“The device accepted his card and told him he could have 1800 francs. Pierre Dupont pressed the button beside this figure on the screen. The device asked him to wait a moment and then delivered the sum requested, reminding him as it did so to withdraw his card. «Thank you for your custom», it added as Pierre Dupont arranged the banknotes in his wallet (...).
He strolled past the window-displays of luxury goods, glancing briefly at their jewellery, clothing and scent bottles, then called at the bookshop where he leafed through a couple of magazines before choosing an undemanding book: travel, adventure, spy fiction. Then he resumed his unhurried progress.
He was enjoying the feeling of freedom imparted by having got rid of his luggage and at the same time, more intimately, by the certainty that, now that he was ‘sorted out’, his identity registered, his boarding pass in his pocket, he had nothing to do but wait for the sequence of events. ‘Roissy, just the two of us!’: these days, surely, it was in these crowded places where thousands of individual itineraries converged for a moment, unware of one another, that there survived something of the uncertain charm of the waste lands, the yards and building sites, the station platforms and waiting rooms where travellers break step, of all the chance meeting places where fugitive feelings occur of the possibility of continuing adventure, the feeling that all there is to do is to ‘see what happens'”.
M. Augè, Non-Places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity
Concept by Giulia De Giorgi, Michela Murialdo, Giovanni Paolin, Roberta Perego, Davide Spagnoletto
PIERRE DUPONT is a project by Giulia De Giorgi, Michela Murialdo, Roberta Perego
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logo design: Cren Design
PIERRE DUPONT is the “Mr. Whoever”, adaptable identity which pursues the path of accessibility and participation, according to an inclusive curatorial practice. A homeless collective, Pierre Dupont is interested in the idea of "habitability of places" as a possible activation of unexplored relationships and new semantic sets.
For i8 – spazi indipendenti, Pierre Dupont has invited Milotta/Donchev, whose works offer a multidimensional investigation probing the different layers of the reality around us.
Pierre Dupont feeds off movement, impermanence, virtual contacts. This is the only way for him to forge relationships with places, people, stories, and create real experiences. To Pierre Dupont, the journey is the essential means to interact and live in a real space.
In i8, interpreting the subject of this current edition, Pierre Dupont goes on an uneasy journey, outside the box, and explores new possibilities of belonging to non-physical places and ventures into virtual reality. It is not the virtual reality of live sharing of information, immediate enjoyment and superficial presence: it is rather that of immateriality and invisibility, which requires waiting, patience, profoundness.
With PARABOLA, Milotta/Donchev present a project that is both a culmination and the beginning of a new course. They offer a journey that is physical as well as virtual, turning the stand into a place of listening, reception, transmission, and analyse the subtle world of electromagnetism. The project features two new works: Parabola, made of a video and a sculpture, and Antennae, a video developed during the full(y)grounding residence of BridgeArt, in Noto.
PARABOLA witnesses countless idiosyncrasies, between what is natural and artificial, transmission and reception, tactile and imperceptible, scientificity and superstition. The artists, exploring the physical properties of sound, take the concepts of transmission and reception back to the human sphere, and investigate what we accept and what we reject with the use of remote communication.
Pierre Dupont presents Hortus (in)conclusus, a collective exhibition designed for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Alcamo, with the artists Francesco Cardarelli, Francesca Ferreri, Cristiano Focacci Menchini, Milotta/Donchev, Carmelo Nicotra, Leonardo Petrucci, Ambra Pittoni e Paul-Flavien Enriquez-Sarano, Nuvola Ravera, Giulio Saverio Rossi, Francesco Simeti, Elisa Strinna.
The Museum is housed in the 17th-century Collegio dei Gesuiti, a fascinating architecture that is not finished: the original project included the building of four wings that would have created a hortus conclusus, or enclosed garden. Starting from this place that was never finished, but only imagined, the exhibition intends to transform the Museum into a “garden”, meant as a place of change, interaction and of people coming together. The artists were asked to reflect on the idea of growth, confines and immateriality, considering each work as an ever-changing microcosm interacting with the history and character of the place.
By referring to the concept of "friches" – i.e. how garden designer Gilles Clément defined the neglected land growing on the side of roads – the exhibition goes beyond the museum’s confines and extends to other landmarks in the town of Alcamo. Conceived as moments in which the museum-garden opens up to the world outside, these events generate further opportunities for artistic research and the public to meet.
With the support of the Council of Alcamo
This exhibition is part of the programme of Palermo Italian Capital of Culture 2018
“Beyond any generic praise, his great ability goes over the “making of” models: it is the understanding of the objects which he then tells with the models... With Sacchi you go over the volume: he makes you feel what is really, tactilely going on: it produces an evolved sensation, so much so that a model by him can fully meet the designers. With a model like this, in truth, you almost have no desire to make the object.”
