22 Apr 2014

KMD | Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp

EXHIBITION: Gelosia (Jealousy) was the name of the boat that in 2010, with the help of many friends and the public, the Italian artists pushed along the streets of a village in southern Italy during the first edition of an annual event they called 'The Celebration of the Living (who reflect upon death).'

The artists proposed to turn the traditional November 2nd celebration, the 'Day of the Dead,' into this new holiday. For the first edition of this feast, on November 2nd, 2010, they invited those who were interested to be part of a pilgrimage, probably the shortest and slowest in the world, that departed from its destination (rather than arriving at it): Lu Cafausu in San Cesario di Lecce.

Lu Cafausu is a mysterious small building, an architectural remnant that the artists have elected as a source of metaphors and narratives. It is 'an imaginary place that really exists,' around which the presence of death floats. Any day, the small building might in fact be demolished to accommodate more parking space for cars, or might also fall apart due to its precarious, old architecture. It could also be turned into a frozen, dead monument. Because of this feeling of the presence of death, Lu Cafausu is an ideal place for a new celebration. The Celebration of the Living or, in Italian, 'La Festa dei Vivi,' is for those who, in order to give meaning to life, reflect upon death; their own, 'first and foremost.'
In an ideal continuation of this journey, which deals with our common destiny, with the death of Courbet nearby 'Duchamp's waterfall,' with the origin of the world, with any erotic feeling that could match death, with coincidences, with the unexpected, with chaos. . . the artists decided to realize a reproduction of the boat Gelosia that will include a secret, some ashes, referring to something very personal, jealously kept, owned by them.

Over the last few years Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti, and Luigi Presicce have been involved in a sort of common aesthetic and anthropological investigation dealing with the contradictions of both urban and metaphorical spaces, 'self-generated' beauty (by chance or necessity), and the 'errata' of the landscape. Lu Cafausu, an old gazebo-shaped building located in a small town in the south of Italy, has become the inspiration for stories, performances, and actions realized in different European and American cities. The artists identified Lu Cafausu as a metaphor for something that is, at the same time, both central and marginal, where aesthetic contradictions meet the meanings (or maybe the lack of any meaning) of our time.

PUBLICATION: On the occasion of the exhibition, the book BESIDES, IT'S ALWAYS THE OTHERS WHO DIE (D'ailleurs c'est toujours les autres qui meurent) will be published, edited by Lu Cafausu for the KMD | Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp (no. 15 / ISBN 978-3-86984-080-2), distributed by Verlag für moderne Kunst, Nuremberg, Germany, about 200 pages, language: English. As a central body of the book, a collective text based on an 'exquisite cadaver', a conversation held in Rome on Jan 19th, 2014 between Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti, Luigi Presicce, Sara Alberani, Lisa Batacchi, Marco Benincasa, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Sarah Ciracì, Irene Coppola, Gianluca Marinelli, Luca Musacchio, Caterina Pecchioli, Mattia Pellegrini, Davide Ricco, Roberto Tenace with notes also by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri, Stefan Banz, Francesca Marianna, Adrian Paci, Antonella Rizzo, Giorgio Rizzo, and Franco Vaccari, approx. 20 pictures, found the same day at the Porta Portese flea market, that are quoted in the text and a series of drawings by Francesco Lauretta portraying people in the pose of recently dead bodies, executed during the 4th edition of 'The Celebration of the Living (who reflect upon death)'

This book, whose title is the epitaph on Marcel Duchamp's tombstone, is one of several initiatives that Lu Cafausu has developed around the theme of death, starting from 'The Celebration of the Living (who reflect upon death)'. 'The Celebration of the Living (who reflect upon death)' is an annual event, made by the Italian artist collective whose members are Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti and Luigi Presicce. The artists proposed to turn the traditional November 2nd celebration, the 'Day of the Dead', into a new holiday: 'The Celebration of the Living (who reflect upon death)'. For the first edition of this celebration, on November 2nd, 2010, they invited those who were interested to be part of a pilgrimage, probably the shortest and slowest in the world, that departed from its destination (rather than arriving at it): Lu Cafausu in San Cesario di Lecce.