Читать книгу South Tyrol. The Other Italy - Елизавета Эбнер - Страница 10

At first, they took away only the toilet. The explanation that it was only an innocent curtsey to the classic of modern art, the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, didn’t help a bit; the work was ruthlessly impounded by the city authorities following a complaint from National Alliance activists. The toilet was a work by the Roman artists Eleonora Chiari and Sara Goldschmied, working under the pseudonym Goldiechiari. When a person approached it, the plumbing fixture would play Italy’s national anthem along with the sounds of flushing. The case came to trial, and the court ruled that the toilet did not insult either the anthem or the state of Italy, and it was returned to its place.

Then, their “crucified frog” by the German artist Martin Kippenberger was glimpsed by a representative of the Roman Curia, who was pretty much bothered by the sight. As a result, Pope Benedict XVI personally spoke out against this scoffing green amphibian on the cross with an egg in one hand and a beer mug in the other. The Italian Minister of Culture Sandro Bondi called the frog “an unnecessary provocation”, while Franz Pahl, an official, went on a hunger strike as a sign of protest against the sculpture, and even ended up in hospital. Meanwhile, the artist Martin Kippenberger, who died in 1997, called his work Zuerst die Füsse (“Feet first”), and said it was a self-portrait of a person in a state of deep crisis.

Finally, the whole world heard the news about the installation Where Shall We Go Dancing Tonight? which the cleaners took for garbage. The work by the already mentioned Roman artists Eleonora Chiari and Sara Goldschmied was supposed to tell about the ideology of the consumer society, to ridicule the luxurious parties and scandals around the Italian politicians of the 1980s. Empty bottles scattered on the floor, cigarette butts, streamers, festive decorations, items of clothing and shoes – cleaners took all this for garbage from the celebration held the night before, sorted it into recycling bags and cleaned the room. Fortunately, the installation was recreated.

All of these stories took place at the Bolzano (Bozen) Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. It has been blacklisted, and it seems that all the international press has written about scandals associated with its exhibitions. However, even at the most difficult times, here, at the Museion, the staff have fought with word and action for the right of the art to be free, and all the unpleasant “incidents” were perceived philosophically, as a basis for discussing contemporary art.

Unfortunately, the construction of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano (Bozen) did not bring the so-called “Bilbao effect” to the region. Even now, artists from London or New York, who are invited from time to time to take part in the Museion exhibition programs, first have to figure out its exact geographical position. Nevertheless, the architectural design of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, created by the Berlin architects KSV Krüger Schuberth Vandreike, is very interesting in itself. The 25-metre-high parallelepiped is located on the border between the “old” and the “new” Bolzano, with one of its glass facades reflecting the life of the historical part of the city and another one – the rapid flow of the Talfer river and the modern city across the river. At sunset, these glass facades become an “exhibition tool” of multimedia art. Inside the multi-layered facades of the museum there are opaque glass panels, which during the daytime are used to control the lighting inside the Museion. Thus, in the afternoon, when the panels are “open”, you can see everything that happens in the building from the outside. Who knows, whether the representative of the Curia, going on his way past the museum, would have seen Kippenberger’s “crucified frog”, if the sculpture, hanging in the hall above the cashier’s desk, had not been visible from outside through the transparent walls?

The Museion was created not as a “container” with works of art, but as an international research laboratory in the field of contemporary art. In addition to the exhibition halls, the museum has venues for events and seminars, a library, a cafe, a shop and, moreover, a multipurpose indoor space on the ground floor, open to everybody. The latter was created by a guest designer from Merano (Meran), Martino Gamper, who has been living in London for many years. The Museion Passage was made free-to-enter for all kinds of events, both related and non-related to the work of the museum.

The wonderful initiative of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano (Bozen) – opening its covered passage with designer furniture for free public use – almost turned into another scandal. Migrants began to gather there. They charged their phones in the museum, used its restrooms and its high-speed free internet. Migrants filled the stone benches in front of the museum – the Wi-Fi signal was fine in the street. Soon the benches got decorated with inscriptions “Bolzano ai Bolzanini!!” (“Bolzano is for the residents of Bolzano”) and “Integrazione = Degrado!!” (“Integration equals degradation”).

Well, we forget that people never run from their countries, homes and families, if everything is all right. Tomorrow, you can find yourself in their place: run away from bombs, hunger, poverty, an unfair political regime; carry your children in the arms mile after mile, not knowing what awaits them ahead; try to cross a sea, realizing that the chances of drowning and of reaching the coast are about equal; risk your life and the lives of your families for the sake of hope for the future. Put yourself in the shoes of these people. What do you know about them?

