3 October 2025
In
Exhibition Images
Anna Scalfi Eghenter – COLLECTORS ANONYMOUS
Photo credit: Alice Moschin
3 October 2025
In
Exhibition Images
Anna Scalfi Eghenter – COLLECTORS ANONYMOUS
Photo credit: Alice Moschin
10 May 2025
In
Exhibition Images, Press Release
Mark Dion – THE MELANCHOLY ENTOMOLOGIST AND OF TALES OF ECOLOGICAL DESPAIR
Pinksummer is pleased to announce Mark Dion’s new exhibition
THE MELANCHOLY ENTOMOLOGIST AND OF TALES OF ECOLOGICAL DESPAIR
The exhibition will open on 10 May 2025, 6-9 pm
and will be on view until 13.09.2025
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 3 – 7.30 p.m. or by appointment
Press release in form of interview
Chapter I
DDT
Pinksummer: “To reflect on the ethics of love for all creatures in all its details this is the difficult task assigned to the time in which we live,” wrote musicologist physician Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965). Silent Spring the original title, the forerunner manifesto book of the Environmental Movement by biologist Rachel Carson is dedicated to Schweitzer and his special conception of ethics. Published in 1962 Silent Spring , it was a true denunciation with respect to the use of pesticides and herbicides , and it is also thanks to the book that in 1972 the use of DDT was banned in the United States, the insecticide was banned in Italy in 1978. Carson wonders why in those late 1950s the voices of spring, insects, birds were silent in many quarters of America. He goes on to explore the devastating effects of DDT, which not only harms wildlife but also destroys the entire ecological balance of water and soil, and concludes, “Are pesticides really necessary?”. The discovery of DDT was attributed in 1939 to Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1948 “for the discovery of the great efficacy of DDT as a contact poison against many arthropods.” What did DDT, the first modern insecticide, represent to humanity in that hot, positivist era?
Mark Dion: What it represented was the control of nature. Like much of the post war positivist thinking around science, including the “Green Revolution”, the notion of better living through chemistry. ( The actual slogan of the DuPont Corporation was “Better Things for Better Living….Through Chemistry”). The idea that public good could be served by the application of new generations of chemicals including, fertilizers, biocides, water resistant compounds, lubricants, was largely unchanged until Rachel Carson and others looked at the undesirable ecological side effects of the massive application of industrial chemicals over time. While there was a lot of lip service to the control of nature in the service of humankind, the reality was that these innovations where profoundly in the service of capitalism first and human welfare second, and ecological well being not at all. All over the world, a pattern became well established of using science (chemistry, engineering, forestry, urban planning, etc.) for short term economic and social gain, while ignoring long term environmental and public health consequences. Rachel Carson is truly one of the legitimate heroes of the 20th Century. A gifted writer, uncompromising scientists and blessed with amazing courage and patience, she fought an unprecedented battle with industry and the state. She was of course correct about DDT and others Environmental poisons, but she had to withstand attacks from dirty industry executives, politicians and the press. They were mercilessly in their vitriol, which was often frankly misogynist. She prevailed and ushered in a new generation of environmentalists and protections for wild places and public health. Needless to say, pesticides are a necessity with regards to public health and agriculture as we practice them today. Biocides should be thought of as a last resort solution, and the long term consequences of their application must be throughly understood and the cost to the ecosystem considered paramount. We have learned in the west that the people who develop these chemical fixes can not be trusted to police themselves and must always be regarded as putting profit over safety.
Chapter II
Body Horror – Entomological Cinema and Literature
PS: With respect to the body-horror genre, insects take center stage both directly and mediately. Moving from Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, via David Cronemberg’s 1986 film The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum, to Jan Mc Ewan’s 2020 The Cockroach, considered a political pamphlet homage to The Metamorphosis. Unlike Kafka’s mutant Gregor Samsa, who wakes up a giant insect, Mc Ewan’s Jim Sans, “a perceptive fellow, but not at all profound,” wakes up after a night of restless dreams as prime minister of England. Jim turned human takes very little time, unlike Gregor initially quite clumsy as an insect, to learn to move his hands, climb stairs with only two feet, and above all to effectively understand the use of Twitter. Seth Brundle, the protagonist of The Fly, whose mutation is not abrupt but progressive, unlike Gregor and Jim, beyond the shaggy hairs growing on his back, notices that something in him is changing because he feels stronger, more resilient, and sexually more performant, and since when the body changes the mind also follows, he becomes more and more arrogant. Both Seth and Kafka’s Gregor, The two protagonists who transform into insects, move from fear to curiosity, and the mutation at times is experienced as a kind of liberation. Do entomological literature and cinema represent the complex relationship between humans and insects? Does the insect represent the other than itself, even to the point of containing alien elements in relation to human perception?
