curated by Ilaria Mancia
The Mattatoio is opening to the public, and for the first time in years people will be able (including with their gaze) to cross the large central avenue linking the Lungotevere and Ponte Testaccio bridge with Piazza Orazio Giustiniani. It is opening to host two installations by contemporary artists: Gaia by Luke Jerram (UK) and Thirst by Voldemārs Johansons (Latvia). Gaia will be displayed outdoors in the heart of the former Mattatoio complex, while Thirst will be displayed in one of the theatres constructed inside the Pelanda.
The decision to display these two works is our way of responding to the exceptional circumstances dictated by the pandemic and quarantine, an attempt to regain confidence and take back ownership of the public space, yet without turning our backs on the debate on our present situation and on our fears. This is probably the first time in history that everyone on the planet is thinking and talking about the same thing, fully aware that this is a condition shared right across the globe. Thus Gaia appears to all of us, not just to minorities sensitive to environmental or climate-related issues, as a commonplace, a huge and complex space, an interconnected space in which each individual is experiencing the same thing from a different standpoint and in a different situation. For the Greeks, Γῆ, Γαῖα, was the earth in the sense of soil for growing crops on, or for tripping up on. It was where you set out from, or your point of arrival after a long sea journey. It certainly was not what we visualise today thanks to satellite images or to photogaphs taken by astronauts orbiting around the moon. In our contemporary imagination, this object, which looks from a distance like a small ball of blue marble veined with white, is the very image of beauty, but also of fragility, of the risk of changes that are both irreversible and catastrophic in their totality; it is one of the many planets, but it is the only "world" that we have to inhabit and preserve by forging alliances that stretch beyond mankind alone.
Like Gaia, so also Voldemārs Johansons' Thirst, an immersive video-installation of a stormy sea, brings us face to face with a classic dilemma pitting contemplation (the breadth of the "all-encompassing view" and the attraction of the different forms of power in nature) and direct experience (being inside a thing, touching it or even being impacted by it). On the one hand there is the sublime – being able to witness something terrifying from a safe vantage point – while on the other there is terror in the face of overbearing and uncontrollable forces. It is rumoured that William Turner – who was an unquestioned "expert" in storms – in his typically Romantic drive to "be inside" the sublime, to possess the sublime, had himself lashed to the mast of a ship braving the high seas in a gale. The story may not be true, of course, but his pictures, which are one of the sources of inspiration behind this Latvian artist's work, certainly never have the feel of a detached and reassuring vision. The storm overwhelms us but from a viewpoint where we can observe it, abandoning ourselves to a condition at once impossible and alluring.
“Surviving on a seriously damaged planet” (Donna Haraway) is possible thanks to alliances with other living beings and thanks to everything that takes place independently of human action, but possibly also thanks to works of art, their ability to accompany critical reflection with beauty and the pleasure of coming to terms with a trauma. We adopt the posture of observers contemplating natural phenomena, we are driven by a desire to "understand" so that we can forge a relationship with those phenomena in order to feel, responsibly, that we too are made of water, just like plants, and that we rest our lives on the soil/earth alongside other creatures.
The space beneath Gaia, as Jerram himself says, is a space that can be activated, in the sense that it can also be used by other artists: "This work offers opportunities for collaboration and welcomes the creative stimuli of others. I like an artwork's unexpected result, when I leave the space for the audience or for other artists to express their creativity." (L.J.).
On this particular occasion, a programme of events will unfold beneath Gaia and its light, either to dialogue with the work or, more simply, to share the same space with it in a context of mutual empowerment. With their gesture, the artists and theoreticians who have accepted the invitation are proving the power of cooperation and dialogue, the strength that lies in mingling, overcoming all sense of awe in the presence of this spectacularly symbolic object thanks to the power of an open and malleable – and thus doubly creative – imagination.
The programme includes performances, encounters on environmental and mythological themes, concerts, workshops for children and the arrival of a flag that is going to cross Rome on a long journey before reaching the Mattatoio and bringing with it the question: "is it my world?"