Double show by Friedrich Andreoni and Roberto Casti

curated by Caterina Angelucci and Andrea Elia Zanini

KA32, Berlin

November 18-30, 2023

Through sound installations, performances, and works on paper, the artists explore the need to reach a material or immaterial place that allows one to abstract from the void and emptiness of life, a refuge from the stress and pressures imposed by the social context of the metropolis.

Roberto Casti presents a new series of works titled Aleph, paying homage to the eponymous story of Jorge Luis Borges.

For the realization of these works, the artist collected recordings of himself or friends who traveled to distant countries (New York, Sardinia, Tokyo, Thailand). The tracks were slowed down to create a subdued background noise, where every spatial and temporal data is screened. The displays are defined by the artist as non-objects, devices that inhabit the margins of any domestic or commercial environment: junction boxes, drainage pipes, or ventilation ducts. Functional but concealed instruments that usually serve to hide “passages,” be they of energy, air, or information. Using these devices as anomalous resonators, Casti highlights what dwells at the edges of anthropic space, reinterpreting the connections that link the living space to the outside, the micro to the macro, the individual to the planet in which they live.

This exercise of empathy is made evident also by the presence of a computer through which, throughout the duration of the exhibition, the public can contribute to a list of questions reflecting on their position in the world and in their historical time. The list, started in the weeks leading up to the
exhibition, is considered the graphic apparatus of a performance titled Aleph (Milan-Berlin), which will be presented on the opening day with the presence and voice of Dalia Maini. The text/work, in continuous growth, is a device of spatiotemporal awareness, an attempt at impossible empathy that shifts attention from the individual to the collective, assuming a reversal of one’s existential condition linked to their personal sphere.

Roberto Casti thanks Helena Bocca Ozino and Francesco Simbola for the recordings made in Tokyo and Thailand; Dalia Maini for her participation in the opening performance; all the friends who
contributed with their questions to the Aleph (Milan-Berlin) project.