MD: The insect is the ultimate other. So much of insect’s being, is an irritant to the modern urban sensibility of being beyond nature. Some of the disgust articulated in the fictions you mention relates to the uncanny aspects of insect body architecture- too many legs, a different kind of symmetry, strange transformative lifecycles, voracious eating habits, another kind of reproduction. Perhaps even more unsettling is the notion that insects remind us that we are also animals implicated in a complex web of life, which we just can’t seem to entirely control. Every cockroach in a kitchen, mosquito bite, head louse in a child’s classroom, reminds us that we have not yet transcended nature. Of course we hate to be reminded that we are animals because it also reminds us that we are mortal. So when we speak about being concerned about insect population collapse, it can be a hard sell to a general public. “Good riddance”, many will respond, since they don’t realize how utterly dependent life on earth is on invertebrates. Sure it is easy to motivate people to save pandas, elephants and dolphins (survival of the cutest), although we are still not doing a very good job, but is difficult to motivate people to preserve insect population numbers. For many insects are synonymous with pests, despite the appeal of fireflies and butterflies.
Chapter III
Pasolini and the Disappearance of the Fireflies
PS: If Mc Ewan wrote The Cockroach in 2020 against Brexit, Pier Paolo Pasolini in the pages of “Corriere della Sera” in 1975, used the metaphor of the disappearance of the fireflies to launch a violent attack on the Christian Democrats, the then majority party in Italy. Pasolini begins by distinguishing Fascist Fascism from Christian Democrat Fascism, which he holds responsible for the sudden moral decline of the Italian people, transformed in a very short time into a people of consumers, forgetful of every value that had connoted them until then (homeland, family, religion, savings): “(…) That phenomenon that happened in Italy about ten years ago. In the early 1960s due to water pollution (the blue rivers, the clear irrigation ditches) fireflies began to disappear. The phenomenon was lightning fast and dazzling. After a few years the fireflies were gone.” Pasolini concludes with the phrase “I would give the entire Montedison for a firefly,” Montedison was an Italian industrial group dedicated to chemistry and agribusiness. Insects in fact are strong indicators with respect to the health of the environment, Pasolini traces the pollution of nature to moral decay, and this analogy could be applicable to the suffering of honey bees or other species of pollinating insects about human action. Dante in the Divine Comedy often mentions insects, and if in Paradise (Canto XXXI) compares the jubilation of the angels to a “host of bees bursting into bloom,” in Canto III of Inferno the sloths, including Pope Celestine V who had abdicated, are tormented naked by flies and wasps until they bleed. Dante died of malaria, by the way. In ancient times, the invasion of locusts or other insect pests was actually perceived as synonymous with man’s moral decay.What does the melancholic entomologist think about these analogies flowing from the natural environment to human moral decay in this world of ours in which global extracinic capitalism has become turbocharged and supranational?
MD: In the phenomenon of insect population collapse we have a paradigmatic example of The West’s suicidal relationship to the nature world. The instruments of this suicide, are not razors, revolvers, pills or train tracks, but a myriad of factors from pesticides and light pollution, to unwise land use and pollution. The driving factor is not depression and hopelessness but extreme capitalism. The drive to protect insects is not merely aesthetic or ethical, as valuable as these factors are, but overwhelmingly it is essential to survival. We must protect insects out of self preservation. Insects provide so many ecological services from pollination to food for vertebrates like birds, to being essential in the process of cycling nutrients and energy. Living in the USA at the moment, is to witness the triumph of the values of extreme capitalism over all other systems of value. The only system of value in place seems today or those of money and power, short term gain and making an overwhelmingly beneficial deal. The consequences of this intensely antisocial value system are reflected in ethical breakdown and the rise of authoritarianism, and this will have deep and pernicious results. Part of this culture of brute capitalism is also a breakdown in rationality and dismissal of long term research science. Without committed long term environmental research it is impossible to understand the scope of ecological degradation. Part of the melancholic aspect of our entomologist is that the scope of environmental catastrophe is overwhelming. I read extensively on the subject of “the insect apocalypse” and became interested in a number of aspects of the situation. The first is that the phenomenon was first identified by amateurs rather then entomologists working for the state or a University or museum. I loved how this seemed like a bridge to old fashioned natural history study, where citizen science played such a huge role. Something else that was inspiring was how international and cooperative the discipline seems to be, with scientists and amateurs sharing information across the globe. I was very influenced by Elizabeth Kolbert’s profile of Dr. David Wagner, an insect biologist from University of Connecticut. Since so little good news is coming from the world of invertebrate studies, I imagined him as necessarily being melancholic. Ironically when I meet him he told me he was not melancholic but rather fired up and activated. He said now is the moment for action and engagement and there is not time for melancholy. While I agree, I also think mourning is an appropriate response for our moment and it definitely does not exclude action.
Chapter IV
Insects Food of the Future
PS: And what does your entomologist protagonist think when it is announced to him with tractousness that insects will be our food of the future? What insects are we talking about? Considering that insects have declined by 80 percent in recent decades, and he knows that insects are the lynchpin of biodiversity: they are consumers and food for birds and reptiles, and without insects there would no longer be 70 percent of the plant species we know. There are some who even in postmodernity call for the return of DDT to defeat the Anopheles mosquito in Africa, which is responsible for malaria.
