Date: 02 February - 02 March, 2013
Location: BOCS, Catania, Italy
Curated by Alessandra Ferlito
Disrupted Accounts is the first solo exhibition of Maria Domenica Rapicavoli in Catania, her native city.
Developed from an investigation of economic and political ties between Sicily (the artist’s country of origin) and the United States (where she currently works), Disrupted Accounts explores the complex relationship between historical memory and individual conscience, raising specific questions about the (presumed) veracity of reconstruction, narration and transmission of events in relation to the common perception of the current situation - dominated on the surface by a complex system of invisible and unknown connections.
Drawing from recent news events (shedding light on the effects of the military agreements between the two continents which started in the 50s), the project triggers an extensive series of space-time references, holding the viewer in a continuous back and forth between the past and an unpredictable future, creating an atmosphere of suspension and ambiguity. Within this framework even the present appears as a transient and imperceptible time between what has just been and what is to become. Reality escapes from the understanding of those who are living it and it becomes an indefinite and misleading fragment.
As the title suggests, the exhibition presents itself as a disrupted, disturbed, broken up account, challenging all linear readings of temporality. The show is an audiovisual device that acts as a polyphonic document in which the viewer can loose or find himself, negotiating between abstract and poetic tones, or critical and political notes.
For the production of the project, the artist focuses on the exhibition space which looks like a hangar, and experiments with both artistic media she normally uses (photography and video), as well as with new ones (found object sculptures and sound installation), assigning to each of them a precise semantic and conceptual value.
The exhibition consists of a set of works closely related and complementary to each other: An immersive sound installation of environmental and mechanical sounds. An 8 mm video projection transferred into digital showing footage shot by the artist around restricted Sicilian military bases on Mount Etna as well as fragments extracted from the web (U.S unmanned airplanes flights, for example). A black and white photograph, printed on traditional paper showing a panoramic view and some fragments of a German war plane, which crashed on Mount Etna in 1943 and has never been found. Another large size photo printed on common wrapping paper, providing an overview of the Muos (Mobile User Objective System) – a system of satellite communications at ultra-high frequency. It is one of the four ground stations in the world and it is under construction in Sicily, near Niscemi.
Other clues are also provided in the form of sculptural fragments and texts. Alessandra Ferlito
Click here to the exhibition website.
Click here for press release.
