italianoCONIGLIOVIOLA – statement
CONIGLIOVIOLA is an art group founded in 2000 by Brice Coniglio and Andrea Raviola, and leaded by Brice Cornelio Coniglio.
From video art to multimedia theatre, from electronic music to performance art, from net.art to photography, there are few areas of contemporary art that have not been explored and ironically subverted by the tentacular operations of CONIGLIOVIOLA: “Renaissance workshop of the digital era” and genuine “brand”.
Well-known at the international level thanks to spectacular operations such as the Pirate Attack on the Biennale di Venezia (2007), CONIGLIOVIOLA is devoted to a radical and cross research into POP-ular culture, and especially into those shared cultural myths and clichés through which society represents and hide itself.
Multilinguism derives from a reflection on the digital medium intended as a meta-language. This allows CONIGLIOVIOLA to elaborate a project and then to articulate it into all possible art forms. As a result, and the use of different media notwithstanding, all projects are strictly linked one to the other. CONIGLIOVIOLA uses the intrinsic characteristic of digital medium – “fluidity” (Lev Manovich) – to liquefy the borderline between artistic genres and merge consolidated forms, styles and techniques. The digital revolution is therefore interpreted like an instrument in order to reestablish a Renaissance-like vision of the artist (capable of a complete, well rounded expression) and, at the same time, as an overcoming of the specialized vision of the individual, which is a heritage of the age of the Industrial revolution.
The logo of CONIGLIOVIOLA (translated: the Purple Rabbit), which features the Vitruvian rabbit represents this very aspiration towards total eclecticism, connected on one hand to the desire to reclaim a Renaissance vision of the artist, with the ironic exaltation of the human/rabbit figure, and on the other to a constant desecration of myth and legend. The decision to use this humorous, mysterious animal can therefore be linked not only to the surname of Brice Coniglio, its creator, but also to the mythology present in all cultures, according to which animals play a particular role of mediation between the human and transcendent spheres, identity and otherness.
In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, the White Rabbit plays the role of Alice’s guide in the transition between two different spatial and temporal dimensions. This is the same role that CONIGLIOVIOLA assumes within its own research inside contemporary art: an investigation on the more and more uncertain borderlines of creativity and, at the same time, the creation of surreal and self-contained worlds. So CONIGLIOVIOLA’s operations are in some ways difficult to label, and as a result they are unconventional within the Art system.
Among the various project starring CONIGLIOVIOLA, besides the Pirate Attack on Venice Biennal, must be mentioned: the net-artwork La meditazione di Yolanda (Yolanda’s Meditation), the theatre show Recuperate Le Vostre Radici Quadrate (Reclaim Your Square Roots), the cover of Pagine Bianche Piemonte (Piedmont Phone Book) (2007), the Nous deux project with Unicredit&Art (Paris, 2007), as well as several collaborations: with the Italian singer Loredana Bertè, the fashion designers Etro, Vivienne Westwood and Antonio Marras, the art critics Achille Bonito Oliva and Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (performing the unconventional role of actors), the IRAA Theatre Company and the director Valter Malosti.
In 2009 the Milan PAC ( Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea – Contemporary Art Pavilion) dedicated to CONIGLIOVIOLA a remarkable solo exhibition entitled Sono un pirata / Sono un signore (I’m a pirate / I’m a gentleman). The exhibition was visited by more that ten thousand people in just ten days. The texts collected in the exhibit catalogue, published by Silvana Editoriale, were written by Antonio Arevalo, Alessandro Bergonzoni, Achille Bonito Oliva, Martina Corgnati, Maurizio Ferraris, Tommaso Labranca, Milva, Domenico Quaranta, Laura Serani and Massimiliano Finazzer Flory (Coincillor of Culture of the City of Milan)
In 2009 a new theatre show debuted at Teatro Stabile di Torino, within the programme of Prospettiva Festival curated by Fabrizio Arcuri: Concerto senza titolo (Untitled Concert), starring Antonella Ruggiero: the result of a research into the collision between the taboo topic of death and pop culture.
→ net.art
This is cronologically the first field of experimentation. Here CONIGLIOVIOLA introduced an interpretation of the virtual space as a real space, becoming very quickly a cult-group on Internet. The very first experiment was Yolanda’s Meditation (2001): the first net-artwork that allows online meditation. It is used to this day by thousands of people all over the world. Through the instrument of irony this piece of work introduces the idea that the digital space may not only become an extension of human memory, but also of deeper states of consciousness. Another interesting experiment was the net.drama Secret.Room (2004) an investigation on the borderline between net.art and theatre, created in collaboration with the Australian company IRAA Theatre.
→photography & digital painting
If photography is, commonly at least, considered as a “mimetic” art, CONIGLIOVIOLA uses the photo-digital-painting to create a portrait of the imaginary, or of the possible. A meaningful example of that is the project Nous Deux (The two of us) (2007). Here, through an operation of digital body-art, the artists work on their present pictures in order to transform themselves into two children, through the combination of drawing, digital manipulation and photography techniques, in order to tell an imaginary self-biography. Art therefore becomes a way to escape from the determination of life and history, and immersion in another dimension which is not yet realized, albeit possible. A portrait that sometimes is truer than truth itself.
→videoart & music
Most of CONIGLIOVIOLA research in the field of video art is strictly linked with the experimentation with electronic music. The process there consists in selecting well-known music hits from the past and re-arranging them with a new version developed by the artists. Once the song is so re-written, the artists then produces a video for it in which they also play as performers. Through the use of video, the artists unveil a double meaning implicit in a song that is already rooted inside the collective imaginary. It attributes new meanings to the song, distorting its common perception, that which Arthur Danto would refer to as “transfiguration of the commonplace”.
The case of the video Ci sarà is emblematic of this kind of research. The song Ci sarà was a hit by the singing couple Al Bano & Romina Power, stars of the 80s, and this song is commonly regarded as a love song. In the video-installation Fine Primo Tempo (End of First Half) (2008) the song lyrics are read like a text that talks about afterlife. The artists here portray themselves like two children at the time of their funeral, but instead of a Church the ceremony takes place on the stage of the San Remo music festival.
→performance
The most spectacular and symbolic one is the Pirate Attack on Venice Biennale. On June 7th, 2007 – day of the opening of the 52nd edition – an enormous Pirate Rabbit, winged like the Lion of San Marco, with one eye covered with a classic pirate’s eye patch, crossed the whole Canale della Giudecca on board of a large raft, as far as the Giardini, the official venue of the Biennale, and from there – at around 6pm – it fired 52 cannon shots at the buildings of the Biennale…
→theatre
All of CONIGLIOVIOLA’s research is someway theatrical. Theatre is the place where the different spirits of the “Purple rabbit” can be expressed together. From 2004 to 2006 CONIGLIOVIOLA was engaged in the production of the massive project Recuperate Le Vostre Radici Quadrate (Reclaim Your Square Roots) starting point of a multimedia live show, an anthology of about twenty videos, an audio-cd and a collection of photographs and installations presented during the first CONIGLIOVIOLA’s solo show (Milan, 2006). In 2009 CONIGLIOVIOLA debuts with its new project Concerto Senza Titolo (Untitled Concert): an anthology of songs about Death.
