A LINE OF TIME
(14 September to 25 September 2015)
"... Time is not the achievement of an isolated and lone subject, but … is the very relationship of the subject with the Other..."
(Emmanuel Levinas, "Time and the Other")
The project comes from the idea of relating my creative process to that of the Cartiera Favini paper mill. Starting from the production methods and some significant words that were said during my visit to the company, I tried to find a strong connection with my own practice, work and thought process.
By starting with my own experience of encountering a different situation, new possibilities were opened. I always keep with me the substance I am made of and when I come across something that corresponds to me, I let it affect the pre-existing substance. This time, which was previously experienced in solitude, is reanimated through an exchange, intersecting with other people’s stories.
WORDS FROM THE MEETING WITH FAVINI: THE CYCLE
Michele Posocco: Knead, press and amalgamate, following a productive cycle.
Maria: Leave traces. Scan time, keep in the rhythm of existence. Move, act, deposit colour, trace signs, all of this leaves parts behind. What remains during the journey constitutes something parallel and marks the passage of the experience.
THE PLACE OF ORIGIN
The place where the colour is created: The Bowl, where Maria creates the colour every day, and The Kneader in which the paper machine mixes the colours for the paper.
The gesture in the studio is small and contained. The colour created in the studio on a daily basis is small and concentrated.
The gesture of the paper mill is broad and repetitive.
How can I make this condensed and intimate gesture relate to the large dimensions and large quantity?
THE PAPER, THE SPONGES AND THE STONES
A life cycle is activated through a succession of colours. One colour leads to another. One colour determines another. One colour is kneaded and amalgamated with another.
Two times compared. Two traces of colour. The time of the paper machine and the intimate time of the artist.
Maria and Favini obtain their colours with their hands in the same time span.
Favini’s colour is crystallised through the tracing of my hand. It is about “pinches of colour” whereas mine is through sponges which absorb the colour so that you can hold it in your hand.
Clumps, colours which express density and consistency and which allow you to take the measurement of things.
An azzurrite granite stone is inserted like an intruder, like an interruption, which is added to the layout like a meteorite catapulted into this cycle. An external, vaster, more dilated time, outside of everything, a substance which is here to symbolise the origin of all “colour”.
(Written in 2016)
