Arte a Milano – Inaugura il 12 dicembre alla Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro

On Thursday December 12th at 5pm, the video Walking through the walls (40’ VR 360° ambisonic) will be presented at Studio Arnaldo Pomodoro, as part of the project Hic sunt draconesby the artist Francesco Bertelé, curated by Chiara Pirozzi and promoted by Fondazione Made in Cloister. The project was the winner of the 4th edition of the Italian Council (2018), a competition conceived by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity and Urban Regeneration – an organism of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism.

After the presentation at Amsterdam’s Mediamatic center, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro will host the first step of Hic sunt dracones transmedial narrative. The work will be presented in its entirety in January 2020, with the release of the final version on the occasion of an exhibition at Naples’ Museo Madre – to which the work is being donated – together with the presentation of the artist’s book as an integral part of the entire project.

The video Walking through the walls will be presented in the evocative venue of Studio Arnaldo Pomodoro and viewed with Oculus GO and MEZE AUDIO headphones, to experience it in a collective immersive way. The video is completed by a soundtrack composed by the musician Bienoise and editing meant to create a physical and tangible link between the artist, his experience and the performance acting on the end-user.

Hic sunt dracones is the product of a long and complex research project carried out by Francesco Bertelé over several years. Since 2018 it has included an exploratory performance carried out by the artist and his team: a sideways climb along the northern cliff of an island in the Mediterranean Sea.
The exploratory action carried out by the artist, suspended between sky and sea on a rocky coast that geologically belongs to the African tectonic plate but politically to Europe, has been mapped with the aid of advanced digital technologies. These have transformed it into an individual and unique route where up-to-date Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies blend with insights generated from themes such as the geopolitics of the border, the manipulation of information and the ‘error’ as a gap between physical and altered reality. The result is a disconnect between present time and that of experience, as well as a sensory distortion in hybrid and over-stimulated environments – in other words, a place where the threshold of certainty might be crossed with the aim of constructing and inhabiting unexplored spaces, starting from the cognitive perceptions of each individual..

Francesco Bertelé’s research in Hic sunt dracones is energised with theoretical insight by authors who have written critical essays in the artist’s book. It is formalised in the experimental use of digital technologies and in the creation of an environmental installation, through a collaboration between the artist and the FabLab Recipient.Cc. The strongly dematerialised nature of this installation – able to redefine the space of vision, models of use and narrative experiences in a revolutionary way (S. Arcagni) – is created through interaction with the individual, the only tool that can activate the work.

Project made possible by the support of the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity and Urban Regeneration an organism of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, under the Italian Council program, 4th Edition, 2018.