Black Air

Artists: Aldo Tambellini, Otto Piene, Ibrahim R. Ineke, Semiconductor, Ayako Kato, Max Kuiper, Lisa Slodki, Hans de Wit

Air is black. It is without colour, without luminosity, and without form. Its blackness is not void, but constitutes pure potential, raw creative energy. Air is free. It circulates everywhere, all at once and always, without conceding to architectural or political borders. We are intimately immersed in black air. We are born into it. We breathe it. We move and act through it, speak from within it. Full of electromagnetic energy, black air animates us, it vibrates and sounds, it carries and transmits.

Curated by Amelia LiCavoli, Black Air takes its name from a 1968 electronic environment of video and pneumatics by Aldo Tambellini and Otto Piene. In addition to this re-activation, a new publication, site-specific installations, and performances have been commissioned. Ibrahim R. Ineke’s painting and artist’s book set the human scale. Semiconductor maps scientific data from expanses of dark energy within superclusters of galaxies, and visualizes them as sculptural reliefs, accompanied by sound. Ayako Kato performs a physical exploration of metaphysical black air throughout space and time. Max Kuiper constructs a mixed-media installation of sound, video projections, and transparent sheets with encased materials and prints. A suspended video installation by Lisa Slodki depicts a series of dynamic vignettes captured during a search for ether. Landscapes by Hans de Wit indicate bursts of radiation, churning air, and biological antennae, suggesting that the earth’s surface is more like a lung than a hard crust. Together these artworks demonstrate the amorosity of black air—which becomes visible or tangible only through its interactions, relationships, and effects.

Amelia LiCavoli is a Chicago-based curator and writer specializing in intermedia art. Since 2014 she has been developing a book manuscript that documents the underground history of Aldo Tambellini’s Black Gate Theater and its integration within experimental-film and electromedia-performance art of the 1960s. Since 2003, Amelia LiCavoli has published catalogue essays, monographs, long-form articles, and exhibition/performance reviews. She has also curated gallery exhibitions and video and film screenings at venues such as Experimental Sound Studio, Artists’ Television Access, and Western Exhibitions in the US, Nes Artist Residency in Iceland, and CCRD opderschmelz in Luxembourg.