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Dal Sottosuolo

(english version coming soon)

Nel pavimento dello spazio espositivo viene scavata una buca dove viene collocato un monitor con lo schermo rivolto verso l’alto.[read]Il video riprende un movimento ossessivo e tendenzialmente infinito: una donna si immerge e riemerge dall’acqua con un movimento continuo, regolato dal ritmo del respiro. Sovvertendo le consuete convenzioni visive e spaziali, la visione dall’alto verso il basso, rovesciata rispetto a quella orizzontale, è coerente con la ripresa dell’azione anch’essa zenitale. Questo video è lo stesso che, insieme ad altri elementi sarà presente in altre installazioni di questo periodo, Egitto Egitto!, Sans Mot Dire: un elemento linguistico ricorrente che in contesti diversi genera ogni volta ulteriori significati.[/read]

Dal Sottosuolo. VideoInstallation, Künstlerhaus, Hamburg, 1979 [PE0010]

Sketches

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Egitto
Egitto!

Installazione-performance in collaborazione con Daniela Cristadoro.
La performance si svolge in due spazi distinti – un ambiente situato a piano terra e il cortile ad esso antistante – e in due fasi successive, ma in stretta relazione tra loro.[read]Un telone traslucido posto sulla finestra funge da precario diaframma tra interno ed esterno: su di esso viene proiettato un filmato. La cinepresa collocata davanti alla finestra aveva ripreso una coppia che accennava passi di danza; durante la performance, attraverso il filmato proiettato sul telone traslucido, chi assiste diventa testimone di un continuo rovesciamento di termini. Un rovesciamento che avviene nel rapporto tra rappresentazione dell’azione nel filmato e azione reale durante performance. Il filmato non rappresenta in realtà che se stesso e la cercata coincidenza tra rappresentazione e realtà istituisce un paradossale conflitto in cui i due termini si inseguono e si confondono all’infinito.
Come in alcuni precedenti lavori, anche in questa installazione-performance i filmati realizzati vengono proiettati negli stessi spazi in cui sono state effettuate le riprese. Più proiettori saranno posti all’interno e all’esterno dell’ambiente: uno di essi invierà le immagini ruotando sulla stessa base mobile su cui era stata precedentemente collocata la cinepresa che, sempre dal medesimo punto, aveva indagato circolarmente lo spazio e le azioni dei performers. Lo schermo non è più un elemento fisso, ma ruota circolarmente lungo l’ambiente: attraverso un gioco di rimandi e simulazione tra immagini reali e immagini virtuali s’innesca una tensione mai risolta tra coincidenza e sdoppiamento.
L’entrata del suono – partitura sonora di Ferruccio Ascari ed elaborazioni su nastro magnetico di brani tratti da J.Strauss e Ravel – costituisce una sorta di irruzione tra gli altri elementi della performance: come già le immagini anche il suono riprodotto dai magnetofoni, tenderà a stabilire con le parole, i rumori e la musica direttamente prodotta durante la performance, un rapporto all’insegna dell’inganno, sempre sul punto di ricavarsi all’interno dell’operazione una propria autonoma presenza.[/read]

Egitto Egitto!. Site specific installation, performance. Super 8 movie, slides, various objects, soundtrack on magnetic tape, Sixto/Notes, Milan, 1979 [PE0002]

 

[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/220934514″ align=”center”]

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79

Dispositivi

(english version coming soon)

Dispositivi incontrollati, neutralizzantesi a vicenda, dispositivi insicuri, sovraeccitati, allarmati, dispositivi funzionanti in un insieme macchina che non tollera feed-back, in cui l’autocorrezione cessa di operare.[read]Sequenze di immagini, flussi di suoni, di luce, di fonemi che vengono prodotti e dispersi da dispositivi non preposti al controllo della loro circolazione in un sistema, ma alla loro sregolazione al di la di esso.
Una macchina “cinema” (Kinēma, movimento) che non produce appunto movimento secondo uno statuto e che si muove a sua volta per ingranaggi incompatibili, funzionanti per discontinuità. Una macchina che non è possibile mettere in moto perché già mossa nella fuga lontano dalla stabilità dinamica dell’equilibrio.
Filmati prodotti in un luogo, l’Out-off, e non rappresentabili in un altrove simmetrico, nella linearità e nell’opposizione bipolare di proiettore-schermo rievocante la “realtà” attraverso il suo simulacro, ma ‘ripresentabili’ nell’attraversamento proprio di quei confini, di quelle pareti che ne sono oggetto. Al di là di un gioco di ri/produzione, i dispositivi della macchina producono: non opposizioni, ma connessioni asimmetriche di significanza, dissolvenze delle presenze oggettuali nella tra(s)parenza stessa delle immagini.
Ferruccio Ascari[/read]

