(Earth and beeswax shaped as a small-scale model of empty underground space)
Interview by Zlatko Kozina
I don’t know if others are familiar with this fact, but you insisted on finding an underground space for the realization of your project. Why?
That’s true. It wasn’t easy finding the kind of space I was interested in. Even this space is not as deeply underground as I would like, but it was an optimal combination of shape and location.
Why underground? In a nutshell, the installation deals with the nature and history of the location; its content is the interaction between the form, the medium, and the location. By simple analogy, the installation is located beneath the surface of the Earth, it is made of earth, and occupies the same space once filled with earth. This space now reacts on its own, to itself, and within itself. Incubare is a kind of perpetuum mobile; I am merely an assistant in this situation which I consider Architecture; the shape and architecture of space are the consequence.
Of course, the underground bears many associations, all of which may be correct, but everything is born of earth, and everything returns to it. It remembers EVERYTHING
As you know, “socio-technologartists” don’t venture down in the catacombs. In perspective, who might spread the “gospel“?
Maybe that’s because there’s nothing but bones down there? But these bones carry a history, a truth in its own right. Don’t scientists read from these bones by means of DNA analysis? Socio-technologartists should be the first to understand that these bones are still alive as the context of the location. The fact that we don’t know what to do with this information is another problem altogether.
Modern technology, as much as I find it fascinating, remains inadequate without understanding some ancient technologies that remain unexplained. I believe in synthesis and sublimation.
The Gospel contains Truth that saves us from ourselves. Today, who dares to speak it out loud?
The Eskimo languages have over a hundred words for snow. Snow is whiteness. You paint empty space in white. How many kinds of emptiness do you know?
I’ll never forget the words of David Hockney. He said we can never truly know what empty space looks like. As long as we observe something, this space can’t be empty, and how can we know anything about empty space without observing it? A paradox!
The emptiness we experience is a symptom of something else.
To me, your wax and earth block is a body! The current statewithout which the spirit cannot act. What is this little corpus for you?
That’s exactly what it is: a corpus, in all its meanings, and in the context that surrounds it. It is compact (compressed) and liberated space, its reflection – in this case, in the form of a small sculpture. It could have been bigger or smaller, this is a matter of pure intuition, a product of spiritthat remembers a certain space. The body conceived by self-insemination in the earth’s womb, but also an inversion of the space it was conceivedin. A situation that has a dual meaning. Maybe spirit in matter, like you said yourself?
There’s also the factor of beeswax as a binding agent that becomes at once the fat of the land, both symbolic and concrete. I’m interested in this inverted procedure of lowering the beeswax’ quality. It’s a known fact that beeswax improves in quality through a process of cleaning and bleaching, and I tarnish it with earth, beneath the surface of the Earth, so earth can complement wax in this case. By losing its quality in this way, beeswax actually takes part in creation. Organic beeswax is not here by accident, it is deliberately chosen instead of paraffin wax
Let’s conclude this Sacra conversazione! Why do you think Dubuffet’s La Metafisyx would look more approvingly at site specific as an art form? Is it partly because this younger fellow has filled his stomach with the pods of the carob tree in a faraway country, and now sympathizes with it?
Your choice of Dubuffet’s iconic image is interesting. Perhaps it sums up this whole situation. I say perhaps. I won’t go further than an iconic understanding of your association. Once you’ve eaten in a faraway land, your own country ceases to be the same. I am thrilled by the idea of apoint of no return.
Since we’re mentioning other artists, this entire situation of Incubating can be put in reference to Walter de Maria and his work New York Earth Room.
He occupied the gallery space with earth, took from earth in order to refer back to it in a new context. Here in Incubare I attempt an inverted process of returning the earth to its original place, again with a spatial and contextual shift.
Note: I do not associate your delivery with site-specific, even though someone might think that I should.
There’s no reason why you should.