Ettore Sottsass
PIERRE DUPONT meets Spazio MIL, multifunctional area dedicated to creativity and design. In this 2.500 square meters space, two important places for the history of Italian design have found their location: Giovanni Sacchi’s workshop, reconstruction of the original one located in Via Sirtori in Milan, and the Giovanni Sacchi Archive. Relazione di appartenenza (Membership Relation) takes place from the meeting between PIERRE DUPONT and these places. The project involves, for a period of six months, young Italian artists of different training and research: Pasquale Loiudice, the duo Giulia Sacchetto and Annamaria Maccapani, Guglielmo Poletti, Marco Secondin, Livia Sperandio and Cren Design.
The project stems from the desire to explore new possible forms of “being part of”, the desire of artistic and curatorial research, to an unknown and alien place. The artists, by attending Sacchi‘s Archive and Workshop, enter into dialogue with models, manifests, projects, drawings, tools, photographs and any other documents.
As in mathematics, the “membership relation” is the fundamental relationship which forms the basis of the set definition: it captures a property that links each element with the set to which it belongs. Possession, therefore, as a link between individual entities and not as a form of property. The project is seen to grow this affinity from month to month, and it is then manifesting itself in the final stages in the format of the group exhibition. Pierre Dupont pursues this idea of “habitability of places” as a possible activation of unexplored relationships, constantly looking for new semantic sets.
Many designers and architects including Aldo Rossi, Marcello Nizzoli, Achille Castiglioni, Ettore Sottsass jr and Marco Zanuso have developed and fine-tuned their products through Giovanni Sacchi’s models. Possible food for thoughts during the months of project is actually the concept of model: at the same time abstraction and materialization of an idea, object that was created with the aim to become something else. The artists are invited to reflect on space and time existing between intuition and material realization of a work, with a look to the figure of the modeler that, by transferring an idea in complete forms, builds the bridge between vision and production of a real object.
Pierre Dupont, partner of the review "Dialoghi d'Arte", invites Hannes Egger, Cleo Fariselli, Roberto Fassone and Nuvola Ravera to present four unseen projects that, in line with the 2019 edition of "Dialoghi d'Arte", see the active participation of the public. The artistic interventions - one for each day - take up some of the themes discussed during the scheduled conversations, and are thought of as a real shift from the theoretical to the practical level. The artists, through experimenting with different formats, give life to opportunities to confront with contemporary art, triggering a shared reflection around the idea of participation and the role of the public.
For the launch issue of PROPAGAZIONI Bollettino di esperienze di campo (PROPAGATION Bulletin of field experiences), Pierre Dupont meets Pietro Bonfanti, Valeria Codara, Davide Manzoni, and Riccardo Preda, some of the founders of the collective Propagazioni. The debate between artists, educators and an expert in immigration law generated an exchange of experiences, practices and planning methods, addressing issues only apparently unrelated.
Conversation with Pietro Bonfanti
Fato Profugus
A choral documentary to re-read the experience of the reception centre for asylum seekers of Vedeseta (BG), featuring people who have worked or lived in the centre and with artists from different disciplines.
Conversation with Valeria Codara
Archivio delle età desiderate (Archive of desired ages)
A photographic and narrative project to encourage a dialogue between women of different generations, so that the individual knowledge, the knowledge acquired through living, the level of awareness reached by each one can be passed down and shared.
Conversation with Davide Manzoni
Sul confine. Arriva il Corona con il Macarona (On the border. Here comes the Corona with the Macarona)
Discussion on the meaning that Western society gives to borders, focusing on how the emphasis on this concept creates segregation, fear, and discrimination.
Conversation with Riccardo Preda
Harnet Streets: contro-mappe eritree in Roma (Harnet Streets: Eritrean counter-maps in Rome)
A project that wants to redefine the colonial odonomy of Rome’s African neighbourhood through the narratives of Eritrean people.
Pietro Bonfanti, Valeria Codara, Davide Manzoni, Riccardo Preda
www.propagazioni.it
On the occasion of the collective exhibition paradise is exactly like where you are right now only much, much better, curated by Virginia Lupo and Marta Orsola Sironi, Pierre Dupont welcomes the artist Simone Scardino to present the unreleased video Greensaver (Act II) (2020-ongoing). The work is part of a larger project started in 2020 and presented in its first documentative form at Progetto Diogene, Turin.
An individual seen from behind is moving in an abandoned area of woods wearing a green screen suit, used in cinema as an instrument for creating special effects. The so-called chroma key technique is used to set subjects and objects on virtual backgrounds, through a hybridization between subject and environment. The suit is usually used for its mimetic capacity, but in Greensaver (Act II) it has the opposite effect of making noticeable and visible, underlining the incompatibility between our current way of existing and the life of other species that inhabit Earth. The environments in which the artist moves are extra-urban spaces invisible to our eyes, abandoned, anonymous, but only apparently inactive: these spaces are the manifestation of the "Third Landscape" theorized by the biologist and landscape architect Gilles Clément, and form the basis for the biodiversity of non-human beings. They are areas with a life cycle that is independent from our existence and from our occupation of spaces; our non-intervention and their timeless appearance are actually an expression of their ongoing life.