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Vibractions

In february 1979 an experimental center for visual arts called Sixto/Notes opened in Milan, and precisely in a street called S. Sisto. The purpose of its founders[read]—Ferruccio Ascari, Luisa Cividin, Daniela Cristadoro, and Roberto Taroini—was to follow two lines at once: the creation of an archive of film documents, and the production of an exhibition program of installations and performances able to express the artistic climate in Italy, Europe and United States at that time.
The main focus of the center was on experiences characterized by an intercontamination of languages aimed at re-defining the field of art, its boundaries and trends. This is the context in which “Untitled,” a sound installation and performance by Ferruccio Ascari, would be read: this work was conceived and created within a program of sound installations organized by the center, which included site-specific works by Lanfranco Baldi, Cioni Carpi, Giuseppe Chiari, John Duncan, Walter Marchetti, Gianni Emilio Simonetti, and Roberto Taroni, along with contributions by representatives of the most radical researches of those years: Ant Farm, BDR Ensemble, Nancy Buchanan, Chris Burden, Dal Bosco-Varesco, Guy de Contet, Douglas Huebler, Layurel Klick, Laymen Stifled, Paul Mc Carthy, Fredrick Nilsen, Barbara Smith, and Demetrio Stratos.
“Untitled” was an emblematic example of a research common at that time in which visual and sound elements were considered as indissolubly bound together, in an analysis which started from a deep reflection upon the categories of time and space in art. The paradoxical purpose of “Untitled” was to measure the architectural space by the use of sound, or even better, to find a sound equivalent of the architectural space; to walk through it in order to catch its specific volumetric, dimensional, visual, and acoustic qualities; to find the law by which it was governed and to establish a relation with the subject walking through it; and finally, to find a way of making the space respond to sound impulses until its own Sound was discovered, “the uniqueness and unrepeatability of its resounding in relation to what occurs within it”—as Ferruccio Ascari wrote in a presentation text of this work.
“Untitled” was subsequently reproposed in different sites, the eighteenth-century chapel of the University College of Pavia (1979) and the theatre Aut/Off in Milan (1980): on these occasions, the work was presented under the new titles of “Vibractions I” and “Vibractions II” and produced very different results not only at a sound level. The spatial qualities of each place (dimensions, volumes, architectural typology) were reproduced by a network of harmonic strings running through the floor, the walls, and the ceiling of the room: the strings were anchored at their ends to metal frustums of cones which served as resonance boxes. The sound equipment–designed and realized following mathematical proportions deduced by the environment’s volumetric ratios—became the instrument used to investigate the acoustic specificity of each space, to seize its innermost identity, or, in Ascari’s words, to “find out its own sound” and therefore to disclose its essence. The “epiphany” was committed to the moment of the performance, during which the environment/instrument was “played” by a variable number of instrumentalists/agents: by the use of plectrums, violin bows, and hammers, all of them made the harmonic strings vibrate according to a score that was also mathematically deduced by the volumetric ratios of the space.
Drops of water fell regularly from a cruet hanging from the ceiling onto a large iron disc anchored to a tripod: their sound, amplified through a microphone, punctuated the duration of the event. A looped video reproducing the environment while walked through by the agents/instrumentalists was projected onto the environment itself: the projector placed on a rotating base followed optically the path of the instrumentalists.
“Untitled” was composed of three interconnected levels—installation, performance and film. In the installation, the harmonic strings running throughout the walls were conceptually determined as “visible” sounds even before they were put in vibration. In the performance, the action exercised on the strings was an act of “dis/in/canto,” an Italian word which etymologically means exactly “something producing vibrations”: by resounding and lowering, the vibrations originated kind of an immaterial motion in the space and turned into “acoustic images,” while the environment became an instrument entirely run through by harmonic strings.
The video reproducing the environment and projected onto the environment itself gave shape to a sort of visual whirl, where projection and action became indefinitely knotted and untied, in a continuous relationship of illusion/disillusion.
Of this work, so conceptually and visually tied to the radical investigations of that time, only part of the equipment is left, along with a few meagre notes, a certain number of pictures, and a sound recording.
More than thirty years later, in 2012, Ferruccio Ascari will refer to this 1978 work in a recent series of environmental installations among which Vibractions 2012 and Casa Anatta [Non Io].[/read]

