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TABULA RASA: 111 days on a long table Denis Isaia, in conversation with Raqs Media Collective |
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Tabula Rasa – blank slate – a situation awaiting a presence, an act or an inscription – a space of potency, ripe with anticipation, ready for imminence. Tabula Rasa is a special project of Manifesta 7 within The Rest of Now. It is intended to animate a series of interactions and a network of conversations with the people of Bolzano / Bozen and the broader region. The project will be realized over 111 days on a long, clean table – a “blank slate” – in the empty space of Room 124 in the ex-Alumix building. It consists of a series of events embodying many modes of gathering, talking, sharing, viewing and making things together. The only condition is that each event must start in an empty room, on a clean table. The events featured in Tabula Rasa include table-top exhibitions and performances, music, dance, theatre, film, talks, seminars, workshops, demonstrations, experiments, book releases, archival presentations, gardening and the occasional self-organised banquet. The long table, or Tabula Rasa, in Room 124, was designed by Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Müller. Radio Tandem FM98.4, Bolzano / Bozen, is media partner of the Tabula Rasa project. Denis Isaia is an independent curator based in Bolzano / Bozen. He is the curatorial assistant to Raqs Media Collective for The Rest of Now. Highlights of Tabula Rasa: Alumix / Ex-Alumix / next Alumix: What’s the future of the building?
Thoughts on conservation, contemporary cities and public needs. With: David Adjaye, Nikolaus Hirsch, Michel Müller, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Reinhard Kropf, Siv Helene Stangeland.
The Miracle Metal – Memories of Aluminium
The Alumix Factory is closely connected with the history of Aluminium production in Italy. Jeffrey Schnapp explores the political and cultural resonances of Aluminium, which was once considered to be the miracle metal of modern Italy.
The Pirate as Archivist – Tools and Materials
This workshop is an initiative against an art form that has become proprietary. Today, the dream of cinema no longer consists purely of images, but of the abstract rights that it claims to these images: infinite intellectual properties and their universal protection. In consequence, the single, most interesting tendency in cinema today – and the only one that holds a future – is piracy: the digital reproduction and redistribution of the entire history of cinema. It is organised spontaneously and on a world-wide level. This workshop is not only an attempt to increase the number and quality of movies in circulation, but also to increase the amount and quality of self-esteem among the individuals and organisations participating in various ways in this circulation.
In the Greenhouse
Informal Tabula Rasa
Eugenio Tibaldi, an artist based in Naples, is interested in the practice, common in Southern Italy, of “regularising” informal and illegal constructions by drawing up retrospective architectural plans. This practice could be considered a form of “para-design,” or “after-architecture.” In Informal Tabula Rasa, Tibaldi invites the people working in the ex-Alumix factory during the exhibition – guards, ushers, guides and ticket staff – to build a construction parallel to the long table in Room 124, using unwanted objects and materials from their homes. This construction is then rendered as a drawing, as a collective exercise in “after-architecture”. The drawing is exhibited along with the improvised, built form.