MD: There have long been calls for insects to be used as food in the future. It seems to be a pretty narrow group of insects they consider for consumption, which includes crickets and grasshoppers. This may solve some human protein problems but it will have no impact on insect diversity issues, other then freeing up land now used for cattle and feed crops. Considering the interconnectedness of things a sharp drop in any population of organisms is something to be concerned about. Other vertebrates subsistence on insect consumption- birds, fish, reptiles and quite a few mammals. Numerous plants depend of insect pollination. As you say, many insects are indicator species, giving us a glimpse into the wider environmental health of an ecosystem. When we are getting such clear feedback messages from the world around us, it is at our peril that we ignore it. I don’t see a widespread return to DDT or at least not to the excesses of its previous use. The battle with the Anopheles Mosquito is a example of evolution in process. As we apply new technologies of exclusion, biological and chemical control the mosquito constantly evolves to thwart our efforts to extinguish it. While it is amazing to see how quickly evolution can work, this is serious since the mosquitoes transmit the organism which causes malaria which effects tens of thousands of people.
Chapter V
The Devil’s Garden
PS: Speaking of biodiversity and monocultures, in the highly human-risk rainforests of the Amazon, biodiverse areas par excellence, one sometimes comes across mysterious areas where biodiversity disappears, and only Duroia hirsuta trees stand there. Local people call these areas Devil’s garden. The responsibility for the monoculture of Duroia hirsuta lies not with an evil spirit but with a species of ant, the Mymelachista schumanni that nests in the Trunk of this tree, killing with lethal doses of formic acid every other plant species in these areas, thus the ant ensures its colony an abundant amount of nesting sites. A long-term benefit, considering that colonies of Mymelachista schumanni can live up to 800 years. Isn’t the behavior of the lemon ant awfully similar compared to our intensive agriculture? Could planet Earth live if it was turned into an immense Devil’s garden?
MD: Perhaps the question should be, would it be worth living on an earth which was only a Devil Garden. Maybe these ant colonies seem particularly frightening since we see ourselves, in our immense transformative power, reflected in them. I am very drawn to ecological parables like the one about the Devil Garden. When I stated making the kind of work I do today, in the late 1980s, many of my sculptures and installations took such tales of ecological calamity as a starting point. This was pretty much the moment when the term Biodiversity was coming into popular use. It is such a beautiful and powerful idea, meaning the variety and variability of life on earth. I think discovering the notion of biodiversity somehow gave meaning to my practice of as an artist. With so many artist form my generation, it is easy to understand what we are against, being so critically focused, but it is not always easy to understand what we are for. I am for biodiversity. The story of the Devil’s Garden is a great illustration of the unforeseen consequences of environmental destruction. Once something is degraded, and then left to recover, there is no guarantee what returns will be the same things the site started with. Something will come back, but probably not what was there before. The same is true for fisheries. If one takes all the fish, eventually something will return to fill the empty niche but not often exactly the same fish.
Chapter VI
Donald Trump insect unconscious
PS: These days there is much talk about Trump and his tariffs that rattle Markets from East to West, traversing the globe in a divisive sense. Wouldn’t it be wacky if your entomologist produced a dream of the body-horror genre, turning the controversial American president into an insect. What insect with a Latin name could be the one dreamed up by the unconscious creativity of the melancholy entomologist?
MD: It is an insult to the world of invertebrates to call Trump an insect. Even a virus does not deserve the indignity of comparison to the President. Much worst then body-horror fiction is the culture of sadism and injustice daily paraded on American screens.
Perhaps if we did need to give him a Latin binomial name it could be Necrophorus Rex. King of the Dead.
Thanks to Monica Rivera for her precious research
Special thanks to Strega del Castello
for having shared with us some of the secrets of her enchanted world
23 April 2024
In
Exhibition Images
KOO JEONG-A – KOREAN PAVILION – BIENNALE D’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA, VENEZIA – 2024
KOO JEONG A – ODORAMA CITIES, Korean Pavilion 2024, La Biennale di Venezia, Installation view, Courtesy of Pilar Corrias, London, and PKM Gallery, Seoul, Photo by Mark Blower.
Korean Pavilion at Biennale Arte 2024 Giardini, Venice
20 April – 24 November 2024
The Korean Pavilion presents ODORAMA CITIES by Korean artist Koo Jeong A. In this new commission, the artist will delve into the nuances of our spatial encounters, investigating how we perceive and recollect spaces, with a particular emphasis on how scents, smells, and odours contribute to these memories.
During the summer of 2023 over the course of three months, Koo collected scent memories for ODORAMA CITIES with the aim of building a portrait of the entire Korean peninsula. After a public open call issued by Koo and the pavilion curatorial team via social media, advertisements, one-to-one meetings, Koreans and non-Koreans with a relationship to Korea submitted descriptions in response to one central question: “What is your scent memory of Korea?” This process generated more than 600 written statements recollecting the country through the prism of scent.
“On spring days when Korean rosebays are in bloom, I find myself missing my hometown even more. Here in South Korea, I smell the flowers, hoping to find the same scent as the ones back in North Korea. And indeed, they share the same scent.”1
Thereafter, Koo and the curators tasked and collaborated with perfumers to translate and categorise these memories into 17 distinct scent experiences created specifically for the pavilion. At the pavilion itself, Koo will explore an expanded tactility – returning to key interests that mark the artist’s work including immaterialism, weightlessness, endlessness, and levitation. Those concerns are embedded and engraved as infinity symbols directly into a new wooden floor for the Korean pavilion and manifest as two floating wooden möbius-shaped sculptures and a levitating, scent-diffusing bronze figure, and ultimately are symbolized in the scents that transform the pavilion into a sprawling collection of olfactory memories.
