Emidio Clementi and Dario Parisini
Along the borders of Bologna, sound reading
”One day ten years ago, musician and writer Emidio Clementi called Andrea Chiesi and asked whether he would take a walk with him through the suburbs of Bologna. The call was not only prompted by the long-standing relationship between the two but also by the fact that Clementi already described Chiesi as “a suburb expert”. (writes Claudio Musso in the “Orrizonte variabile, sguardo fisso” exhibition catalogue ).
Ten years later, Andrea Chiesi returned to Bologna’s suburbs, specifically to Pilastro, to explore a new project: an exhibition accompanied by a sound reading with Emidio Clementi, frontman of the historic band Massimo Volume, and Dario Parisini, of the now defunct band Disciplinatha. A specially created ambient sound piece using Clementi’s words, packed with new ideas, visions, and spaces, within CUBO’s evocative Mediatheque. The almost cinematographic slant of Clementi’s writing will be accompanied by digital narration inspired by the artist’s paintings. This has been created for the personal Orizzonte Variabile exhibition, curated by Claudio Musso, hosted in Spazio Arte, where the landscape becomes somewhere to talk about humanity without necessarily representing it. It becomes a pretext for going beyond, opening up another world where all places leave the realm of time.
“Suburbia and horizon are inextricably linked concepts in the urban and metropolitan landscape. The direction of our gaze obsessively oriented from the urban to the suburban makes the latter the only possible horizon. At the same time, while etymologically the two terms share the idea of limit and circularity, symbolically both can be used as synonyms for development and renewal. In this second hypothesis lies the ambiguous character that best distinguishes today’s suburbs, areas on the fringes indeed, but always the focus of public discourse. Undoubtedly borderlands, but placed in the spotlight because they can embody contradictions, inconsistencies and antinomies that are less apparent elsewhere. […]
The urban landscape, the complex organism that hosts everyday life, is the starting point and the point of arrival. An unstable start and a safe landing, it has been and remains one of the favourite themes in Andrea Chiesi’s painting. From the early days of his career, suburban scenery peeped through in comic strips filled with abandoned factories, harsh black and white contrasts, and suburban atmospheres not yet identified as a single image on which to focus all his attention. (from the text in the “Orizzonte variabile, sguardo fisso” by Claudio Musso).
Andrea Chiesi and Claudio Musso on reconnaissance in the Pilastro neighborhood of Bologna.