roccedimenti. fatte, non finite, le nature contemporanee

Roccedimenti. fatte, non finite, le nature contemporanee.
(Rocksedures. Done, not finished, the contemporary natures)

Curated by Gianluca D’Incà Levis, in collaboration with Guido Bartorelli
July the 6^th / September the 8^th, 2013
Nuovo Spazio di Casso

Opening Saturday, July the 6^th, at 6 pm

#roccedimenti 

(#rocksedures)

Artists: francesco ardini, pierpaolo febbo, jean-baptiste camille corot, gianni de val, aron demetz, andrea grotto, alessandro pagani, emmanuele panzarini, mario tomè, alessandro roma, cosimo terlizzi, lucia veronesi, davide zucco.

here a review o of the exhibit published on artribune (ITA)

here a review of the exhibit published on news-art (ITA)

here  the video of Roccedimenti’s opening

roccedimenti, le nature contemporanee (fatte, non finite) – concept

Some themes linked with the Dolomites-UNESCO, and the thematic line summarized in the climbing attitudes, are some of the food for thought that have given birth to this exhibit. Roccedimenti is an exhibit on contemporary nature. Let it not be said that are the rocks the ones inhabiting the minds, since, simultaneously, the opposite is true as well. Open minds seep through every nature, as compact as it might be. Truthfully, inhabiting isn’t an adequate term: exploration is never domestic, it’s not rest, its own, in the rock. In this relationship, both rocks and minds are mobile, where mobile means impulse of opening, and not fleeting action. Rather, procedure and, even, subsidence (procedimento-cedimento), as an origin, or as a finishing line. The never ending task of the contemporary, intended as poetic-analytic category, as location of the conceptual drive, and not as temporal adjective, rather as mountaineering, we could say, is that of researching the exploration, which we recognize as vertical practice, hence, climbing attitudes.

