Future in the past (Atto I)

Future in the past (Atto III)

Look I'm the one who fucks the stars (site-specific work re-adaptation)

This series of pieces of artwork composes the main corpus of my first personal exhibition: “Ho fottuto le stelle (?)”. The show reflects on some theories about memory: these are not connected with the past but they refer to the future: the episodic future thinking is the ability to project oneself forward in time and pre-experience an event based on past facts. All is possible through the autonoetic consciousness, that is the awareness of one’s existence and identity as people. Imagining a new future scenario means simulating a scenario which is realistic and relatable with one’s own background and one’s own history. In this theory, memories are at the service of the “future”, they are not put together by our brain to remember a past event, but they are used to imagine a scenario that is to happen. I have reflected on my past and I have used my memories as a starting point to create those pieces of artwork. The main theme of these pieces of artwork is to predict different scenarios in my first personal exhibition.

“Future in the past” (Act I) is composed by one hundred and eighty drawings, they are divided in two blocks with ninety drawings each. Those two blocks talk about how the artist could react if the exhibition went well or badly and are divided in six thematic areas related to the main block, described by means of fifteen drawings for each area. In the negative aspect, there are different scenarios that allude to failure and reactions to it (sometimes exaggerated and paradoxical like a good cry, consolation from people you feel close to, the desperation for unsold pieces artwork and goals not achieved…); in the positive aspect, there is a pretentious and extroverted tale about the artist’s success (big party after the exhibition, reviews on all art journals, money, fame…).

“Future in the past” (Act II) reproduces the gallery that hosts the exhibition in a scale 1:10. The sculpture of the gallery is turned upside down and it is hooked to the ceiling. From the roof of the sculpture, viewers fall down, and it seems that the space isn't able to no longer contain them. This artwork can be read in two different ways: one positive and one negative. It will be up to the viewers of the sculpture to decide if the gallery has reached full capacity, or if the exhibition is so terrible that the viewers want to run away from it. 

“Future in the past (Act III)” is a video animation. It was born with the intent to tell about one of the possible scenarios of the opening day of the exhibition. The video shows a sort of making-of of the footage, how it is built, the choices that are made (like colors, characters, choice of scenes) through the dialogues between two Giulias: one comes from the past and one from the present. Then, the subject of the video moves on fast to another issue: the question of not having any more ideas about what could happen in the future. The end of the video suggests only one last possibility: waiting for the opening day and seeing what will happen.

“The artwork plunges its roots in a childhood memory: during a school play the teacher chose me for the part of the night. That particular role has become part of the story of my life. In the video the night comes in and out of me, the stars escape from me and only the dark remains. I'm sure that the dark one day will fuck the stars.”