An exhibition catalogue will accompany the pavilion presentation including contributions from Frank Boehm, Grégory Couderc with Jean- Claude Ellena, Hyesoon Kim, Namjo Kim, Seolhui Lee & Jacob Fabricius, Sooyon Lee, Young June Lee, Jessica Morgan, Hans Ulrich Obrist with Koo Jeong A, Eva Tind, Luca Turin, and Kyung Jin Zoh.
—-
Commissioner: Arts Council Korea (ARKO)
Curators: Seolhui Lee & Jacob Fabricius
Artist: Koo Jeong A
Assistant Curators: Yoojin Jang, Najeong Lee
Architect: Jens Rønholt Schmidt
On-Site Manager: Eunjeong Kim
Editorial Manager: Haelee Kim, Sarah Quigley
Graphic Designer: kontaakt (Wonseop Lee, Wonyeong Baque) Publisher: Distanz
In partnership with Hyundai Motor
Partners: NONFICTION, LUMA Foundation, Dinesen
Collaborator: LUSH
Sponsors: ILJIN Culture Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, Agnès b, Bazaar Art, Art Hub Copenhagen
Supporters: Albarrán Bourdais, Pilar Corrias, Pinksummer Gallery, PKM Gallery
PR: Sutton Communication
30 March 2024
In
Exhibition Images
PLAMEN DEJANOFF – HERITAGE PROJECT
Photo credit: Federico Ghillino
22 November 2023
In
Exhibition Images
TOMÁS SARACENO – Life(s) of webs, arachnophobias, arachnophilias, and other stories
Tomás Saraceno, Life(s) of Webs, arachnophobias, arachnophilias, and other stories. Courtesy the artist. Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno.
Summary of the Public Program
November 24 2023, Panel Discussion at Casa Cava, Matera, 18:00 (while seats last) with Tomás Saraceno, Gianni Garrera, Claudia Attimonelli and Salvatore Bevilacqua.
25th 2023, Life(s) of Webs, arachnophobias, arachnophilias, and other stories, permanent installation at Chiesa della Madonna del Carmine, Palazzo Lanfranchi, Museo nazionale di Matera; Fly with Pacha, into the Aerocene (2017-2023 ongoing) Film Screening & Artist Talk dedicated to local schools at Cine-teatro “G. Guerrieri” – Matera, Italy
Spring, 2024, Artist Book Launch & Panel Discussion, Matera, Italy
______________________________________
Matera Basilicata Foundation 2019, together with The National Museum of Matera, are delighted to present Life(s) of Webs, arachnophobias, arachnophilias, and other stories, a permanent installation at Chiesa Madonna del Carmine, Palazzo Lanfranchi by Tomás Saraceno, from 25th November, 2023. The artwork serves as the opening to collaborative research that fits within this syncretic, Arachnophilia project, culminating with the launch of an artist book which will bring together a diverse network of material from philosophers, artists, writers and arachnologists. On the 24th November, Tomás Saraceno will be in conversation with philologist, translator and playwright Gianni Garrera, writer and researcher Claudia Attimonelli and anthropologist and researcher Salvatore Bevilacqua. On 25th November, students from Matera’s high schools will be invited to learn more about Saraceno’s thought and work, through a viewing of one of his films, Fly with Pacha, into the Aerocene (2017-2023 ongoing).
In 2023, in the Chiesa Madonna del Carmine in Matera at Palazzo Lanfranchi – National Museum of Matera, Saraceno’s artwork—a Catholic confessional box—is found, in which spider/webs emerge in the place of the priest, with the intention to share their ancestral wisdom. It’s a call to humanity, one to listen closely to: “we have lived on Earth for more than 380 million years, while most of you humans, merely 200 thousand years… we invertebrates represent 95% of all animals on planet Earth, yet we are threatened by extinction, something that would endanger all lives on earth. We ask you to care for the rights of our webs of life. Can we join forces and weave together ways of living, with lifestyles that do not affect climates, for more just, eco-social inter- intra-species societies for all?”
It is through a new syncretic ensemble of myths, beliefs, liturgies, ceremonies, histories of divination, rituals, food practices, songs & dances, that Lives of webs responds to this call. “We invite you to join us in this movement for new collective multispecies futures. Come closer, sense wisely, feel the vibrations. Every contribution matters. These are times to act and to be part of something larger, and infinitely smaller, than yourself”.
“With the work of artist Tomás Saraceno, the Matera Basilicata 2019 Foundation completes the path of Matera European Capital of Culture 2019 and opens a focus, through contemporary art, on one of the themes at the center of the new programming, that of the environment. The invaluable collaboration with the National Museum of Matera has made it possible to welcome a site-specific work that remains with the city on a permanent basis, so that we can develop around it a long-lasting programming, linked to the main emergencies of contemporaneity.”
