Dates: 28 October 2012 - 2 January 2013
Place: Sala delle Colonne, Fabbrica del Vapore (Milan) and Kunsthuis SYB (Beetsterzwaag)
Curated by Angela Serino and Valerio Del Baglivo. A collaboration between Kunsthuis SYB (NL) and FARE Milano (IT), promoted by City of Milan.
Artists: Maja Bekan, Rory Pilgrim, Paola Anziche’, Marwa Arsanios, Valerio Rocco Orlando, Italo Zuffi.
Is it possible to interrupt our usual routine and suspend our daily programming – however briefly – to rethink the ways and the rhythms of our ‘making’? Can art provide us the opportunity to activate a different level of attention towards ourselves and the environment around us? If any activity requires a certain degree of attention, what happens when the content of an artwork considers the aesthetic dimension of concentration itself?
Through a series of collective activities, involving both physical and mental exercises, the artists of “PAY ATTENTION, please” will generate moments of concentration that aim to encourage alternative ways of observing, experiencing and relating to our surrounding environment.
The proposed exercises will allow us to develop new abilities and skills, as well as to gain new knowledge. But they are also intended to cause shifts and deviations in the experience of each participant, helping them to focus on their relationships with other people, as well as with the familiar gestures they make every day. Transforming the creative act via group actions that also require a degree of individual concentration, “PAY ATTENTION, please” aspires to stimulate a different understanding of our everyday experiences.
”PAY ATTENTION, please” stems from a reflection on the role of residency programs as places of isolation and concentration, and it takes inspiration from the recent projects “ON Residency or an (in)visible production”, curated by A. Serino at Kunsthuis SYB, and “Decompression Summer Camp", co-curated by Valerio Del Baglivo and Radical Intention at Corniolo Art Platform in Tuscany.
The project is supported by the City of Milan, FARE and Kunsthuis SYB, and it consists of a series of public activities that take place at Sala delle Colonne, Fabbrica del Vapore (Milan) and Kunsthuis SYB (Beetsterzwaag).
