Museion #10YearsOn

#10YearsOn: on May 24, 2018, Museion, Bolzano’s museum of modern and contemporary art, will celebrate the tenth anniversary in its venue in Piazza Piero Siena designed by the KSV architecture firm of Berlin: a striking building that contrasts boldly with its physical and cultural surroundings. Located in the unique area of South Tyrol, a crossroads of cultures and languages, in the last ten years Museion has remained resolutely vibrant and dynamic, in a word, “switched on.” The month of May sees a series of events for #10YearsON which reflect Museion’s energy and multifaceted identity.

Olaf Nicolai, Carillon (2018)
The heart of the special project by Olaf Nicolai (1962, Halle/Saale, Germany) is a musical composition for 15 cow bells, each of them unique, with its own distinctive sound. The piece, entitled OUTSIDE IN, was written by the well-known composer Isabel Mundry (1963, Schlüchtern, Germany) and will be performed for the first time in Museion (performer: Rainer Römer).

While this special concert is being played inside the museum, outside the building, on the nearby banks of the Talvera river, a herd of cows will be gathered. After the performance, each bell will be placed round the neck of a cow, giving rise to a second, free-form composition. This concert will continue throughout the summer months when the cows pasture in the mountains, in the Salto / Salten area (altipiano del Monzoccolo / Tschögglberg).

Carillon closes with a musical walk in the company of the artist and various singers from “Neue Vocalsolisten” of Stuttgart. Olaf Nicolai’s project connects the Bolzano museum to its surrounding area. Working with the element of time, the piece forges a bond with the local customs. At the same time it creates a new, original practice of its own, which like an ancient tradition, can be repeated. By bringing elements of the local setting into an institution like Museion, Olaf Nicolai links it to the international panorama.

For the occasion an LP documenting both compositions, produced by Nero Press Edizioni and a walking map will be published.

May 5, 2018, 11am, Museion Passage: OUTSIDE IN (debut performance). Composed by Isabel Mundry and executed by Rainer Römer
May 30–September 30, 2018, Salto/Salten (altipiano Monzoccolo/Tschögglberg): free-form composition for 15 cow bells
September 30, 2018, 3pm: musical walk with Olaf Nicolai and the singers of the “Neue Vocalsolisten” of Stuttgart

In collaboration with the Rinderzuchtverband Südtirol
The finissage is a co-production with Festival Transart

Somatechnics. Transparent travelers and obscure nobodies
Curated by Simone Frangi
Opening May 24, 2018, 7pm
8–9pm: performance by Mercedes Azpilicueta, ye-gua-ye-ta-yu-ta (2017)

This project was the winning entry in a call for proposals for an exhibition concept which ten young curators were invited to take part in. In view of Museion’s original mission—to forge a dialogue between Northern European and Mediterranean culture—the brief was to freely interpret the idea of an Italy-Austria Pavilion.

The jury that selected the project comprised Massimiliano Gioni, Associate Director and Head Curator of the New Museum in New York and Artistic Director of Fondazione Trussardi in Milan, Matthias Mühling, Director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, and Letizia Ragaglia, Director of Museion.

Somatechnics brings together the research of artists who work in Austria and Italy, and engage with their physical, administrative and symbolic borders and the lands in which the two countries intersect.

The project, which includes an exhibition, a programme of performances and a public programme, explores social processes involved in the artificial fabrication of bodily identities, and their bonds to linguistic identity and to the multiple senses of belonging and inscription which abusively try to confine our bodies in specific territories.
In particular it focuses on those practices of social profiling that stigmatise certain bodies rather than others according to visual stereotypes connected to race, gender, class, religion and sexual orientation.

Featured artists
Displayed works: Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Danilo Correale, Patrizio Di Massimo, Adelita Husni-Bey, Ursula Mayer, Sophie Utikal
Performance and Public Programme: Mercedes Azpilicueta, Marissa Lôbo, Muna Mussie
 

The Future of the Museum
Conference with Lisa Le Feuvre, Director Holt-Smithson Foundation, Santa Fe and Andrew Renton, professor at Goldsmiths, University of London
May 23, 2018, 7pm

Museums as places to celebrate the past and inspire the future, places where we can find the coordinates of our place in the world, celebrating the adversities encountered: this is the starting point for the conversation on the future of museums between Lisa Le Feuvre and Andrew Renton.