of corporeity
in everyday life is an experience shared by the
majority of people, and is a consequence of the
automotive and suburban development of human
life. Walking is an act of resistance to tradition.
Walking prevailed at a time when its pace contradicted
its epoch, and this explains why most
of this walking history has to do with the First
World after the Industrial Revolution, which was
more or less when walking ceased to be part of
the flow of experience and became a conscious
choice. But, the author suggests, there may still
be counter-cultures and subcultures that will
continue walking in order to protest against the
lack of space, time and corporeity typical of the
post-industrial and postmodern world.
Paola Anziché
chronophilia
Irene Calderoni
“Only the instant of the act is alive. In it the
future being is inscribed. The instant of the act
is the only living reality in ourselves. Becoming
aware is already in the past. Brute perception of
the act is in the future being made. The present
and the future are implied in the now-present of
the act.”
Lygia Clark, Livro-obra, Rio de Janeiro, 1983
The path opens with a trap. A network of
snow-white, shiny fabric clings to the corridor
walls, climbs the walls up to the ceiling, leaving
behind it seductive silhouettes of light and
shadow. Then the net bends and becomes an obstacle,
as passers-by find themselves caught in a
tangle, forced to fight their way through, to make
Greater Torino :
themselves an opening space, and temporarily
transform the structure erected by the artist.
In Spaziando, 2010, Paola Anziché further develops
her research on the relationship between
sculpture, architecture and public, i.e. between
object, space and body. Each element exists in a
relationship with the other components, and the
work of art leads an unstable life the moment the
two meet/clash. Interaction is a central element
in Anziché’s works, we could say it is their creative
principle, and aims at exploring the mechanisms
of perception and of the construction of
self. The traditional view of the work-spectator
relationship implies and reproduces an ‘extensive’
mode of world cognition: in experiencing
the work, the two terms of this relationship are
separated, in that a clear dividing line is drawn
between subject and object. In the participatory
mode, instead, this separation gets reduced,
sometimes even erased, for if the object can no
longer be perceived as something outside the
self, in turn the separation between self and the
world dissolves, and the body becomes a ‘receptacle’
of every power that has to do with otherness.
Psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik described this
second mode of sensibly apprehending reality as
“resonant body”, a notion she originally derived
from the work of Lygia Clark. 1 The great Brazilian
artist has had a special influence on the research
of Paola Anziché, who made this reference explicit
in her work Aggrovigliamenti. Un Omaggio
a Lygia Clark, 2009, a reconstruction of Rete de
elastico, 1968. The work is a clear illustration
of Clark’s practice: overcoming the idea of the
work of art as something self-sufficient in order
to create functional objects, devices, machines
that trigger off the process of interaction with
the public. To create Aggrovigliamenti, a giant net
made of rubber bands installed in the tank spaces
of the Fondazione Merz, Anziché involved many
people, mainly Academy students, for a performance
the public actively took part in, creating an
exciting and playful event. Each person’s movement
influenced that of others, so that together
the group modified the net’s geometry.
The playful attitude and the relational dimension
of sculpture are also the key elements of
Shopping-t, 2004. For Greater Torino this work
is presented as a live action that involves the museum’s
staff and the public. The art mediators are
1.
Lars Bang Larsen, Suely Rolnik,
“A Conversation on Lygia Clark’s
Structuring the Self”,
Afterall, Spring / Summer 2007
english text