Introduction and texts by Friday in FRAC organiser Nicoletta Daldanise:
“Thinking about the exhibition of the FRAC Piedmont collection, the UNIDEE 2011 Residents’ interventions explore various possibilities of dialogue with architecture as well as different ways of acting within it, starting from the exhibition space. In fact, a series of meetings preceded the actual construction of the works, conceiving the show and developing a creative workshop in order to define the best way of sharing a place not only in physical terms, but also working on the lines of a collaborative and critical approach.
The inspiration drawn from the works of Ignacio Uriarte and Oscar Tuazon in the FRAC space is an opportunity to explore the different narratives that inhabit the places we cross through every day, leaving traces of a personal experience that joins together the identity of the space, sometimes changing how it is perceived.
Since the beginning of time man has constantly had the need to tell a story in the form of myth, fairy tale or history and narrative which, whether individual or collective, is a fundamental part of the cognitive process and the construction of identity. Therefore, intertwining the individual stories of the elements that contribute towards shaping the works on show means looking at places in a different way, reconstructing social contexts, bringing to light the crucial points within the necessary compromises of living together in one space. What emerges from the UNIDEE Residents’ work is the relation with the Biellese territory and the involvement of the community in the artistic practice, both through the interaction and through the recovery of the traces left behind during the exhibition.
In fact, the possibility for the narrator to be more or less aware of his role and his ability to transform the space is another issue that has been developed in the exhibition, in the way that there are references to examples of automatic writing, creative typography and linguistic or symbolic conventions to express opinions on the web. This creates an interesting bridge between physical and virtual space, real and imaginary narratives, but always with an ending open to contribution from the public.”
___________________________________________________________________________
Offer
The power of image, the processes behind its creation and the potential impact on contemporary society have been the main issues of Cai Weidong’s research since his early works. Offer is the result of the reconstruction of a space, in particular a dark room where, instead of photographs, historic events are developed. The dark room is like a maternal figure pregnant with images, where the observers can see time, space and contemporary events, images of the earthquake, photos of war and those that are more pleasant. Amongst the other objects that have been depicted there is a box with the word ‘Nothing’, an allusion to the emptiness of the world that surrounds it. The room is therefore a social concentration, an essence of contemporary phenomenons. A studio reproduction of a social architecture, an elaborate synthesis of society.
___________________________________________________________________________
Artist Aided Drafting (AAD)
Automatic writing intertwines curious connections with our psyche and is able to reveal issues difficult to grasp rationally. The performance by Eduardo Cachucho puts an unexpected third term of comparison into the dialogue between “writer” and “reader”. The instructions on how to draw the design are dictated by a person from the table to an artist who mechanically carries them out for the audience, standing between the work and the person who designed it. Issues typical of the contemporary scene such as the debate about the authorship of an art work, the dialogue with the space and the margin for interpretation of the original project at the time of its practical realization run together with the artist’s architectural background. Artist Aided Drafting (AAD), in fact, comes from Computer Aided Drafting (CAD), a well-known design software, able to automatically perform the instructions of the designer through a similar coordinate system, but in this case the uncertainty of the human element opens the process up to unpredictable outcomes.
___________________________________________________________________________
Handmade Typography
Typography was born as a technological invention, but the whole history of art, from the historical Avant-gardes onwards, considered it as an expressive code, rather than as a mere linguistic medium. The fact that the Greek etymology of the word itself contains the idea of track (from túpos = print), therefore, is particularly important for Olga Karyakina. Handmade Typography collects the thoughts of Biella’s citizens in the form of statements, which are then reproduced on a large scale using different materials such as bread or leaves. The objects made in this way are placed into the space again and in particular into the landscape, showing the signs of intangible personal stories in a concrete way. The photos that document these single actions therefore not only block the exchange of experiences inside the frame, but are also witness to the artist’s passing through the places: from outside to inside the architectural space in a continuous dialogue between man and his surroundings.
___________________________________________________________________________
Who likes it?
The recent developments that have been introduced by technological innovations into the communication system push us to reconsider how it is perceived by those who use it with different degrees of awareness, clearly highlighting some of the contradictions about mass phenomena. Social networks and all online information, for instance, have widely expanded the access to news, but at the same time they led to a subsequent emptying of contents. Özgür Demirci reflects on the expression of personal opinions inside the virtual space of the internet, through the obsessive repetition of the “thumbs up” symbol. Who likes it? develops the possibility of recurrence of an automatic form, which then loses its meaning to assume another one which is purely aesthetic. The objectivity of the judging criteria, the supposed subjectivity of opinion (even in art criticism), the time and place of its expression are some of the issues raised by interlocking the two-dimensional constructions on display.
UNIDEE 2011 
Pingback: friday in FRAC | UNIDEE 2011