In the work Parachute Project-Floating House, there are a series of elements that can be considered as paradigmatic of a new mode of producing and reinterpreting some of the concepts upon which –historically speaking, art is founded. The first of these concepts that the project destabilizes is that of the single artist as sole producer of an artwork. We are confronted by a plural subject: the Trickster Studio. The studio is a ‘mobile’ group of artists, performers and/or architects founded in 1998 by Filippo Borella and Stefania Grazioli, the works of whom are the result of a collaboration and process of exchange that is present in both the conceptual and practical phases of the work. As the initial idea is the fruit of a group effort, the collaborative concept is continued by the fundamental role that Trickster gives to the citizens of Como in the realization of the work. In this way, the group question the limits of the traditional figure of the artist/genius; a figure of controversy throughout the twentieth century which has nonetheless remained a fixed point of reference in the art world.
The second element that Parachute Project-Floating House disturbs is the concept of the art work itself. In fact, it is difficult to analyse with the traditional instruments of evaluation the work that Trickster presents because it is not confined by an object that symbolizes artistic discourse. The whole operation –with its ethical content, goes beyond any purely aesthetic definition of a work of art. If we depart from such presuppostions it is easy to comprehend how the role of the spectator (in its active sense –considered from both an Italian and Indian point of view) can also be questioned. The gallery space is also put under scrutiny in this way: widened and deformed by the very art work spread out between the closed exhibiting space and lack Como where the last phase of Parachute Project –the true Floating House- took place. The result is an open work, where creative invention is linked to the reality of social problems, and where the representation gives up its place to an attempt to intervene at the heart of the ever-expanding emergencies of our time.
The last point that I would like to cover is a brief analysis of the group’s name: trickster. This English term, which one could simply translate as ‘con artist’ actually refers to an archetypal figure, difficult to categorize and present in all sorts of narratives; a figure which also fascinated C G Jung1. Half liar, half civilizing hero, the figure of the trickster is capable of combining feminine and masculine, western and eastern characteristics in a continual destabilizing of the certainties of laws and orders, leaving the possibility of creating a world where anything is possible2. Nomen omen Plautus said twenty-two centuries ago, and perhaps we can still put face in these words to consider the meaning of Parachute Project - Floating House is already present in the term Trickster3.
Roberto Pinto
Note
1 cfr. Radin, P., Jung, C. G., Kerényi, K., Il briccone divino, Bompiani, Milano 1965.
2 cfr. Miceli, S., Il demiurgo trasgressivo. Studio sul trickster, Sellerio, Milano 2000.
3 Plauto, Persa, v. 625.