Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Biennale de Paris, a parallel, underground and outlaw world of art
The Biennale de Paris was launched in 1959 by Andre Malraux with the purpose of creating a meeting place for those who would define the art of the future. After a hiatus of several years, the Biennale was relaunched in 2000. Since then it has not ceased in its efforts to unravel art from institutions. The Biennale de Paris rejects the use of art objects, which are too alienated by the market. It does not confine itself to a framework that would hinder its present actions or its political, economic and ideological evolution. By acting upon everyday life and its unfolding realities, the biennale seeks to redefine art by using criteria which rejects the idea of the artist as the sole protagonist in his work. Simply stated, the Biennale de Paris refuses to participate in today's conventional art world. By mixing up genres, exploiting porous frontiers and practicing the redistribution of roles, the Biennale de Paris allows art to appear precisely where it's not expected.
Calendar of lectures, discussions, operations
Download the pressbook [pdf 8 Mb]
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Monday, September 19, 2011
X Locus: Cryptoporticus (Abluvion)-final / Jennifer Scappettone et alii. 2011
First installed inside the tract of Trajan's aqueduct that passes below the cryptoporticus or basement of the American Academy in Rome in May 2011, this sound poem draws excerpts of visual/textual scores by Jennifer Scappettone performed live by the Difforme Ensemble (Marco Ariano (percussion and electronics), Renato Ciunfrini (sampler, contrabass clarinet, voice) and Roberto Fega (electronics), and vocals by Jennifer Scappettone, Ersela Kripa, and Karen Yasinsky) together with field recordings in Roman aqueducts (the Acqua Traiana, Acqua Marcia, and Acqua Claudia), discussions with community members about the vagaries of monumental Roman waterworks, readings from outmoded chronicles of Roman history, and decodings of the inscriptions to the underworld hovering in the courtyard above the Academy basement so as to plunge sonically into the infrastructure of empire and collapse.
"X Locus: Cryptoporticus (Abluvion)" animates the hollows beneath our feet. Choral utterances emerge from a blighted underground—montages of voices salvaged from the community and from pastoral poetry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice—to sound the metamorphosing role of now-defunct aqueducts in feeding the city, spurring deviant behaviors and sieges of empire.
In the May 2011 installation, environmental media projections by Stephen Mueller and Ersela Kripa (AGENCY Architecture) and a conversant sculpted soundtrack of fountains and birdsong by Paul Rudy reliquefied the corridor that hosts a tract of the 1,902-year-old aqueduct while from a hole in the floor—opening onto the lit-up channel itself—Scappettone’s poem drew listeners into cycles of use, abuse, and disuse of infrastructure for the public good, portents for our postpastoral and near-apocalyptic moment.
Jennifer Scappettone would like to thank the artists, scholars, and staff of the American Academy in Rome for their voices in the work. Special thanks to Mona Talbott and the Rome Sustainable Food Project, Gianni Ponti and Roma Sotterranea, Ted and Michael O’Neill, Andrew Riggsby, and Lila Yawn.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Monday, September 12, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
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