The nights of Tino of Baghdad in Milan.
ConiglioViola: The Nights of Tino from Baghdad
Studio Museo Francesco Messina, Milan
and other ten sites in Milan
8 March – 9 April 2017
OPENING: Wednesday, 8 March 2017, from 6:00 p.m.
curated by Kaninchen-Haus
Inspired by Else Lasker-Schüler’s orientalising tales,
this augmented reality film project transforms the city in a diffused cinema.
Eight years after their exhibition at the PAC, the artist duo formed by Brice Coniglio and Andrea Raviola will be back to Milan, in the Studio Museo Francesco Messina and further ten city sites, from 8 March to 9 April 2017.
With their new project, ConiglioViola are going to transform the urban space in a ‘diffused cinema’ engaging the audience in a kind of treasure hunt designed to enable us to rearrange the episodes of narrative.
The Nights of Tino from Baghdad, ConiglioViola’s new transmedia project, combines public art, experimental cinematography, breakthrough technology such as augmented reality, and traditional art forms and techniques, including copper engraving and shadow theatre.
The starting point is a literary work, Else Lasker-Schüler’s Die Nächte der Tino von Bagdad (1907). That collection of Expressionist, orientalising tales by the German woman poet virtually is a kaleidoscope of contrasting features – a fascination with exoticism and enthrallment to urban life, the author’s strong connection to her Jewish roots and her interest in the avant-gardes, pictorial research and literary mannerism, childhood games and eroticism. The protagonist of the tales is Tino, princess-poetess from Arabia, who has to give her life to make poetry immortal.
Exploiting the open structural model of Lasker-Schüler’s literary work, ConiglioViola has given breath of life to twenty-six episodes, each of which has been represented by conjoining a copper engraving and film shoot through augmented reality technology as a means for interpretation and fruition.
ConiglioViola’s visions are set in small light boxes, framed Arabic-style windows made of concrete. After having installed the Tino free application, the viewer pointing their smartphone at these ‘scene sets’ will be able to see on display ConiglioViola’s animated figures and motions. These were realised by filming dance and puppet theatre performances, and editing video clips with digital animation techniques.
ConiglioViola’s light boxes will be displayed at the ground floor of the main exhibition venue, which was a baroque church before being turned into a museum, whose spaces are being transformed by the duo’s creativity. Also to be exhibited there is Tino und Apollides, ConiglioViola’s great diptych after a famous scene from Il fiore delle mille e una notte by Pier Paolo Pasolini. A short motion picture by the artist duo will be projected on the museum’s glass wall.
The works and artefacts made by ConiglioViola within the framework of this complex art project will be shown in the crypt. More particularly, it will be possible to see preparatory drawings, copper engravings, photographs, masks (worn by the performers being filmed). Finally, there will be a projection of the documentary presenting The Nights of Tino from Baghdad.
ConiglioViola’s show will not be confined in the Studio Museo Francesco Messina, but will also take place in further ten sites in Milan, each of which will feature a different episode of Tino’s story. To rearrange the sequence of its episodes, the audience will have to move through the exhibition path, from the Studio Museo Francesco Messina to the other sites in Milan, all shown in the map available at www.tinobagdad.com.
Such a journey can start at any of these locations, where the wandering spectators are invited to engage in the creative process as they are, once back home, they can rearrange the episodes of Tino’s story and share their views. The audience thus becomes a co-author applying the theories of Combinatory Literature into urban spaces and multiplying narrative.
This project has been produced by Kaninchen-Haus with support from Fondazione Cariplo, and in collaboration with c/o careof.
Main sponsors: Temporary – Lavorint
Techical sponsors: Epson – Lumix G – Amazon
The Nights of Tino from Baghdad presented by ConiglioViola:
#TinoBagdad
Exhibition tour:
ConiglioViola
ConiglioViola (literally PurpleRabbit) is an artist duo formed by Brice Coniglio and Andrea Raviola in 2000, and based in Turin, Italy. Building on their cross-disciplinary backgrounds, ConiglioViola have explored the visual and performing arts using different media and breakthrough technology. Some reflection on the notion of the digital medium as a meta-language (whose intrinsic property is ‘fluidity’, according to Lev Manovich) lies behind their commitment to conjoining art forms and ‘liquefying borders’ between media and genres – from video and photography to digital art to electronic music and much more. Inspired by Humanism, they have shaped their idea of art as something to be pursued exceeding specificity in that the latter not only is antithetical to knowledge as a whole, but also represents a constraint to creativity. From that perspective, ConiglioViola see their studio as a ‘Renaissance workshop of the digital era’.
