edited by Chiara Gatti
coordination by Elisabetta Masala
Winning project of PAC2021 – Plan for Contemporary Art promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture
The MAN Museum of Nuoro presents for the summer, in the spaces of its project room, I call Olympia, winning project of PAC2021.
Je m’appelle Olympia was born from an “action for hall lights” performed by Alice Guareschi, only once, for a selected audience of guests, on 12 April 2012 at the Olympia Music Hall, an iconic and legendary Parisian theatre. The 16 photographs that make up this series were taken on the same day as the action, immediately after the live activation of the light choreography in the empty space of the theatre, which involved all thirteen tracks of colored lights, permanently integrated into the architecture. With a fixed shot, similar but not identical, following the precise original score composed by the artist, the images return a sequence of different movements of light inside the room. The photographic series thus becomes a new synthesis of the image-idea and the intention at the origin of the performance: to activate a theater without any show, play it live , reawaken the latent memory, the secret life removed from the spectator’s gaze. By breaking down the duration of the action into frames, which can be seen both individually and as a whole, the spatial declination of the work now allows the idea to be embraced in a single glance.
The setup site-specific, studied by the artist for the MAN, displays all the photographs of the series, alongside the punctuated musical score, on the staves, from the times of the action, where presences or pauses of the lights replace the musical notes in a complex polyphony. The space – conceived as a small theater – is reached by crossing the entrance curtain, evocation of access to an audience, but also a border, a limit that separates the place of life from its representation. Immersed in silence, the ideal space of the theatre, removed from voices or sounds, stages itself; the light inhabits it, revealing its nature and physiognomy.
«The starting point is an image: that of a luminous choreography that suddenly activates in the empty space of the hall, at a moment of the day when no show is scheduled and the theater rests uninhabited and silent. Like an explosion of energy accumulated over the years, like the unexpected revelation of a secret life that concerns only the building. A few months ago, when I found myself for the first time at the Olympia for a concert, I was deeply struck by the silent wonder of the lights in relation to the somehow romantic monumentality, marked by time and its stories, of the theater. To such a point that music has become an almost superfluous element for me. Without having foreseen it, I had become a spectator of another show. At the end of the evening I left the hall last, to be able to take full advantage of the powerful atmosphere of the space left empty after the concert: the perception of the very small scale of my body in relation to the spectacular majesty of the theatre, even more striking when on the scene nothing is happening, it also had a truly surprising effect on me. In the narrative suspension of this present space-time, the link between past and future suddenly seemed to show itself with its extraordinary charge of memory and possibility. “This is the space that stories inhabit,” I thought. Left alone with herself again, the room seemed to vibrate secretly.” Alice Guareschi, Paris, 12 April 2012
Open call
Workshop for adults – aimed at art students, artists, researchers, performers, musicians
My name is Olympia
Thursday 14th – Saturday 16th September 2023
Within the framework of the project My name is Olympia , the workshop for adults conducted by Alice Guareschi, in collaboration with the MAN educational department, aims to directly involve participants, stimulating the development of critical thinking, discussion and the growth of creative abilities. Starting from some food for thought that the work raises – such as, for example, the idea of ”activation of a space”, of “latent memory of a place” and of “the secret life of a building in the absence of spectacle” – the work will be divided into different moments and spaces, starting from the MAN to explore and involve other important points of the social and cultural fabric of Nuoro, including the civic theatre. The objective is to create a direct link between the work, the artist, the museum and the city, where the participants will be active figures, who through their theoretical and practical involvement and their personal experience, will become agents bearers of a new look.
Biographical note
Alice Guareschi (1976) is a visual artist and filmmaker, lives and works in Milan. Graduated in philosophy with a thesis on experimental cinema, she articulates her research between video, writing and the creation of objects. She has been an artist in residence in Paris at the Pavillon du Palais de Tokyo and at the Cité Internationale des Arts, in Triangle, New York, and at Kaus Australis, Rotterdam. In 2008 he won the Scholarship for Young Italian Art of the Friends of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, and in 2022 he won the PAC2021 production call promoted by the General Directorate of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. Since 2018 he has taught Project Writing and Creative Research at the IED in Milan, and since 2022 Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies I at NABA. He has participated in collective exhibitions and festivals in Italy and abroad, exhibiting in public and private institutions including: Fondazione Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin; PAC, Milan; MAMbo, Bologna; GAMeC, Bergamo; Mart, Rovereto; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg; Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris; Spanish Academy and German Academy at Villa Massimo, Rome; Villa Arson, Nice. Main solo exhibitions: Galleria Alessandro De March, Milan; Sonia Rosso Gallery, Turin; Center Culturel Français, Milan; Rivoli Castle, Turin; Italian Cultural Institute, Paris; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn; Galerie DREI, Cologne; Joey Ramone Gallery, Rotterdam. Film festivals and screenings: Filmmaker Doc Festival, Milan; Impakt Festival, Utrecht; Italian Cinema London Festival; Pesaro New Cinema Exhibition; Milan Design Film Festival; The Foundation, Rome; Milan Triennial; Macro, Rome.
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