MILIARDI DI DETRITI CI SEPARANO DALLA NOSTRA OMBRA

Exhibition/performative project

with a text by Treti Galaxie

Performance with Chiara De Marchis Garofalo, Michela Depetris, Marco Rossi and Edith Couccurda

Bastione, Villa Rey, Turin

April 09-16, 2022

“Miliardi di detriti ci separano dalla nostra ombra” (Billions of debris separate us from our shadow) is a project initially conceived by Roberto Casti for the Bastione San Maurizio, the first headquarters of the Bastione collective and belonging to the perimeter walls of the Cavallerizza Reale in Turin – a complex emptied in 2019 following a fire and the renewed interest of the municipality in the clearing of self-managed spaces.

The project that is being re-proposed today for the rooms of Villa Rey, the new headquarters of the association, is a variant of the initial work, and is therefore born – or completed – through a failure. It is determined thanks to the indeterminacy of a moment – exactly this moment – in which ruins of the past, cognitive impossibilities of the present and fears of the future converge.

Inside the two main rooms of Villa Rey sounds, movements and objects coexist. The speakers reproduce fired recordings dating back to 2019, period in which the artist decided to extrapolate sounds and noises from the surrounding area outside the walls of Bastione San Maurizio. On the floor there are scraps from inside it: dust, dirt, rubble and ash that the collective had carefully preserved before the structure was cleared. The debris are mixed with objects belonging to three performers, who – together with a little girl – move between the rooms, interacting with the testimonies of the past. In the largest room, an open trapdoor highlights a connection with an inaccessible place, an unknown “elsewhere”.

Ciò che abbiamo dimenticato è ancora qui (Bastione)

Series of four photos, print on paper, various debris, wood frames, glass

30×40 cm

2022

On the walls there are four photos – entitled “What we have forgotten is still here” – which preserve, in the gap between the image and the glass, the dust and scraps recovered from the Bastione. The external surface of these photographs will be affected by new dust which will slowly settle on the glass, generating an additional layer.