Quest for grassroots definitions, rather than eventual ones, chiselled and still in their decoration. What is done isn’t finished, and what can be finished isn’t really done, says Baudelaire talking about Corot, and in broader terms about the act of searching through art. Where “done” is meant profoundly, in the tension of research, of reality, of nature, which is never limitation (Corot can’t imitate). Herein lies the difference, then, and the primacy, of the impulse over the order. The moral audacity is typical of every contemporary artist. Where with “contemporary” we mean, ultimately, ultra-contemporary, since the term “contemporary”, temporally speaking, is already almost in the past, while the drive is tension towards the future, urgency in the wake of the lazy fortuity of the present. Contemporary doesn’t, indeed, mean talking about the present time, or telling the time, but rather flinging oneself forward, and re-launching forward the meaning as well, hurling it into the beyond. The exact opposite, then, of what one often means with that word. The primacy, we were saying, of impulse over other, of novelty over decrepitude, of research over narrative. Telling tales isn’t necessary, only looking for them is. The folklore, the tale, the myth, alone are naked, epiphanies of physiologies, magical lanterns. They are recovery techniques, archaeological digs. Underground construction sites, not open-pit buildings. Speleology, not mountaineering. A contemporary artwork isn’t always, necessarily, a work of genius, asks a skeptic? But doesn’t the spirit, all things considered correspond – on the good frequencies – to the genius? (a work of soul, is a work of genius – again, Baudelaire). Without spirit, there can be a tale – even if yawn-worthy – but not research – and not real tension: the raw tension isn’t yet ever scripted. Of the genius, what matters is the spirit, and not the other way round. And the contemporary, always, is research, tension, spirit. It is, always, this aptitude, the result of the necessity to avoid conformity, to re-appear, to re-live, re-think, re-view. To go beyond the chiché. And if the mountain, for example,  were exclusively the marten or the sublime,  it would be poor, and static, in the already large gallery of the accomplished stereotyped images. But, instead, one looks for it still, the mountain, the nature of the mountain, it is looked for by some artists, as it is searched, for instance, in some alpine expeditions in China, or in the Thien Shan, where one goes to climb mountains 5.000 meters high, still nameless while, simultaneously, queues and columns of thousands of men and women, whom have read the autobiography of a legend, clock in at the Everest, that is why today this contemporary thought, of putting a mountain inside a hangar, in a city, rather, makes sense. It is still searched for, certainly, the contemporary mountain, while in the mean time legions of surface-spirits skim through second-rate books scribbled about the mountain-in-breeches, the good-only-because-it’s-not-there-anymore mountain, the rock-and-death mountain, the mountain of the content little corners, made of cabins and vernaculars, pipes and sunsets, woods haunted by prophets of times long gone, and of fleeing time, prophets who sell this uncritical and nostalgic stock, grey at the festivals, to the editor’s, to the public gods without spirit. Thus, like it or not, the contemporary artwork, when made by a spirit and not a stupid, is right, in the intention, and necessary. Because it is alive, it is the trail, the saliva, of  a spirit that still is, that searches and climbs, and that is unbowed, that doesn’t rest its static and fossil truths on a shelf. Because the subject of the action is the mind, and not the memory (tiny little stories), or the arm (artisan’s moral). The triviality of many pantheisms, naturalisms, environmentalisms – extremists. Whom are mimetic, and according to whom the human, being nature, to the nature has to conform – surrender . Imitating it, then, as Aristotle taught. While, instead, if the human is nature, its mind is its most vital part, that cannot be the least compulsory and that, even, in the things and in the action, can make nature instead of simply being it or only creating its apology and rhetoric. Nature is believed,  intended, whether transcendent idea or as immanent organism, whether one wants it ruled by logos or iuxta propria principia, it is, indeed, intended, meaning it goes through an idea. Nature is, evidently, nature of the human as well, that in turn looks, and that, regardless of what Heisenberg has to say, at the same time looks at itself. The human can understand nature because it is inherent to it, but not coincident. The human isn’t only nature: it makes nature as well, and is capable of artificiality. Making nature. Make (and be) landscapes, doesn’t equal to imitating, or to creating objects. It consists of, rather, in having a moral tension towards the truth, a will to act, not to imitate. This will, critic and warlike and spontaneous and creative, is the contemporary will. Contrary to quiet, and to useless chronicle of the present. Contemporary is projection forward, not a chronicle of a status quo. Contemporary, always and only, actually means ultra contemporary, a research, an exploration, in the present of what is, and what could one day be, and of its real and vital and correlated representations, co-existing with the thing itself. The nature, unfolded by the human in the critical-artistic action, isn’t all determined by causes already given , but is, simultaneously, ongoing. The Dolomites, for example, aren’t geology. They are a (cultural) craton, and as such, they are ongoing. The nature of the human is tension, research, instinct, attention, science. Without these passions, and without imagination, the human is “only nature”, biology and chemistry, like a plant or a worm. And its pantheisms come across, at that point, as very superficial, passive. A fossil, it is well known, doesn’t look for anything. And the stone is the nature, in its maximum concentration, here in this environment, in this space, vertical, so we use it as a concrete symbol of the nature itself. And the process of action, of research, of unveiling, of the contemporary is a process, procedure, in itself “rocky”, and here we have the rocksedures. It’s not enough to describe, photograph, breathe. The contemporary is anti-pensive. The critical marking of the human, of the human-nature, is an artificial sediment, that, as we’ve already said, distances it visibly from the fern. It can, for example, and it is important to do it, to limit, refuse, scholastic prejudices of uncritical naturalisms. Not everything that is in the current is contemporary. As not all that has been is given to be archaizing, corot or emerson come to mind, to be anti-contemporary. Everything, overlook on nature included, if it halts, becomes sterile, and fake. Every new look, creative and critic, is definable as contemporary. To those who are unmoving, all that is new seems often incomprehensible; those who don’t seek don’t understand the will of the seeker. They are culturally lethargic subjects, who tend to, with the intend of defending their atrophy, to apply a marginalization of the divergent thought, of what doesn’t comfortably adapt to prefabricated mental schemes. And, since all the original and innovative thought is too, by definition, divergent to a certain degree, the eventual consequence is that this kind of people is wary of ideas as such (caliandro sacco). That happens in regards of the cultural definitions of the scopes and of the things as well. That is one of the reasons why the mountain is often described in a boring and non-genuine manner, and why is definitely important to build different reflections, new ones, that do not rhetorically feed on ideas and images and iconographies of the past, but try instead to commensurate the intellectual, critical effort of the present, with themes and things that, always change with the human, when it dares and wants to leap forward. Because seeking isn’t describing, and having creative motivations isn’t contemplating (to some degree, contemporary is naturans). The things, the reality, aren’t always the same as themselves, but change with the human when it acts through effort and vision. The interpretations of the reality can be, poetically, intellectually, more or less accurate and in-depth, more or less stimulating. The contemporary is the reign of the natural gaze, open to the max and concentrated but not bound by the thing (nature), that, by virtue of its own tension, receptive and intellectual (in regards to the inside and the outside), generates an act of meaning (interpretation, superimposition) really productive. A procedure. A rocky one.

Gianluca D’Incà Levis, July 2013