On 31st July 2008 opens the first edition of Genuis Loci, environmental art exhibition managed by Federica Forti and set up on Palmaria isle. Porto Venere and Alps is a marvelous frame of this suggestive exhibition that proposes as reference point for the young contemporary (and also electronic) art.
Promoted by the cultural association Ars gratia Artis, Genius Loci is the starting point for an ambitious program that wants to become a fix appointment for the general public. Palmaria and its Batteria Umberto I are the chosen location to welcome the emergent artists invited to dialogue with a unique environmental context. Artwork and environment intertwine inside site-specific projects. Live electronics and technologic theatre events realized in collaboration with Backstage Café will highlight the exhibition every Saturday, from 2nd August to 13th September. There are two sections: CRACK!LIVE ELECTRONICS, managed by Anna Maria Monteverdi, and PER FORMA ATTIVA, by Francesca Sommovigo. Dance, electronic theatre and music will accompany the exposition.
Stefano Cagol are the special guest of the event. Lisa Batacchi, Luca Bray, Grazia Cantoni, Andrea Chiodo, Giovanni De Gara, Raffaello Gori, Sibylle Pasche, Niccolò Poggi, Francesco Ricci and Carmen Tornaboni are the selected artists for the first edition of Genius Loci. All those names are pooled by interdisciplinary expressive researches that confront their selves with territory, locations and surrounding environment. Giovanni De Gara is architect and painter, Niccolò Poggi is designer, Grazia Cantoni is a photographer specialized in site-specific installations, Luca Bray and Raffaello Gori are painters, Andrea Chiodo is painter, video maker and musician, Francesco Ricci is painter and works with environmental installations, Lisa Batacchi is an artist who worked in fashion world, for example in London for Vivienne Westwood, and Sibylle Pasche and Carmen Tornaboni are sculptress.
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Conceived in an itinerant way, the exposition open with an installation of Sybille Pasche: six marmoreal sculptures realized for the exhibition and collocated near the Molo del Terrizzo, point of docking for ships. Way up to the path that leads to Batteria Umberto I, the installation of Francesco Ricci, inspired to the military identity of the isle, Grazia Cantoni’s Ometti, location of stop-off and reflection, then iron wire and recycled material sculpture by Carmen Tornaboni and the organic sculpture of Niccolò Poggi. The work of Giovanni De Gara, a reflection on unaware turism, is near the Batteria.
Inside the Batteria, paintings of Luca Bray and Raffaello Gori, the installation of Lisa Batacchi on memories and the video-projection Sinestesia by Andrea Chiodo, artist that has been living since 20 years on the isle and that reproduce with music, video and paint the emotions of the “hermit”. Stefano Cagol will intervene from the roof of the Batteria, where is work proposes to upturn the intrinsic function of the fortress: the memory of the military function exalts its new identity of exposition centre.
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Backstage Café events are divided into two sections. The first one is cRack! LIVE ELECTRONICS ideated by Anna Monteverdi, who invited Motus, Otolab, Giacomo Verde and Badsector. This section is developed on the idea of art as rumor, interference, chipping and infiltration. Original electronic positions where sound/visual narration is assembled live, on four laptops, technologic performance and theatrical action of great immersive impact. The scenery proposed for cRack! goes from experimental electro to techno, from dub to noise to industrial in an involving and mind-blowing connection between electronic organism and natural environment.
The second section was managed by Francesca Sommovigo and entitled PER FORMA ATTIVA. GESTI BIANCHI IN TENSIONE DI PENSIERO. Kinkaleri, Annalisa Maggiani and Juomi Kojoshioka have been invited as dance, word and video-dance artists.
The location is connoted as creative research tension of a SHELTER with the courage to reproduce in it even the ignorance and the loud agitation of the desecrate world, in a path created by art, that goes from earthly to never-ending beauty.
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A real isle, an animated public in opposition to empty chaos of the stagnating thought, to transcend a choc and turning upside down the literary necessity to have a desert isle to search, to desire as alternative World. Events compared to moon landing. Existence attempts.