Thanks to Pinksummer Gallery for collaboration in the development of the Life(s) of Webs project
______________________________________
Opening Hours
Life(s) of Webs, arachnophobias, arachnophilias, and other stories
National Museum of Matera – Palazzo Lanfranchi, Chiesa della Madonna del Carmine Opening hours: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. – last admission 7 p.m.
Closing: Tuesday 09:00 – 14:00
Photo
The photo shoot of the artwork, by photographer Amedeo Benestante, will be available from 26 November 2023.
For enquiries: ufficiostampa@matera-basilicata2019.it
______________________________________
Life(s) of webs
arachnophobias, arachnophilias, and other stories
Amongst Maya Peoples, the spider/web represents the placenta of Ix Chel, the Maya goddess of childbirth and patron saint of weavers, and for whom the spider creates the thread of life from within itself. For the ancient civilisation of the Nazca, the spider was imaged in their geoglyphs–engraved directly onto the ground of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru–as schematic-geometric figures that span a length of nearly 50 meters. In Peru, a special class of pre-Inca Chavín diviners (known as pacchacatic) once consulted the spider as deity and oracle, divining their future based upon its falling movements. In late pre-Hispanic times, and still today in regions of modern highland Peru, spiders are observed to predict rainfall and other other climate events.
During the origins of the Qixi festival in China, a celebration derived from the myth of cloud-weaving goddess Zhinü, it was customary on the “Seventh Night” for young girls who practiced needlework to observe house spiders of the court (xizi), storing them until dawn in hopes to reveal their fortune. If the spider had spun a tightly-woven web, it was a positive omen and read as a reflection of the young woman’s skills. If the web was sparse or unbuilt, the opposite was true.
In Christianity, we encounter the tale of Saint Felix di Nola who, upon being persecuted due to his preaching, slipped through a narrow gap in a nearby ruinous house in order to conceal himself. Once inside, by God’s command, spiders spun a protective web across the opening, tricking his persecutors into believing no one could have traversed the space, who then continued on their path. The spider-as-trickster appears myriad: in North America for the Cheyenne Peoples as Veeho, for the Lakota as Iktómi; in West Africa as Kwaku Anansi—a rogue, arachnid folk hero whose cunning, unpredictable and liminal figure mediates between the gods of the sky and earth-bound humans.
Tarantism, a phenomenon originally believed to be caused by a bite from the Lycosa tarantula or Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, is a form of ‘hysterical’ behavior—and accompanying dancing mania—originating in Southern Italy. The tarantella dance, a series of folk dances with roots in Calabria (Sonu a ballu), Campania (tammurriata) and Puglia (pizzica), evolved as a speculative therapy—a type of musical exorcism—for the ‘victims’ of such spider bites: it is said that such convulsion-invoking rhythms, performed publicly, often for days on end, were used to revive and heal those who had succumbed to the spider’s venom.
In North America, the Hopi and Navajo Peoples count on their Mujer Araña as both a powerful spirit and ally, whose magical agency of the Earth would teach them to weave; for other Californian tribes, she is an avenging spirit that punishes evil. In Greek mythology, the figure of Arachne is entangled within a ‘web of resistance’ with goddess Athena, revealing another tale of mediation: of two women who use embroidery as a performative textuality, confronting and defending the social order.
Mediation across lines of species and language continues today: the historic ŋgam dù spider divination, as practiced by the Mambila People in the borderlands of Cameroon and Nigeria, brings its diviners and consultees into acute relation, awareness and sensitivity to a spider’s oracular capacities. During a consultation, a set of binary questions is presented to a ground-dwelling spider. Cards placed at the entrance to its burrow, made from stiff plant leaves and featuring cut-out shapes (ŋgèe) with specific symbolic meanings, are rearranged by the spider whose response is then interpreted by the diviner.
Myths for syncretic belief
Starting from an object like the confessional, and from a nature like that of the spider/webs, Tomás Saraceno’s idea is to conceive and devise a new liturgy and set up a ritual for a festive day, as if for the public it was not only a matter of visiting an exhibition, but of sanctifying (or making meaningful, important, profound) a day through participation in a ritual.
Liturgy is a science and an art, made of objects, gestures, signs, words, because it is a concrete and beautiful action that—through contact with sensible elements and postures—makes known a greater reality (a truth): there are no spontaneous gestures in it. The arachnophilia project which Saraceno will conceive, includes readings (prayers, lessons, music from the various traditions and in accordance with various converging liturgies concerning an attention and reverence for Nature) objects (the confessional), mysteries (the spider/webs) and ritual gestures or attitudes (greetings, ablutions, etc.) so that the audience is no longer the absolute and spontaneous master of its own movements (because of the erasure of the self and anonymity that flow from the liturgy). The resulting catalog, too, will be like a small breviary or lectionary containing the readings, the stories of this ceremony and its cosmological correspondences.
It is not a matter of simulating a liturgy, but of actually setting it: the pacing and reflection up to the confessional, the kneeling, the participation in the mystery contained therein. For Saraceno, the Confessional recapitulates all the secrets of tradition: it is also a chapel—like those chapels one encounters on street corners—treasure chest. Inside, there is, as Nietzsche wrote, a God-spider weaving, just as a weaving is every ceremony. Saraceno’s purpose is also to restore a liturgical sensibility to people (solemn repetition of a gesture, cyclical ceremonies and fixed readings).
