Interview with Marco Fusinato
Long-durational performance art, experimental music, installations, images. This artist has tried it all. We’re talking about Marco Fusinato. Known for his multi-disciplinary approach, pushing boundaries and experimenting across genres Fusinato creates thought-evoking art spurred from an almost scientific approach to experimentation using “the studio as a laboratory”.
We caught the artist in between exhibitions, and spoke to him about his involvement in the 56th Venice Biennale, the thoughts and observations behind his current and upcoming exhibitions, his multi-disciplinary practice and his fascination for noise versus silence.
fluoro. You’ve got a lot going on at the moment, one of them your participation in the 56th Venice Biennale. What can visitors expect from your upcoming performance Spectral Arrows?
Marco Fusinato. It’s an improvised noise-guitar set, which goes for 8 hours, which are the ‘open for business’ hours of the venue. In this case it will begin at 10am, finishing at 6pm.
I take on the role of a worker. I set my gear up and perform with my back to the audience, uninterrupted, in an attempt to create a massive aural sculpture, using all possible frequencies to provide a physical experience for the audience. Unlike a conventional music performance, where there is a beginning and an end, this goes for so long that it’s hard to grasp. You can only remember sections of it, certain passages.
f. Why is it that you turn your back to the viewers?
MF. There’s a convention that when on stage, you face the audience and you ‘entertain’. By turning my back, it denies any conventional form of entertainment and removes any distraction I may have from the audience. This allows me to be in the moment and go in directions I may not have expected. It’s a physically demanding piece, much like being crushed by waves at the ocean all day, therefore I need to be focused and oblivious to external reactions.
f. Also at the Venice Biennale, your installation From the Horde to the Bee is a special combination of art, philanthropy, and even social experimentation. It requires a lot of trust. What was the idea behind this composition and how are people reacting to it?
MF. It began with the curator of the Venice Biennale, Okwui Enwezor, being interested in a previous project of mine, which was based on my collection of anarchist and Marxist pamphlets, Noise & Capitalism, 2010. He was also looking at the idea of ‘Capital’ and all its implications. He asked if I’d be interested in re-visiting my collection to make something new. I knew immediately that I didn’t want to go back and use my collection, but through my involvement in a project for the previous year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture, which focused on Italian anarchist squats, I had learnt the plight of an immense archive of radical left material in Milan. The Primo Moroni Archive is housed in a historical anarchist squat called Cox 18. Primo Moroni was a political and cultural agitator/writer who ran a bookshop in Milan from the 70’s on. His shop became a meeting point for the Italian left. Towards the end of his life the bookstore moved into the squat. After his death a collective from the squat decided to maintain the huge collection he had amassed and set up an archive as a resource, not only with material from that era, but also to collect and disseminate contemporary material. The archive/squat is a vital and active space for people engaged with these ideas, a meeting place for activists and such, but with little or no funds to survive.
My response to the commission was to create a project/event in order to redistribute funds from the Venice Biennale to the archive. I wanted to use the power, prestige and money that comes with the world’s most celebrated and visited contemporary art exhibition and send it across the country to an impoverished socio-political activity. I was also keen to make something that was ‘alive’, that had a tension around it, with an unknown outcome.
The project is made up of a dense document, featuring a selection of the printed matter from the archive, a selection that captures the spirit of the place, The printed document ended up being A4 and 496 pages in length, all the images reproduced at 1:1 in scale, exactly as they were scanned on an A4 scanner, whether they fitted or not, no crops or edits. A kind of non-design, design. All the images are black and white and the front cover is a 1:1 scan of a €10 note. The edition then sits at the Biennale on a large purpose built table as an installation. In exchange for a copy, the public is asked to throw €10 on the table surface. The cash remains there, exposed, for the seven months of the exhibition as a ‘sculpture’. Part Robin Hood-ism, part money laundering. The edition of 10,000 means there’s a potential of €100,000 on the table. There are no guards or security.
I’ve had an overhead camera set up to take stills for a residual work after the exhibition, so in the meantime I get a live stream on my phone. It’s been amusing watching the activity and flow of people over the course of the exhibition. So many people really engage with it, take the time to have a flick through the document, and some throw money in. A lot of people stop to photograph the cash and some try to reach in to take it. For this reason the Biennale built a wooden device like a shovel to push the money into the centre, to stop people from taking it. I’ve asked them to stop pushing it in to the centre, but to no avail. I’m curious to see how it will all pan out over the months, whether money disappears or how much accumulates. At the end of the exhibition all the money on the table goes to the Primo Moroni archive/squat for its continued struggle.
f. You have an exhibition approaching in Sydney, The Infinitives, which centres on a different medium – images. Tell us a bit about that.