Amongst the duo’s early projects, mention should be made of Yolanda’s Meditation (2001) (https://www.coniglioviola.com/en/yolandas-meditation/), the first net-artwork to allow online meditation. Also to mention is their show Recuperate Le Vostre Radici Quadrate (Reclaim Your Square Roots) as well as the collaborations with the Italian singer Loredana Berté; fashion designers such as Etro, Vivienne Westwood, and Antonio Marras; the art critics Achille Bonito Oliva and Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (appearing in ConiglioViola’s videos), the IRAA Theatre company; and the theatre director Valter Malosti.
In 2007, thanks to funding received from Unicredit&Art, ConiglioViola debuted in Paris with Nous Deux, a digital body-art project culminating in a video, which they made by editing present-day photographs of themselves in order to appear in that representation as children-protagonists of an imaginary self-biography.
That same year they also staged their most famous performance, the Pirate Attack to the Venice Biennale.
In 2009, at the PAC (Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea – Contemporary Art Pavilion) in Milan, ConiglioViola set up their solo exhibition ‘Sono un pirata / Sono un signore’ (I’m a Pirate / I’m a Gentleman), which was visited by more that ten thousand people in ten days. Published by Silvana Editoriale, the exhibition catalogue includes essays by Antonio Arevalo, Alessandro Bergonzoni, Achille Bonito Oliva, Martina Corgnati, Maurizio Ferraris, Tommaso Labranca, Milva, Domenico Quaranta, Laura Serani, and Massimiliano Finazzer Flory.
Still in 2009, at the Teatro Stabile in Turin, ConiglioViola staged the Concerto senza titolo (Untitled Concert), starring the great Italian singer Antonella Ruggiero. That project stemmed from ConiglioViola’s artistic research exploring the oppositeness between the death taboo and pop culture.
In 2011 ConiglioViola participated in the Venice Biennale with Pirate Camp, The Stateless Pavilion, a project involving thirty young artists from all over the world, who were hosted at a ‘pirate’ camp in Venice’s lagoon.
Seeing inception from 2012 are ConiglioViola’s projects realised with the Kaninchen-Haus society. Also thanks to funding granted by the Compagnia di San Paolo, that organisation started and ran the ‘Viadellafucina Artist in Residence’ experimental programme in Turin’s Porta Palazzo quarter, where the artist-run space named ‘K-Hole’ is also based.
In 2015 ConiglioViola released their collectible vinyl record Recuperate Le Vostre Radici Quadrate, with covers performed by the duo since their early years, and a new video, Non Domina Sum. Those artistic achievements were followed by Requiem Elettronico, a cd+dvd set bearing witness to a stunning show with hits sung by Antonella Ruggiero and stage design by ConiglioViola.
Still in 2015 ConiglioViola presented The Nights of Tino from Baghdad, a public art project created with augmented reality technology and produced by Kaninchen-Haus in collaboration with TIM, the Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum, and the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino.
In 2016, ConiglioViola received the ‘ORA! Produzioni Innovative’ Award from Compagnia di San Paolo with Ulysses Now, a project to be produced by the Accademia degli Artefatti in 2017.
Info: www.coniglioviola.com
www.coniglioviola.com
www.facebook.com/coniglioviola
@coniglioviola
KEY INFORMATION
Exhibition: ConiglioViola: The Nights of Tino from Baghdad
Venue: Studio Museo Francesco Messina, Via San Sisto 4/A, Milan.
Also, other 10 sites in Milan.
Timing: 8 March – 1 April 2017
Unveiling: Wednesday, 8 March 2017, from 6:00 p.m.
Opening times: Tuesday-Sunday, 10:00-18:00 hrs. Wednesday: 10:00-20:00 hrs.
Entry: Free
PRESS OFFICE
NORA Comunicazione – Eleonora Caracciolo di Torchiarolo
M. +39 339 89 59 372 – info@noracomunicazione.it – www.noracomunicazione.it
