COLLISIONI

Collisions PJ

 

In supercolliders, electrons, protons, deuterons and heavy ions are pushed to high speeds until they reach a sufficient energy, that enabling the study of their interactions with matter.

The Large Hadron Collider, the biggest supercollider in the world, located on the border between Switzerland and France, everyday gives to scientists the chance to unveil some new detail of the world we live in... starting from the tiniest piece of matter we can imagine and from its reaction to the forementioned collisions.

What are, we, other than less minuscule matter (especially compared to the magnitude of cosmos) in ceaseless collision?

 

We are about to present you a side project, parallel to the concept of Collisions.

The triggering collision is the same -the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic- and this time it lies at the point when many european countries started to think about an economic reopening within their territories.

We can say that this project originates as a sign of curiosity, since that when the concept arose we were still recluded in quarantine and we were feeling the need to learn about the thoughts and the feelings of our relatives, friends, acquantainces and, by extension, of the connections of our connections.

Secondly, the project arises from the obsession of one of us for collecting images (both videos and pictures), for compulsory accumulation and sometimes for the classification of them.

And we view as obvious that all of this took origin from the will to remember, and therefore to not forget.

 

If the concept behind Collisions took form from juxtaposition, here everything starts with an image, choosen by the people involved in the project and shared with us – and obviously later with the rest of the viewers- but that wasn't enough for us, we required a written story as well, and the best way to do it, during isolation, was drawing up a survey, with questions which were not too many nor too specific, not even too technical, because our purpose was getting to the widest range of people, who hopefully lived in places far from us or who spoke other languages. That is why from the beginning we designed this project as multi-lingual (with translations in italian, in spanish and in english). We arranged the questions as “open” ones, implying that what we were actually interested in was the story, the tale.

To all the contributors we submitted personal questions, as well, such as name, age, birthplace etc etc, since giving someone a name is already recognize his/her singularity, and more the data, bigger our chance to shape the characters of a grand narrative: Art could be considered remarkable for while it tells something about oneself, at the same time everyone who witnesses it could say “It's me, it's my story” and feel it closer.

So we have drafted questions which could get to anyone, or could be denied, or rejected,  or even revised as one saw fit, in any case encouraging everyone to tell us their reasons. All of this because we believe that when -or if- you are an artist the only thing you could do is working on a common level, in an area which could or could not belong to everyone.

For this reason we have tried from the very start to “put across the message” that the project could be seen  as a huge jigsaw to be assembled, a story which scale and shape we  still ignored.

 

After the first phase, when we lied down the questions, inherent to a collective experience such as quarantine and its probable effects, we considered that not too many explanations should be given to the participants in order to not “enclose” their thoughts.

In fact, once completed the survey, the next step was writing a short text attempting to involve the participants, in which we were stressing two facts: firstly, that this projects wasn't including any judgement and everyone was free to express themselves without censorship. Secondly, the choosen image should be representative of this peculiar historical moment.

Then we sent all of this through e-mail.

From that instant, we had been waiting, until we started to get the first answers.

 

A second stage followed, the translation of the answers into the other languages we had established, and the building of the artwork itself, which is the creation of the website that shall contain this story.

 

We like to think that what brought us to the making of this work were some questions: what do other people think and how are they living through all of this? Most of all, will we be able to forget EVEN THIS?

After all, Art is always a question, and this artwork is neither perfect nor finished.

While many were looking outside, through windows, through Tvs, through the internet, assuming that everyone was recluded, we, on the contrary, were interested in looking inside, in learning what the others were experiencing.

If this were a painting, it would resemble Night Windows by Edward Hopper, with that suspendend atmosphere, and with that distant look peering through the windows: that's why we like to imagine that the required images, choosen by the participants, are actually the windows of a large building, lightened up by their impressions, by their stories, and wherein we look.

 

In order to represent all of this, we have choosen the medium of archive. In our world, marked by the surplus of pictures and more, the database has become an artistic-cultural practic linked to the memory, or to the loss of it. A practic intended to reconsider the traces of our past, to reactivate processes and topics more bonded to Art than to the power establishment.

 

“We ourselves are a Jiigsaw made by dead. You have got the eyes of a great-great-grandfather you have never known, you have got the mouth of a great aunt everyone has forgotten. We are made by all the dead who stand behind us and who we have forgotten.”

Christian Boltanski

 

These are words written by one of the greatest living artists, who often recurrs to the archive as a medium for his artworks. The archive is then for us the right manner to include  social, psychological and identitary issues, that surely produce and will produce new narratives and then a  greater understanding of our present and future.

 

Given that we were in quarantine while all of this were taking form, from our point of view it was obvoius that the right channel for the creation of this work was internet, accessible to anyone and from anywhere.

 

Then we invite you to make history.