MF. At the beginning of the 21st century I began collecting images from the print media of the moment in a riot when the protagonist is holding a rock with a fire in the background. This image appeared consistently, and so whenever there was conflict anywhere in the world I would look through the newspapers and magazines and find a very similar image each time. I then took these images and blew them up to history-painting scale using the latest commercial print technologies – In this case white ink on black aluminium. This first series called Double Infinitives was shown in 2009. Soon after, the world exploded with events around the Global Financial Crises and the Arab Spring uprisings.
The new series, The Infinitives, are images I have collected since those events, from the last few years. This time focusing on a protagonist just holding a rock. This series also features five images, produced in the same way. It’s been interesting to witness the ‘pre’ and ‘post’ condition, [realising] that it’s all the same. That image is perennial, it’s been there since… cavemen [laughs]. It’s a primal image.
f. Why did you choose to focus on that specific moment? When the protagonist is almost about to throw that rock?
MF. There’s a ‘potential’, captured and presented to us as distilled energy. Much like an image from a great concert. In this instance we have the same action, the world over. I’m also interested in the tension between noise versus silence.
f. So you’re actually capturing a moment of noise through images and not sound.
MF. Yes. Although we are looking at moments of violence, fury and extreme noise, by re-contextualising these images we view them in the silent and contemplative environment of the gallery. I’m fascinated by those contradictions, and a lot of my work uses those contradictions. For example, and because it’s on my mind, I had an exhibition open a few nights ago in Singapore called Constellations. It’s in a large gallery, where there’s a purpose-built, floor to ceiling, 40-meter long wall that diagonally cuts across the gallery. What the audience doesn’t see is that inside that wall is a very large PA system with 15 microphones studded across the inside of the wall. Upon entering the gallery you see this large expanse of wall and nothing else. Making the long walk around to the other side of the wall the only visible object in the large space is a baseball bat attached to the end of a long steel chain coming out from the centre of the diagonal wall. The audience is invited to strike the wall with the bat. What they don’t know is that their action is amplified at 120db, creating a huge reverberate impact that resonates through the entire building, highlighting the divide between noise/silence, something/nothing, maximalist/minimalist and so on.
f. You express yourself through a lot of different media, from performance and experimental music to images, what are common across all those in terms of theme or message?
MF. I work across many themes and each time it’s the idea that drives the form. I certainly want to be open to whatever I’m interested in at the time and not be locked in by any theme, [medium] or message.
f. What are the benefits of stretching across so many different media?
MF. That each medium requires periods of research, which lead to new possibilities.
f. If you had to choose one form of art, what would it be? If you had to limit yourself to one form of art, what would it be?
MF. Mmm… I’ve never thought like that, it’s a difficult question.
f. That’s no fun.
MF. [laughs] its uhm… No I’ve never really thought like that, I’ve certainly been interested in so many things that I’ve never thought I’ve had to limit myself to one ‘craft’. I have no interest in having great skills. In fact I’ve been more inclined to make something out of severe limitations. An example of that being my approach to the guitar whereby I learnt early on that I didn’t have the ear, patience or technical ability to play in a conventional manner. Like all the books in the music shops that teach you ‘How to play in the style of Jimi Hendrix’ or whoever. There’s no section in there ‘How NOT to play in the style of Jimi Hendrix’, which is infinitely more interesting. To do the opposite.
f. Well, you have the rest of 2015 jam-packed with performances and exhibitions, any major projects planned for 2016?
MF. I’m staying in bed. [laughs]
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On that note we let go of the artist to prepare for his upcoming exhibition The Infinitives, which is set to open on Saturday 5 September 2015 at Anna Schwartz Gallery in Sydney, Australia. The performance Spectral Arrows will take place at Teatro Piccolo Arsenale at the Venice Biennale on Tuesday 29 September 2015 from 10am until 6pm. Whether there will be more from the artist in the upcoming year is something only time can tell, otherwise we will look forward to 2017 after his well-deserved year of sleep.
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