Guestbook: Mind-mapping The Rest of Now
Open Anonymous Society (OAS) is a temporary, heterogeneous constellation of artists based in Berlin. It regards the responses of ordinary visitors to art events, usually private and unexpressed, as the “residue” of contemporary art exhibitions. Guestbook: Mind-mapping The Rest of Now will solicit responses from visitors to The Rest of Now in the form of annotations, comments, thoughts, drawings and diagrams, which will be displayed on a “Mind Map” – a chart of conceptual links and associated interpretations – to be exhibited in Room 124. Radio Symphony: listening to global radio with local short-wave enthusiasts
A “radio symphony” is an accidental orchestral form created by simultaneously tuning-in to several radio stations. Twenty-four transistor radios will be arranged on the table, each tuned by a local, short-wave radio enthusiast, to the frequency of a radio station somewhere in the world. A fresh list of stations will be drawn up for each of the five days of the Radio Symphony event. The experience of walking along the table will be like listening to the turning dial of a giant radio. The visitor will be immersed in a constantly changing concert of sounds, voices, languages, music, static and radio-silence from all around the globe. Industrial Ballads: an archive of abandoned industrial buildings
By Botto e Bruno, artists, Turin Commodore 64 slam
Organisation and sound installation by Enrico Spanu, Bolzano / Bozen Summer Drafts, by Paolo Plotegher, Bolzano / Bozen and London, in collaboration with Lungomare, Bolzano / Bozen
Public presentation of the outcome of the Summer Drafts project, a series of workshop and intercultural events exploring informal meeting spaces and forms of sociality which are transversal to the different cultural identities of the local territory. Milena Kosec, Career Contemporary artist, Ljubljana
The artist talks with randomly chosen visitors on a free subject, however, the discussion usually focuses on the person’s life activities. Interpretation Laboratory I
By Monipodio, a cartoonists’ collective, Bolzano / Bozen
Interpretation Laboratory II
How to stabilize a wobbly table, or the Bolzano Theorem
Building Instruments: The Bolzano / Bozen Sessions
Espen Sommer Eide, an artist, musician and philosopher based in Bergen, has designed a method for the collective building of improvised instruments for electronic music, using gramophone records, turntables, bits of amplifiers, sub-woofers, etc. The process of making the instruments continues into the making of the music itself. In The Bolzano / Bozen Sessions, Sommer Eide teams up with friends, acoustic hobbyists and local electronic music enthusiasts to build instruments and make music on, and around, the long table. Floating Territories: Book Presentation
Presentation of a book edited by Nico Dockx, Germana Jaulin and Chiara Parisi based on a logbook of conversations between Nico Dockx, Yona Friedman, Helena Sidiropoulos and Jochem Vanden Ecker, arising from their work on the Floating Territories project. Building Transmissions: Sound Performance
A live sound performance by Kris Delacourt, Nico Dockx and Krist Torfs, and the release of a 12” vinyl record connected to the TEUFELSgroup installation in The Rest of Now. Rosarot und Himmelblau I
Object collections from Bolzano / Bozen, curated by Lisa Trockner, Bolzano / Bozen
Dictionary of War
Dictionary of War è una piattaforma di collaborazione che promuove la discussione legata al concetto di guerra a cui partecipano scienziati, artisti, teorici e attivisti. Lo scopo è evidenziare dei concetti chiave che giocano un ruolo significativo nelle discussioni attuali sulla guerra, oltre a quelli che finora non sono stati considerati o non sono ancora stati creati. In due anni di lavoro e cinque edizioni a Francoforte, Monaco, Graz, Berlino e Novi Sad sono stati sviluppati 125 progetti. La sesta edizione, sviluppata durante Manifesta 7, propone una sintesi dei concetti delle edizioni precedenti e un numero di elaborati ex-novo, accompagnata dalle relative presentazioni. (www.dictionaryofwar.org)
Art Magazines: What Now? Residual Hopes: Table-Top Theatre Weekend
Theatre performances on the table, curated by Il Funambolo, cultural producers, Trento Table-Top Music Weekend
Music performances on the table, curated by Andrea Polato, Bolzano / Bozen
Free Ads Table-Top Poetry Weekend
Poetry slam-and-performance on the table.
TV Effects on Super 8
This exhibition celebrates the art of creating animated graphic transitions (popularly called ‘TV Effects’) on Super 8 film, almost a lost art. Sara Rossi, a filmmaker and artist, presents her personal collection of Super 8 Effects in a specially curated projection program. v Handheld Objects
An exhibition of handheld wooden objects by Davide De Paoli, Bolzano / Bozen Rosarot und Himmelblau II
Sterbebildchen: the Luis Müller collection of remembrance cards, curated by Lisa Trockner Bolzano / Bozen |
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