“Audio Works” Poster, Sixto notes, Milano, 1978

Vibractions II, installazione sonora, performance, Teatro OutOff, Milano, 1980 [PE0001]

Vibractions I, sound installation, performance, Chapel of the University College Cairoli, Pavia, 1979

Untitled, sound installation, performance, Sixto Notes, Milano 1978

Sketches

Project clipboard

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[vc_video link=”https://vimeo.com/117893518″]

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Mano
Armonica

Music score written on the hand fingers—executed for the first time in Milan in 1978 as part of the installation/performance Vibractions, versions of this work were presented through 2012 in a series of environmental and sound installations among which Vibractions 2012 and Casa Anatta [Non Io].

Mano Armonica. 25 Photographic Prints, 12.6 x 17.7 cm each, 1978 [FT0002d]

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Porta
Solare

(english version coming soon)

Porta Solare, che nella realtà avrebbe dovuto essere di dimensioni imponenti, è stata concepita per essere collocata in un luogo deserto[read]e di dimensioni e altezza tali da essere visibile anche da molto lontano. Nelle intenzioni dell’artista si sarebbe trattato di una soglia, un segno che indicava un confine immaginario tra due territori in apparenza indistinguibili. Il progetto prevedeva inoltre che la porta emettesse, grazie a un congegno ad energia solare collocato al suo interno, un suono continuo in relazione all’intensità della luce: un sibilo sottile alle prime luci dell’alba avrebbe raggiunto l’apice allo zenit per poi digradare lentamente in relazione allo scorrere delle ore sino al silenzio notturno.[/read]

Porta Solare. Project of copper sound sculpture, 1977 [S0013]

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Tra Guardare
e Vedere

(english version coming soon)

‘Tra Guardare e Vedere’ è la prima personale di Ferruccio Ascari allora ventiquattrenne. Il titolo della mostra indica, già da allora, un’attitudine analitica che rimarrà una costante della sua ricerca.[read]Rossana Bossaglia, che presentò la mostra, parlava di “allegoria, nella quale il pubblico è chiamato a intervenire per cogliere, attraverso una serie di gesti… il senso della segregazione dell’opera d’arte. Nel percorso, i punti più rappresentativi (il quadro visto attraverso una serie di sportellini, le cui chiavi sono anche misteriosamente inservibili; il quadro nascosto dai veli che vanno lacerati; il piccolo quadro cui si giunge attraverso una perentoria indicazione direzionale costituita dalla striscia nera) tendono a risolversi come simboli, a operazione compiuta: cioè a rimanere come esempi dell’approccio, avvenuto o no.”[/read]

Tra Guardare a Vedere. Site specific installation, College Cairoli, Pavia, 1973 [S0016]

Tra Guardare a Vedere. Original poster of the exhibition, 1973

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Tra Guardare a Vedere. Photocopies from the publication made as an accompaniment to the exhibition visit, 1973

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Ex voto

Ex-voto 1, Ex-voto 2, Ex-voto 3, the three works located in the church of San Bernardino alle Ossa in the context of the personal exhibition of Ferruccio Ascari “Silenzio”, recall the authentic ex-voto offerings covering the walls in front of the ossuary. Here, the intentional choice of the artist has been to integrate these “soft voiced” works in continuity with this “special” place.[read]This also permitted to avoid any overlap with the mood coming from this place. The three works intertwine a dialogue with the authentic ex-votos, thus suggesting to think about the likeness, but also on the difference, between the two: apart from a certain formal reference with those artifacts, which don’t pretend to be anything else than signs of devotion for some received blessing, these three works are situated in a different horizon, that of art as an interrogation, as the search for a sense and also as creation of a space further than that of the daily existence.[/read]

Ex Voto I. Perforated alcantara paper, approx. 40×48 cm, 2017 
Ex Voto II. Plate of perforated graphite, approx. 17×28 cm, 2017 
Ex Voto III. Foil of perforated rubber, approx. 38×58 cm, 2017 

