Via Cernobbio, 19
22100 Como
Italy
T +39 031 338 4976
info@fondazioneratti.org
HOW TO BEGIN
“Talking about being and becoming and the gap in-between. The process of reducing possibilities until, starting with a word or thought or action, one can begin to bridge the gap between intention and actualization.
The beginning is different to everything that comes after. It’s the initial condition and a step into the unknown. By your action, you set the initial condition. The first step forms the condition for the outcome. Before a nail is hammered in it needs to be positioned correctly. Through repetition or expansion or refinement things open up again and the work builds up around a core idea.” CM
The seminar will consider “how do we begin?” through a number of related questions:
How do we negotiate individuality and exchange in the brief context of a seminar and within the larger one of an artistic practice? What’s at stake in a beginning if we refuse to relegate things to a state of passive inactivity and instead choose to recognize agency to them and to all non-human processes? How can we discuss the relationship between the first glimpse of an engagement, which must unavoidably come from outside us, and our future entanglement with it? How do we negotiate the tension between wanting to make something and not wanting to be in it? These questions will provide the starting point for seminars and studio work. They will also be addressed through “Aperto,” a one day exhibition intended as a public moment of collective reflection on the processes, researches and discussions in which the individual participants will have engaged while exploring the themes of How do We Begin?
The same questions will be addressed through a publication to be created in collaboration with all the participants during the XXIV Laboratory and to be released soon after its closing.
CSAV-Artists Research Laboratory is an experimental platform designed to provoke formal and informal discussions and exchanges among artists of different generations and nationalities. It aims to explore different forms of art-making through un-institutional teaching methods. Between 15 and 20 young artists from all nationalities will be selected. The participants will attend daily workshops and seminars run by the invited artist and guest lecturers. The application and the laboratory are free of charge.
Christina Mackie’s work is informed by an interest in materials and process both as they relate to social formations and to natural occurrences. Her investigations have ranged from human and non human power structures, to biology, to gene theory, formalism and chemistry. She is best known for her sculptures and installations which often rely on assemblages of disparate materials to achieve a temporary synthesis through what appears as a continuing process. Christina Mackie was born in 1956 in England and raised in Canada before relocating to London in the 1970s. Recent solo exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2015), Praxes, Berlin (2015), The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2014), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2012), and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012).
The program is directed by Annie Ratti with Lorenzo Benedetti and Gregorio Magnani.
It also includes exhibitions and lectures open to the public:
Christina Mackie
July 20–September 9, 2018
Opening: July 19
Chiesa di San Francesco
Largo Spallino 1
Como, Italy