Logically, all the paraphernalia that will be used and all the gestures and operations that will be carried out—as is typical of a liturgy—refer back to a meaning: liturgy is not choreography, but every position refers back to such signification. If, for example, one conceives of man’s relationship with Nature still as unequal, in order to convey the mystery of the equality of humans and animals, certain gestures will have to ritually make one understand the hidden meaning to which one is referring—and as already written: we confess to Nature, we confess our ecological guilt against Nature: man—through the confessional—asks forgiveness from the Cosmos, therefore Saraceno’s rite is first and foremost a non-sacrificial rite…and its profound function is precisely to revoke all the sacrificial rites of the past for a new mode of reconciliation through the liturgy of art.
— Gianni Garrera
Matera, Chiesa della Madonna del Carmine, Palazzo Lanfranchi – Museo nazionale di Matera
The city of Matera, with its peculiar urban ontology, is for Saraceno a territory of choice, already because of the origin, albeit hypothetical, of the city’s name, which refers to the Greek Meteoron, starry sky, since the city seen after sunset from the side of the Murgia makes Matera comparable to the night sky dotted with stars. Matera is a kind of network carved into the tuffaceous rock, which one has the impression could connect the whole world. An underground world, inhabited and alive, whose souls were once recorded by the little lights placed on the entrances of a consubstantial and close, but different world: a sort of other dimension.
Saraceno’s repeat visits to Matera, starting nine years ago and culminating in July 2022 with his visit to the National Museum of Matera and to the Church of Carmine—located inside the museum at Palazzo Lanfranchi—fostered inspiration which led to the creation of the Life(s) of Webs, arachnophobias, arachnophilias, and other stories confessional. Saraceno has grasped the intrinsic spiritual value of the city of the Sassi, which is well suited to accommodate the holistic and universal nature of its glass showcases with the hybrid spider webs inside, created through the sequential collaboration of spiders of different species: solitary, semi-social and social. The spider webs are also understood as a sublunar mirror due to their similarity and resemblance to dark matter, the cosmic web that supports galaxies and worlds, visible only through the gravitational lens, which vibrates in astral time, generating the worldly music that the Pythagoreans already told us about and which we now call cosmic background noise.
The sound of worlds vibrates with vibrations similar to those of the spider’s web that spiders play, one might venture, as if it were a harp, restoring to those who can and know how to listen the sounds of love, of the hunt, of fear just as the cosmos restores in the chords of dark matter the whirling chirping to perfection of the silence of a pair of black holes merging into one, which took place millions of light years ago. For those of us who only concretely have the category of linear time, through Saraceno’s work we seem to have a greater affinity with the idea that our eyes perceive the shimmering of stars that have stopped shining in a distant time that we cannot even imagine.
Tomás Saraceno
Tomás Saraceno (b. 1973, he/him/his) is an Argentina-born, Berlin-based artist whose projects dialogue with forms of life and life-forming, rethinking dominant threads of knowledge and recognizing how diverse modes of being engage a multiplicity of vibrations on the Web of Life. For more than two decades, Saraceno has worked with local communities, scientific researchers, and institutions around the world, and has activated open-source, interdisciplinary, collective projects, including Museo Aero Solar (2007–), the Aerocene Foundation (2015–), and Arachnophilia, towards a society free from carbon emissions, for intra and interspecies climate justice.
Saraceno has been the subject of solo exhibitions and permanent installations at museums and institutions internationally, including The Serpentine Gallery, London (2023), The Shed, New York (2022), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires (2017); K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Ständehaus, Dusseldorf (2013); the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012); and Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2011). Saraceno has participated in numerous
festivals and biennales, including the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale (2020) and the 53rd and 58th Venice Biennales (2009, 2019).
Arachnophilia
Saraceno is the founder of Arachnophilia, an interdisciplinary, research-driven community, focusing on the extraordinary architecture of spider webs and their behaviors, which entangle us in various cultural perceptions, myths, and relationships. Through expanding its artistic networks, the Arachnophilia community seeks to invent innovative, playful and engaging platforms for bringing research discourse into the public sphere. At Studio Tomás Saraceno, this consists of research and praxis in the fields of biomateriomics, bioacoustics, ethology and cognitive science, among others, as a way of engaging speculatively, but also sensitively, with the forms of life that exist all around us.
Together with the Arachnophilia community, Saraceno’s love for spiders and their webs has led to innumerous collaborations with them. Notably, he invented the Spider/Web Scan, a novel, laser-supported tomographic technique that allowed precise 3-D models of complex spider/webs to be made for the first time — this invention resulted in leading research groups around the world, from MIT to Max Planck Institute, coming to learn from this collaboration.