The reaction of the Museion’s administration was not immediate, but nevertheless the only correct one: they gave the migrants the opportunity to speak about themselves. The project was called “Where do you imagine yourself?” Within its framework, meetings were held, at which the migrants were told about the place in front of which they would spend hours on benches, separated from it, however, by an invisible barrier. The experimental project of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano helped these people to take the first steps to adaptation and became an opportunity to learn about their stories and life situations. And that was only the beginning. A few months later, migrants, young people from South Tyrol and other European regions were already working together on an art project at Museion. The barriers had been finally brought down. The migrants got an opportunity to become a part of the community, while the community got a chance to feel closer to the migrants.

This art project, like many others, was created through common efforts in the studio – the building located next to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. The house-studio was designed, along with the Museion and two bridges – for pedestrians and cyclists, by the Berlin KSV architects, as part of a single museum complex. The interior space of the building was occupied by the South Tyrolean designer Harry Thaler, whom the press usually calls “a London designer of South Tyrolean origin”. Interestingly, during his studies in the capital of Great Britain, Thaler, before setting up his own firm, worked at the office of Martino Gamper, the designer of the Museion Passage. The house-studio was designed as a temporary housing and a workshop for guest artists and curators invited to the Museion in Bolzano (Bozen).

The museum complex continues with two bridges spanning the Talfer river. Though made from the same materials as the museum itself, they were designed curvilinear in contrast to its strict forms. The bridges connect the historical centre of the city with the “new” Bolzano (Bozen), and you will have to cross them in order to look at the last part of the museum complex, located in the modern Don Bosco district.

There used to be a huge garden where Don Bosco district is now, but in 1940, under the Fascist regime, workers who came from various places in Italy to work in the nearby industrial area of Bolzano (Bozen) began to settle here. This project was part of the plan for the Italianization of South Tyrol – the result of the agreement between Hitler and Mussolini concerning the region. The period from 1943 through 1945 was for Don Bosco the time of Nazi occupation. A transit camp was established here, in which the Jews and the partisans of South Tyrol and other occupied territories were usually held before deportation to concentration camps in Germany. Today, you can follow the history of Don Bosco by looking at the few monuments of the past still found on its territory: remnants of the camp wall, sculptures dedicated to the victims of the inhuman regime, and one of the houses for Italian workers, now turned into a museum (casa semirurale, “a semi-rural house”).

People generally go to museums for knowledge and new impressions, but the administraton of Museion reckoned that the opposite is also possible. That is how a small glass pavilion – the Garutti Cube, or the Little Museion, as people call it – appeared in Don Bosco district. The artist Alberto Garutti studied the population of the district and came to the conclusion that its residents have practically no interest for arts. Garutti wanted to change this state of affairs, to establish a dialogue with the city, to become as close to the potential audience as possible, to step down from the creator’s “pedestal”, and to produce a piece of art that would possibly become a link between his work and the audience. As part of this project, it was decided to decentralize the system responsible for contemporary art in Bolzano (Bozen) by moving one work of art from the Museion collection to the outskirts of the city every three months or by creating “autonomous” exhibitions. The simple glass-and-concrete pavilion installed next to a playground became a mini-representation of the Museum of Modern Art. You cannot enter the transparent cubic sculpture – you can only look at its contents from the outside, but when you approach the pavilion, the lighting is turned on at any time of the day (or night). People passing by the Garutti Cube inevitably find themselves in the role of spectators, and over time it becomes an everyday object for them. The pavilion naturally generates around itself numerous meetings of local residents, of people interested in the exhibited works and in art in general. The architectural solution of the Little Museion was made as simple as possible on purpose – so that the concept of introducing modern art into different parts of the city could be continued in the future.

One would think that the residents of Don Bosco remained only outside observers of the Garutti Cube project, but that is not true. Several exhibitions were set up in the pavilion with their active participation. For one of them, residents of the district were asked to bring some of their personal belongings to the cube; those were used to create an exhibition dedicated to the collective activities of the population of Don Bosco. As part of another project, people were invited to turn the walls of the pavilion into a shared diary, which was then exhibited in Museion.

Isn’t art an amazing thing! It can unite; evoke feelings and emotions in people of any age, any culture, and any nationality. The inhabitants of Don Bosco, before the appearance of the Garutti Cube in their district, probably could not have imagined that their thoughts or objects preserving the memory of their lives would one day become museum exhibits.

It is wonderful how one building can put a whole region on the map of the world. The architect Frank Gehry designed the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the life of the Basque Country changed dramatically for the better. The whole world started speaking about that part of Spain.

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano (Bozen) did not bring instant international fame to South Tyrol, so what? The most important thing is that Museion has managed to make a difference for its land and for its residents. You will probably say that not everyone will agree with this statement in South Tyrol itself, and that, according to opinion polls, not all the inhabitants of the region are proud of the museum. Well, there are very few things in life that people would be unanimously positive about, especially when it comes to art.