Salviamo la Luna
Save the Moon
CR 891. Year 2005 - 2007
What did we try to salvage with this rational, highly structured and yet open, loose, unpredictable project? What is the meaning of the moon to which we refer with a title which is so incredibly poetic and yet simple and far from rhetorical? An extreme poetic act of poiesis, an ultimate and extreme attempt to create art by doing, in memory of the etymology of the Greek verb poiein, which means "to do", as Gerz reminded us? The firm belief that at the bottom of their hearts people still want to take part in a process, in something collective? That culture can assert itself against the force of commodities, the mass media, the conventions of a life which is the same for everybody and yet governed by a manifest individualism? Did we also want to salvage a dynamic and open idea of photography, no longer an image to be contemplated but an instrument for action, playing, sharing, participation? A hope that, in the midst of barbarous contemporary anarchy, some ghost of democracy might survive in a form of a scattered, free poetic vortex, void of usefulness and not finalised towards anything? The idea that a museum located in a metropolitan hinterland might have a vital impact…?
Roberta Valtorta 2008
Categories
Keywords
Public authorship / Work in public space
Cinisello Balsamo, Italia
2734 photographic portraits, each 60 x 45 cm, mounted on aluminum
The invitation extended to Jochen Gerz by the Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea was accompanied by the request to create a bridge between the city and the museum and to realize a public work that would be equally significant for both the townspeople and visitors from other areas.
The point of departure for the work was the story of a man from Cinisello Balsamo who found the moon in a puddle.
The man did not realize that what he saw was only the reflection of the moon. He asked his friends to help him rescue the moon. Gerz invited the citizens of Cinisello Balsamo to help him realize a public work of art. Participants were photographed by young artists at the Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea in Cinisello Balsamo. Then each participant carried his or her own portrait through the streets of the city for an hour after sunset as a “personal manifestation”. Following their return to the museum, the photographs were exhibited for two months and then distributed to the participants, each of whom received the portrait of a different person on permanent loan for exhibition at home.
Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Cinisello Balsamo.
Participants
2734 residents of Cinisello Balsamo
Partners
Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea, Comune di Cinisello Balsamo, Comune di Milano – Padiglione di Arte Contemporanea, Goethe-Institut Milano, Politecnico di Milano, Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, CFP Riccardo Bauer, IULM – Istituto di consumi, Grandi Stazioni, Il Giorno, La Città (quindicinale di Cinisello Balsamo), Il Diario del Nord Milano, Projektlabor Cinisello Balsamo, Matteo Balduzzi, Carole Simonetti, Roberta Valtorta
Realisation
Cinisello Balsamo, 2007
Exhibition
Cinisello Balsamo, Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea in Cinisello Balsamo und Villa Ghirlanda, 23.6. – 23.9.2007
Bibliography
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