11 Nov 2009

Records of a lifetime by Alberto Frigo at Italian Institute of Culture & Uppsala Art Museum

The launch of 'Records of a Lifetime' will be held at the Institute of Italian Culture in Stockholm and will be accompanied by a presentation of two recent works of Alberto Frigo on loan from the exhibition, 'Records of a Lifetime: 6 Works in Progress by Alberto Frigo' at the Uppsala Art Museum. The event will include a brief conversation between the artist and Jason Waite, an independent curator.

As part of an ongoing 36 year life performance that will last till his 60th year of age, Alberto Frigo, photographs all the objects his dominant hand uses, documents his dreams, recomposes the songs he hears, films the surrounding public space where he sits, translates his ideas to simple visual images and tapes his thoughts while walking alone. A number of the projects begin to lay the foundation for an archive of the interior of an individual, while others capture the details of the late capitalist environment that form our everyday existence. The final presentation in 2040 will be a complex architecture of everyday life, a Noah's Ark of an extinguishing nature pervaded by the very technologies that the artist so embraces. A real-time progress of the project can be followed at: www.albertofrigo.net.

All this touches upon a myriad of questions on various levels, psychological, philosophical, artistic and ethnological: Is it possible to describe a life in the form of a document? What effect does everyday life have on an individual? And what does it say about an existence? All the objects he has used can naturally be analysed from an ethnographic, contemporary, cultural and class perspective. Likewise, the films tell of the places, times and environments he has occupied, as does the musical notation with regard to cultural impact of the music of his time and temporary location. What, eventually, will this material after 36 years in the making mean for posterity?

The book contains essays by 6 prominent authors from various background and disciplines: Ernesto Luciano Francalanci, professor of contemporary art history, University of Architecture (IUAV), Venice; Rolf Hughes, Director of Research, Professor of Design Theory and Practice-Based Research, Konstfack, Stockholm; Björn Norberg, curator at Mejan Labs, Stockholm; Jason Waite, independent curator based in London; Davide Di Saró, music video artist and musician based in Toronto; and Jonatan Habib Engqvist, curator and theorist in philosophy and aesthetic theory. The publication was supported by the Italian Institute of Culture in Stockholm.

After 6 years the 6 projects are being presented in 'Records of a Lifetime: 6 Works in Progress by Alberto Frigo' currently on view at the Uppsala Art Museum until November 22nd. The museum is located in a 400 square meters space in a renovated castle overlooking Uppsala. The Museum exhibits works of art from its own collections, arranges temporary exhibitions of Swedish and international contemporary art and also houses a permanent exhibition of works from the Uppsala University collection.

For more information or to order the book please contact Siv-Britt Ernbrandt at siv-britt.ernbrandt@uppsala.se.

Press Material: www.uppsala.se/sv/Uppsalase/English-startpage/Culture--libraries/Uppsala-Art-Museum/Press/

Alberto Frigo (Venice, born 1979) currently lives and works in Shanghai, China. He holds a bachelor from the University of Architecture in Venice, and postgraduate degrees from from the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede, the Netherlands and the Royal College of Art in Stockholm. He has been a guest artist at the Interactive Institute, Stockholm and an artist in residence at Splintermind. In the last decade he has been lecturer at the Art and Technology Department of the Chalmers University, Gothenburg and Konstfack University College of Art and Design, Stockholm and currently teaches at the design for innovation department at Tongji University in Shanghai. His ongoing projects have been included in a number of exhibitions internationally and have received awards at Prix Ars Electronica, Linz; the Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo and Prix Möbius Nordica at KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.