01/07/10
Slept very well and woke up to conversations I later learnt were with the city official sort of like a mayor or presidente.
Got directions and a map to the Fresia Gardens and set off, wondering if the forecasts of thunderstorms would hold true. Promptly misnavigated, found the swimming pool, grabbed an espresso and took up the super steep >45° path back to the main road. Located the park and set about stamping Blah Blah Blah on the designated pavilion.
Simone arrived to provide tech support and we installed the speakers and mp3 players which tried to pretend they didn’t work and then proceeded to be incredibly quiet on max volume. Simone rescued the situation and increased the volume on the mp3 files and it worked fine so we tried the positioning of the speakers for a while until I decide they should all face outwards opposite to the Static projection.
The ants crawling over the freshly stamped Blah Blah Blah were mesmerising and brought scale and a 2D reality to the surface. Both Michelas said they thought it was beautiful and I was happy. I think they thought the sound piece was bonkers and would drive me mad. Perhaps there’s something in the installation now that’s both attractive and repulsive or inviting and intrusive; the appeal of the visual Blah Blah Blah and the way it leads the eye in peaks and troughs from left to right, and then there’s the audio that’s difficult to pinpoint and distinguish each voice and you cannot just stop hearing like you can choose not to look at the visual, or choose which bit to consume so easily without physically navigating the space.
I learnt from Francesca in Edinburgh that bla bla bla is a very Italian phrase, and I have heard it often, probably more than the UK.
I wondered before, in conversation and selection by Michela how it would translate and now more educated on the matter I am still curious how the mostly Northern and softer Southern English accents and the additional h will be perceived.
I also don’t know what the curators have put in my text panel although Simone who is French attempts the first line for me in English which includes the word “obsession” or a derivative. The projection needs bringing up a little but that can wait til later.
Another artist Ryts Monet (Enrico de Napoli) is clothing a tree with what I understand to be donated/recycled clothing and although more patchwork than regular, I instantly see an affinity with Odd Socks which I’m making again for a show at Manchester Victoria Baths in September. I want to talk to him about it and those parallels and differentiations but I do not speak enough Italian and he does speak enough English. Instead I talk to his girlfriend curator about the pros and cons of being and working with different sizes of organisation.
I feel embarrassed about not knowing much lingua locale which is made worse by a strange compulsion to speak German and I keep entirely forgetting that it’s grazie not danke.