Welcoming the reflection posed by paradise is exactly like where you are right now only much, much better to review our approach to reality and to deconstruct our views, Simone Scardino's project fits into the exhibition by questioning the relationship between human and non-human, through a narrative that highlights the existence of boundaries between “An inside (of us) and an outside (of us)”, and so the need for change. The text that accompanies the video, written by the artist and read by a voiceover, explores the concept of “deep space” starting from the expression “deep time”, used in geology to define a time scale that invariably exceeds our own - anthropic - perception of time. Through the failure of the mimetic device’s functioning, Greensaver (Act II) achieves a reversal, leading us to reflect on the urgent issues of our current times, such as hybridization, multispecies, coexistence. The decision to involve Simone Scardino is also motivated by the desire to promote among the audience the plural and collaborative aspect of his production: the suit made for the Greensaver project was created with Giulia Perin, who dyes using natural pigments, and with the collective Muta (Giuliana Meirano and Irene Coscarella), and was coloured using only plant chlorophyll.
Simone Scardino
Starting from the article for the launch issue of PROPAGAZIONI Bollettino di esperienze di campo (PROPAGATION Bulletin of field experiences), Pierre Dupont invites the audience to the studio of ventunesimo, to share ideas with some of the people involved in the publication and to freely enjoy the space and materials on display. The open-studio day is conceived as an actual extension of the editorial project within a physical space and as a further opportunity to discuss field experiences that investigate the concepts of identity, memory, and boundaries.
Pietro Bonfanti, Valeria Codara, Lucia Cristiani, Davide Manzoni, Riccardo Preda
In these weeks of isolation and slow recovery, as a collective of curators we have repeatedly questioned what was happening, the opportunity to produce content, the rampant digital inclinations, and prospects for the future. We found ourselves distant, a dimension we are accustomed to since we live in different cities, but which in this moment exposed a deeper and more aware meaning. We reflected on the practice of the collective and, following our usual processes, we sought an exchange with an external figure, including in this reflection the artist Barbara Baroncini.
Our contribution stems from the desire to circulate some considerations, addressing the theme of cure starting from two terms apparently far from this concept: concealment and distance.
Barbara Baroncini: How can I curate if I am concealed and the other can’t see me?
Pierre Dupont: Let's start with us: the name of the collective is the name of a person, a reminder of its human and therefore relational essence. Pierre Dupont is the French equivalent of Mario Rossi - the most common names respectively in France and in Italy-, he can be anyone who wishes to be part of it and, at the same time, implies a condition of concealment within the community.
The concept of existence is for us separate, or should be separated, from the one of visibility. Practicing cure is like exercising one's presence with discretion: standing back can be an attitude not so much of inactivity, absence, or lack of interest, but rather a way of letting others be.
Our work can be positioned in this dimension of “present invisibility”, perceiving cure as a practice of listening, attentive to welcoming all the elements - artists, places, and publics - that constitute a project. Pierre Dupont, an adaptable and inclusive identity, is a first person but plural.
For us, cure is a form of co-existence, of "existing with", immersed in an attitude of appreciation and mutual recognition: practicing concealment to support the idea of a collective existence.
Pierre Dupont: Can distance be a favourable condition for cure?
Barbara Baroncini: 18 meters correspond to the right distance that allows millenary olive trees to live healthily and in virtuous conditions. To understand the amount of space needed by an olive tree, one can use a simple visual method, projecting the maximum height it can reach onto the ground: the greater the radius, the more the development and wellbeing of the tree will increase.
With the work 18 metri (2018) I collected, on a long strip of clay, the soil that I encountered in the 18 meters that separated two millenary olive trees in the Parco Regionale delle Dune Costiere nature reserve of Ostuni (Apulia, Italy). The distance was covered with a performative action, a gesture that became the measurement of a portion of space usually considered marginal and that I wanted to interpret as something to be protected and preserved. As I proceeded, the material added up to form a real sculpture. The final result is the visual exemplification of a still fertile trace of a complex territory, which suffers due to the irreversible changes caused by the excessively close relationship between humankind and the Earth.
I think that in any relationship between humans and nature or between humans, we speak of cure when there is a manifestation of interest in another existence. I believe that any gesture must always be made from the perspective of length, with the idea of taking into consideration everything in between to give it a new dignity, an unprecedented meaning and value. Cure finds fertile ground when it preserves what already exists and accompanies the birth of something that has yet to be achieved. At the base of this ancient peasant knowledge, rooted in the respect for distance, a number is not an expression of quantity but a manifestation of a search for life and collective well-being.
Number of olive trees that can be planted in one hectare of land
Distance mt. 4 x 4 = n. plants 625
Distance mt. 4 x 5 = n. plants 500
Distance mt. 5 x 5 = n. plants 400
Distance mt. 5 x 6 = n. plants 333
Distance mt. 6 x 6 = n. plants 278
Distance mt. 6 x 7 = n. plants 238
Distance mt. 7 x 7 = n. plants 204
Distance mt. 7 x 8 = n. plants 178
Distance mt. 8 x 8 = n. plants 156
Distance mt. 18 x 18 = n. plants 25
Barbara Baroncini (1989), artist. Lives and works in Bologna.
www.barbarabaroncini.com