Another of Arachnophilia’s developments is that of hyper-sensitive microphones that sense the vibrations of spiders through their webs. These methods and technologies, besides becoming artworks in themselves, were also documented and extensively covered in art publications as well by internationally renowned scientific and technological journals, such as Nature, PNAS, MIT and others. Further research areas include an archive of spider/web vibrations recorded on different web types, building upon the biotremological innovations in spider/web recording and sonification devices developed by Studio Tomás Saraceno; an archive of maps of spider/web ecologies, that make visible the ways in which spider and human habitats are intertwined, in sites across the globe. By sharing the content of these archives as well as the tools with which to collaboratively build and enrich them, the Arachnophilia community hopes to empower a broader audience to contribute to an understanding of our relationships with our arachnid kin, and therefore to cultivate renewed perspective on our responsibilities toward the nonhuman creatures with whom we share our environments.
______________________________________
Matera Basilicata Foundation 2019
The Matera Basilicata 2019 Foundation was established in 2014 to implement the lines of action outlined in Matera’s candidacy dossier for European Capital of Culture 2019, in order to consolidate the position gained by Matera and Basilicata region at the European level and to become a cultural platform for Southern Europe. In 2023, after completing the activity plan for Matera and Basilicata as European Capital of Culture and securing its legacy, the goals and duration of the Foundation were extended to 2035 to continue to operate in the field of creativity and culture with the aim of: to promote and support the development of creative, artistic and cultural activities in the city of Matera and at the regional level in tune with the strategies of local authorities and in collaboration with the world of university, research and business; to consolidate and strengthen the national and international position of Basilicata and Matera as a platform for cultural innovation that creates relationships, exchanges, and projects in Europe and around the world; and to foster social inclusion through art and culture.
Press
www.matera-basilicata2019.it
Press Office: Caterina Venece
ufficiostampa@matera-basilicata2019.it
+39 0835 256384
Instagram & Meta @matera2019
National museum of Matera
https://www.museonazionaledimatera.it/
mn-mt@cultura.gov.it
+39 0835 310058
Facebook: @museomatera
Instagram: @museonazionaledimatera
Studio Tomás Saraceno
Instagram & Meta @studiotomássaraceno
X @tomássaraceno
press@t-saraceno.org
Studiotomássaraceno.org
Arachnophilia.net
Aerocene.org
25 May 2023
In
Exhibition Images
MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL – IN A CONVEX MIRROR
Photo credits Alice Moschin
13 December 2022
In
Exhibition Images
Mariana Castillo Deball – In a Convex Mirror
Photo credits Alice Moschin
30 July 2022
In
Exhibition Images
Invernomuto – MED T-1000 – Pinksummer goes to Palermo
Photo credit CAVE Studio
Photo Credits Alice Moschin
6 August 2021
In
Exhibition Images
Michael Beutler – Keep Beating Below 65°
Photo Credits Alice Moschin
12 March 2021
In
Exhibition Images
Luca Trevisani – In Bocca
PC Giulio Boem
PC Giulio Boem
PC Giulio Boem
PC Giulio Boem
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
PC Alice Moschin
20 October 2020
In
Exhibition Images
Michael Beutler – Keep beating below 65°
Photo Credits Alice Moschin
24 September 2020
In
Exhibition Images
Cesare Viel – Scrivere il giardino
Photo credits Alice Moschin
27 April 2019
In
Exhibition Images
Invernomuto – MED T-1000
Photo credit
- Immagini opening Alice Moschin
- Installation view + works Giulio Boem
15 March 2019
In
Exhibition Images
PETER FEND/YONA FRIEDMAN – FILLING THE ABSENCE
Photo credit Alice Moschin
12 December 2018
In
Exhibition Images
Luca Trevisani – 38° 11′ 13.32” N 13° 21′ 4.44” E 44° 24′ 27.4” N 8° 55′ 60.0” E
Photo credit Alice Moschin
12 July 2018
In
Exhibition Images
TOMÁS SARACENO- ALBEDO
-
- courtesy Pinksummer and Aerocene Foundation
-
- courtesy Pinksummer and Aerocene Foundation
-
- courtesy Pinksummer and Aerocene Foundation
Photo credits Alice Moschin
29 May 2018
In
Exhibition Images
PINKSUMMER GOES TO PALERMO
photo credit Cave Studio Production, Palermo
29 May 2018
In
Exhibition Images
Pinksummer goes to Palermo
photo credit Cave Studio Production, Palermo
24 May 2018
In
Exhibition Images
Koo Jeong A – TENGAM – Pinksummer goes to Palermo
Photo credit CAVE Studio
24 May 2018
In
Exhibition Images
Peter Fend – Costa Verso Costa – Pinksummer goes to Palermo
Photo credit CAVE Studio
24 May 2018
In
Exhibition Images
Invernomuto – MED T-1000 – Pinksummer goes to Palermo
Photo credit CAVE Studio
24 May 2018
In
Exhibition Images
Peter Fend – Costa Verso Costa – Pinksummer goes to Palermo
Photo credit CAVE Studio
12 October 2017
In
Exhibition Images
I MODI DI DIRE E DELLA BUCA – STEFANIA GALEGATI
photo credit Alice Moschin
28 June 2017
In
Exhibition Images
THE TORTOISE AND OTHER FOOTRACES BETWEEN UNEQUAL CONTESTANTS – MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL
photo credit Francesco Cardarelli
20 May 2017
In
Exhibition Images
AB URBE GENUA DUO LYKANTHROPI ROMAE – CESARE VIEL – LUCA VITONE
Photo credits Francesco Cardarelli
25 March 2017
In
Exhibition Images
THE IFTH OF OOFTH – ALIS/FILLIOL – INVERNOMUTO
Photo credit Andrea Veneri
9 March 2017
In
Exhibition Images
CRISS CROSS GARAGE – MICHAEL BEUTLER
Opening Photography Alice Moschin
20 January 2017
In
Exhibition Images
ESCAPE ARTISTS – GUY BEN-NER
Opening Photography © Alice Moschin
20 January 2017
In
Exhibition Images
CANOAS – TAMAR GUIMARÃES
Opening Photography © Davide Pambianchi
25 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
THE TRUTH IS THAT THE TRUTH CHANGES – LUCA TREVISANI
Photo credits Francesco Cardarelli
17 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
HELEN MIRRA & ALISON KNOWLES
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
17 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
SHADOW SHOULD NOT EXCEED – DAVID MALJKOVIC WITH JAN ST WERNER
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
17 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
NIGHTINGALE: LOVE TWO TIMES – HENRIK HAKANSSON
Opening Photography © Paolo Palmieri
17 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
CHRISTIAN SCHMIDT RASMUSSEN – LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WE ARE FLOATING IN SPACE
Opening Photography © Paolo Palmieri
17 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
ZUFFI, ITALO – ITALO ZUFFI
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
16 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
IL VOLO DEL GRIFO – LUCA VITONE
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
16 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
PER L’ ETERNITA’ – LUCA VITONE
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
16 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
INFINITA RICOMPOSIZIONE – CESARE VIEL
Photo credits Massimo Palazzi, Davide Pambianchi, Antonio Torrieri
15 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
ORIGIN – THE ICELANDIC LOVE CORPORATION
Photo credits Francesco Cardarelli
15 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
LA MOGLIE DI LOT – SUPERSTUDIO
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
14 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
THE BUNNY LAKES COLLECTION – GEORGINA STARR
Photo credits Paolo Palmieri
14 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
THE JOYFUL MYSTERIES OF JUNIOR – GEORGINA STARR
Photo credits Francesco Cardarelli
12 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE IN THE REVERSE – BOJAN SARCEVIC
Photo credits Sophie Triniac
12 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
TRUE ENOUGH – BOJAN SARCEVIC
Photo credits Francesco Cardarelli
12 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR – BOJAN SARCEVIC
Photo credits Francesco Cardarelli
11 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
ON AIR – TOMAS SARACENO
Photo credits Massimiliano Marchica, Andrea Balestrero and Sophie Triniac
10 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
BIOSPHERE MW32 AIR-PORT-CITY – TOMAS SARACENO
Photo credits Rokma
10 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
CLOUD CITIES – TOMAS SARACENO
Photo credits Francesco Cardarelli
9 November 2016
In
Exhibition Images
DARK COSMIC WEB – TOMAS SARACENO
Photo credits Francesco Cardarelli
5 October 2016
In
Exhibition Images
SPOGLIANDO UN VICINO – TOBIAS PUTRIH
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
5 October 2016
In
Exhibition Images
LOS PIES DE JUDAS – JORGE PERIS
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
4 October 2016
In
Exhibition Images
12.11.1972 – GRUPPO A12
Opening Photography © Massimiliano Marchica
4 October 2016
In
Exhibition Images
HEEBIES-JEEBIES – GRUPPO A12
Opening Photography © Andrea Balestrero
3 October 2016
In
Exhibition Images
STEFANIA GALEGATI
Opening Photography © Stefania Galegati + Paolo Palmieri
2 October 2016
In
Exhibition Images
COLLECTIVE WISHDREAM OF UPPERCLASS – PLAMEN DEJANOFF
Opening Photography © Paolo Palmieri
2 October 2016
In
Exhibition Images
PLANET OF COMPARISON-PLAMEN DEJANOFF
Opening Photography © Rokma
1 October 2016
In
Exhibition Images
FOUNDATION REQUIREMENTS – PLAMEN DEJANOFF
-
- Genova – galleria arte contemporanea Pinksummer – Plamen Dejanoff – foundation requirements – opening february 2015
Opening Photography © Davide Pambianchi
30 September 2016
In
Exhibition Images
FIGURES DON’T LIE BUT LIARS CAN FIGURE – MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
30 September 2016
In
Exhibition Images
TAMOANCHAN – MARIANA CASTILLO DEBALL
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
30 September 2016
In
Exhibition Images
SECOND NATURE – GUY BEN-NER
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
29 September 2016
In
Exhibition Images
SOUNDTRACK – GUY BEN-NER
Opening Photography © Francesco Cardarelli
27 September 2016
In
Exhibition Images
CHECK YOUR TOTEM – ALIS / FILLIOL
Opening Photography ©Francesco Cardarelli
7 September 2016
In
Exhibition Images
THE ICELANDIC LOVE CORPORATION – EMBODY
Photo credits Davide Pambianchi
6 September 2016
In
Exhibition Images
DURA MATER – AMY O’NEILL
Opening photography © Davide Pambianchi
