Tacita Dean
Comoggardising: the benefits of creative indolence
XX CSAV – Artists Research Laboratory
30 June–23 July 2014
Fondazione Antonio Ratti
Director: Annie Ratti
Curator: Simone Menegoi
Coordinator: Anna Castelli
Exhibitions:
Corso Aperto
Preview: 9 July, 4:30pm
Opening: 10 July, 10am–6pm
Venue: Villa del Grumello, via per Cernobbio 11, Como
Tacita Dean: Craneway Event
10 July–28 September
Film screening preview: 9 July, 7:30pm
Film screenings: Thursday–Sunday, 4pm / 6 pm
Venue: Spazio Culturale Antonio Ratti (former San Francesco Church), Largo Spallino 1, Como
Lectures (at Villa Sucota, via per Cernobbio 19)
Tacita Dean
9 July, 5:30pm
Béla Tarr
16 July, 6:30pm
The CSAV – Artists Research Laboratory, conceived and directed by Annie Ratti, is among one of the most prestigious artists’ workshops in Europe. Every year since 1995, in July, an internationally acclaimed artist shares her/his vision and experience with a group of emerging artists—recruited through an open call. Detached from the traditional teaching methods, CSAV privileges improvisation, debate and growth.
In 2014 the CSAV – Artists Research Laboratory celebrates its 20th edition. This year, the summer workshop will be lead by one of the most important living British artists: Tacita Dean (born 1965 in Canterbury, UK, lives in Berlin).
Dean’s works are known for their contemplative and slow pace. Whether they portray an artist near to the end of his life or depict a fleeting optical phenomenon—like the ‘green ray’ at sunset—their key subject is the passing of time and the moving beauty of what time erases.
The theme suggested by the artist for XX CSAV indeed relates to time. Titled Comoggardising: the benefits of creative indolence (Comoggardising is a word created by Dean by combining Como with sluggardising the English translation of one of writer Robert Walser’s verb), the workshop aims to revalue the so-called ‘dead time,’ a time where the basic elements of creative process—contemplation, daydreaming, incidental thinking—can find their place. All participants are warned: “The level of brain idleness I want to encourage is very rigorous indeed and difficult to achieve.”
Tacita Dean will discuss her work during the first public event of the workshop: her lecture on the 9th of July at 5:30pm.
In keeping with the subject, the workshop will host another master of the slow gaze as a lecturer, one of the most radical living movie directors: the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, author of Sátántángo (1994, lasting about 7 hours) and The Turin Horse (2011). Tarr’s lecture will take place on the 16th of July at 6:30pm.
The workshop programme also includes two exhibitions: the group show of the participant artists—Corso aperto—and the solo show of the visiting artist, both opening on 9th of July. Corso aperto will be held in the suggestive Villa del Grumello in Como. It will introduce the audience to the work of the 16 young participant artists—from ten different countries—selected among almost 700 applicants to the Foundation’s open call.
Tacita Dean‘s solo show will be hosted at Spazio Culturale Antonio Ratti in Como. The show is named after Craneway Event—the 2009 film that will be projected for the first time in Italy—one of the artist’s longest (108 minutes) and most important films. Craneway Event portrays Merce Cunningham months before his death at the age of 90. In the film the choreographer is lucid and focused, despite the age, while he directs from a wheelchair his dance company rehearsing in a large hall overlooking the San Francisco Bay. “I began to feel that Merce had set up the components that make up the film—the building, the dancers, the light, the ships and the birds, because he knew they would not fail him in absentia.”
–Tacita Dean, 2009
With the collaboration of Comune di Como
Thanks to Villa del Grumello
Grants: Artists in Residence – Jakobstad
Sponsor: Epson Italia
Press office
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