STRESSED ENVIRONMENT / 2016
installation, dimension variable, Marselléria, Milan
In Marselleria’s new space, Davide Savorani creates “Stressed Environment”, turning it into a place full of stimuli coming from his research on the possibility of transforming boredom into an active, dynamic and continually mutating state.
Savorani says that “You are never at ease if you are bored”: you react to stimuli, and while trying to adapt yourself, you have new experiences, both personal and shared. We are usually slaves to frantic stimuli in communication, social and personal relationships and the working environment.
So, boredom could be the seed of an alternative: opening new scenarios, new dialogues and new narratives, and bringing us beyond the binary system of consumption and production, demand and offer, which is continuously repeated by capitalism.
With “Stressed Environment” Savorani presents an unprecedented installation and performative elements which disdain stability, the static, two-dimensionality, and instead favour movement, prompting action both for the audience and for the choreographies which take place during the exhibition.
“Stressed Environment” unfolds in an ambiguous way, where the displayed works and the acoustic references uncover multiple, shimmering dynamics inscribed in the phisicality of Marselleria’s space.
In the exhibition space the artist has put together a science-fiction choreography of PVC masks and telescopic poles, usually used to support satellite dishes, which here instead are a suggestion of a series of physical exercises. The light boxes illuminate Savorani’s drawings and images and punctuate the course of a show that defies trite readings and established definitions. The banana peels symbolize the past, but there is a future being built here.
Hello! – So begins each of the monologues of the voice at the rear of the exhibition. This lively stream of consciousness may be a guide to overcoming the psychological complications of everyday life or perhaps it contains a veiled invitation to curl up in each of our lush, lustful emotional wildernesses.
Caterina Riva
CIAO!
written by Davide Savorani
interpreted by Laura Bagarella
(2016) audio track, 30′, stereo
Chapter II
Hi.
This series of messages takes inspiration from real events. Some of the names, activities, incidents — as much as some locations and events — have been fictionalized for the purpose of drama. Any resemblance to names, personalities or histories of a person is purely coincidental and unintentional.
OK.
Who are you? What’s your story? What are you looking for? Have we met already? Have you noticed me? I lost sight of you. Can we see each other? Where are we? How distant?
We’re close, very close. Basically joined. Almost like one person. It’s no longer a matter of dramatic virtual distances. Here you are. I can see the open pores of your face, the dirt in your t shirt collar, the creases of your shoes.
Your breath. You’re breathing. Ok, enough.
How long did it take you to realize you could spend your time with me?
Use and spend. Consume. Discard. Then search, again. Re-search. Choose. Try. Maybe, yes. Maybe, not. Use and spend, again. Hope. Consume. Let down. Discard. Continue.
What a shitty circle! What a nice story.
Big disappointment. Big virtual tour. Big wonder. Big adventure. Big stress. Big void. Huge bore. Big fraud. Big loss of time. Big deal. Big value for quality/price/time and space ratio. Until there’s nothing ‘big’ left. Everything is gone. I’m sorry, it’s all over.
Let’s get closer, so close we end up talking about our solitude while tickling each other’s brows.
Let’s get closer, let’s hold onto each other, let’s make it clear how falsely profound we are.
Let’s spit each other away. I’m a kernel, you’re a kernel.
When I got to the Base I was over saturated, my boot disk was full, my system was stuck. My personalities had overdosed. I had the impression of being a tree-body, onto which thousands of people were hanging, trying to escape from a tsunami. They were holding tight to my empty skin, my flabby muscles. I was every single one of those astonished people. Astonished: shaken by clamour of thunders. Making somebody stupid. Thundering. Getting dumb after a close strike of a lightning, but more generally for any kind of reason. Still and silent because of a big surprise or any other strong feeling. Astonishment. Dumb.
Do you know what I mean? Do you understand why I was unable to feel any drive, no matter if natural or artificial?
Here we are. We could make it together, but let’s leave it here for now.
In the meantime. Idealize a place and its inhabitants. Get into details enough so that it disappears.
Bye.
(translated by Giulia Tognon)
Chapter VIII
Hi.
Look up.
If you’re here it’s also a matter of time. The third or fourth thing you get told at the Base is a very simple exercise: formulate and ask yourself questions about time. What kind of time is it? How’s time? Where are you in relation to time? How much time do you have? How do you fill your time? Or is time filling itself?
I know, they seem silly questions, but trust me, it’s like a close-up on every single pore of the skin, yours or someone else’s. Like in a hole to be filled and emptied, filled and emptied.
My dear Sisifo, how’s the weather? Dark. Beautiful. Wolf. Bright. Magnetic. Normal.
What time is it? It’s your hour. The hour of those who surrender. The hour of those who, more or less pathetically, surrender to. Those who are and, sometimes, forget to be. How? With or without desire. What? How many? Why?
The desire to give everything and everyone up, whenever you want. The desire to be anything.
The desire of ‘whatever’. The desire to fuck a manhole in the daylight.
The desire of the manhole, the ball, the line, the fire, the shoe, the window.
The desire to change everything and ignore rules. Too many and often without desire.
The desire to stop everything and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!
Where were we? We were talking about the rules of others against your standards (?). The time of trees against your positions. Especially your time, that has nothing to do with timing. Employed, enlisted, justified, absent, dismissed, wasted, killer, traitor, pleasure-seeker, relaxing, wearying time and again: absent, absent, absent time.
Smile and let’s take a break.
Let’s suspend ourselves for an x lapse of time. Let’s pretend we know each other. Let’s share something extremely personal. Improper. Obscene. Visceral. I am talking precisely about that feeling, that slimy surface. Sticky, squishy, gelatinous, soggy, slippery, oily, pasty.
Hands sinking into the intestines of the goat thrown on the bare and repulsive rock, under a plumbeous and furious sky. The impetus of lightning in the dawn of times, when times were numerous. And the future could be right there, in those contortions. You know what? This is far ahead that people don’t understand it: I love it. Is it your blindness or my farsightedness? I know, it’s tough on the ears, but there’s so much heart in the head. Damnit. No one is ever ready, ever! Struggling to discover the blood ties between brain and duodenum, knew and stack, nail and sea. Why insist? How much time has passed? How much time is there left? Once you’ll think you know me, you’ll get tired of me. Staying, remaining, reanimating.
Ok, let’s have another break.
The time of a yawn. From here to there. But what happens when all the other bridges get bombed? What if you don’t manage to jump?Yes, I know that you can see the target, it’s right in front of you. But easier said than done.
Bye.