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Luogo
Presunto

The exhibition “Silenzio” (Silence) started with this installation consisting in a series of spindly iron-rod structures and located at the center of the opencast space of the cloister of the Basilica of San Simpliciano. This exhibition has been conceived by the artist as a path twisting in the center of Milan and comprehending two other places of spirituality, that is the rectory church of San Raffaele and the chapel of San Bernardino alle Ossa.[read]The elements of the installation, wiry and fragile architectures, were placed in the space with no apparent order, simply seeming to respond to a desire to spread out: “Archetypical buildings that could almost fly away from one moment to the next. A house between land and sky, a suspended shelter that avoids contact, perhaps protecting us even more than a sturdy construction standing solidly on the ground”, as the artist described his work. The title, “Luogo presunto” (Suspected Place), a quote from Borges, in fact refers to an imaginary place whose existence is uncertain, a place with the same texture as a mirage or a dream.[/read]

Luogo presunto. Environmental installation, iron, variable dimensions, 2017

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Silenzio
Amen
Logos

Silenzio, Amen and Logos are the three works placed in the central nave of the rectory church of San Raffaele, in Milan, in the context of the personal exhibit “Silenzio” (1) of Ferruccio Ascari articulated simultaneously in other locations in town, which are extraordinary in terms of historical and artistic value : the small cloister of the Basilica of San Simpliciano, where the installation Luogo Presunto, was located, and San Bernardino alle Ossa, with Ex Voto I, II, III e Rumore.

[read] Silenzio (Silence) – a large linen sheet hung at the start of the nave, bearing this word embroidered in gold in its center – was the first work that you encountered when entering the church of San Raffaele. Speaking of this work, Ferruccio Ascari stated: “More than the title of the work, Silenzio is the work. The title and the work are one. Silence says what it means, but not in a tautological way. My intention was to amplify the warning, making it resound inside the spectator, as I mentioned earlier. I liked the idea of the writing being small and at the center of a large neutral field where it could reverberate…”.

On high, suspended above the steps leading up to the altar, was collocated the work Amen, a tryptic whose entire surface was covered by the word “amen” in its original language, that is Hebrew. This decision to work with the word, with the written word rather than the image, alludes to the “unrepresentable” nature of the divine. The technique of the fresco mounted on canvas that characterizes Ascari’s painted is combined with a golden background: a clear throwback to Italian art of the thirteenth century, but also to Byzantine icons and their theological as well as artistic significance. As we will see in Mantra, the artist’s formal choices are in themselves a declaration of intent: the drastic reduction of figural elements, the golden background, transform this work into an object of meditation, in a contemporaneous way, with an implicit reference to – by way of Malevich’s Black Square – the icon, to its theological meaning other than artistic, to its being a “presence” and not only a simple representation.
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Logos, a wooden egg covered with golden leaves, has been placed by the artist inside the ciborium, above the altar, in the holiest of places in the church. This work represented the final point of a vanishing point that started with Silenzio and continued with Amen: an ascensional path not only in visual terms, but also in a more intimate sense of whom these works represent the stages. With regard to this work, the artist stated: “I usually start to think of a title when I’ve finished a work, but in this case the word came first, and it’s a word that comes from a memory: ‘In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…’ (John,1:1-5). John continues: ‘All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men…’. The idea of the golden egg came to me first and foremost from those words. I thought of the egg as a symbol of the most important Christian holy occasion, the Resurrection. But not only in those terms. The egg came to me, of course, as a ‘rebirth’, but before that, I thought of it as a ‘birth’, the birth of everything, as a cosmogonic egg”.
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(1) With regard to this exhibition, in an interview given in that occasion Ferruccio Ascari declared: “The relationship between the work and the space in which it is placed has always been a central element of my work, and this since the first environmental installations that I realized from the mid ’70s onwards: in many of these works the location represents a fundamental aspect of the work. All the more in this case. Here we are not dealing with simple exhibition spaces, but with places that for me represent the occasion for a special interior path other than esthetical. For the visitor this path should transform in an experience… The title (of the exhibition, editor’s note), Silence, implies a particular condition, a ‘being ready to listen’. Without silence, things cannot speak to our hearts; they cannot reveal their hidden significance. I began systematically practicing silence in India where I went to study for several years. The practice is known as ‘mauna’ in India, and it is an important element in self-awareness paths. And silence is a practice found in all great traditions…”.

[/read]

Silenzio. Linen sheet and gold, approx. 140×140 cm, 2017 [Church of San Raffaele, Milano]

Amen. Fresco transferred to canvas, 90×40 cm, 2017 [Church of San Raffaele, Milano]

Logos. Wooden egg covered with golden leaves, approx. 10x10x20 cm, 2017 [Church of San Raffaele, Milano]