The exhibition: at MAD, Murate, Jacopo Baboni Schilingi reinterprets Florentines’ dreams recorded in spring: eighty accounts transformed into images, sounds and multimedia installations. The artist: “We all dream—men, women and children. With this work I have given voice to the unconscious.”
Nothing is more democratic than dreaming. We all dream: men and women, children and older people, rich and poor, surprising ourselves when we wake—when we remember—with feelings of happiness, wonder or panic. But when an artist casts an eye over it, the material becomes rarefied. The project proposed by MAD Murate Art District, Florence’s municipal contemporary-art centre managed by MUS.E, is certainly sophisticated. It has entrusted international artist Jacopo Baboni Schilingi with bringing Florence an experiment at the latest frontiers of digital art.
The performance Il Respiro dei sogni can be seen on one day only, tomorrow from 7 to 9 p.m., in the Terzo Giardino on the Arno. In the event of rain it moves to Le Murate—check the MAD website—where the exhibition continues from Friday until 15 October.
The artist collected dreams from people who answered last May’s open call, inviting them to stroll freely through the Terzo Giardino and record one or more dreams as voice messages on their phones, to “give” to Florence. The result: eighty dream accounts. Jacopo Baboni Schilingi listened to and analysed them, entrusting their vocal interpretation to Cristina Abati and Riccardo Rombi.
Whispered dreams are decoded by a sophisticated electronic device called Argo: a kind of belt below the rib cage measuring respiration, based on technology developed by David Kuller with MyAir. It records visitors’ emotions as they encounter digital representations of these dreams: dreams of hope, of the immediate present, dream visions and utopias. Each category will occupy a cell in the former Florentine prison, leading to the Anna Banti room, where visitors can experience “dreaming” for themselves and, like orchestral conductors, compose music simply by moving their hands. All this is made possible by the revolutionary device conceived by the artist. Each video has a digital soundtrack through which, following his instincts, the artist has interpreted the dream.
“The ability to dream unites us all,” Jacopo Baboni Schilingi explained. “It is that unconscious ability through which we are all a little like artists, capable of profound, mysterious, frightening and imaginative experiences. Through the breath of dreams I decided to give voice to your unconscious.”
Curator Valentina Gensini observes: “Culture has the power to emancipate a place; experimentation is worthwhile.” She also highlights the merits of MAD’s artist-residency programme, in which Schilingi himself spent a lengthy period.
The project by Jacopo Baboni Schilingi is curated by Valentina Gensini, MAD’s artistic director, and Renata Summo O’Connell, president of Artegiro. It is funded by ANCI and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers’ Department for Youth Policies and Universal Civil Service, within Lumen–Progetto Riva. Conceived and produced by MAD, it involves Artegiro Contemporary Art, the Institut français, Florence’s Academy of Fine Arts, the Luigi Cherubini Conservatoire and EMI–Ensemble de Musique Interactive, with support from Fondazione CR Firenze.
Loredana Ficcichia
Image captions: the large photograph shows the artist presenting a video generated by decoding dreams. Other images show the recording of dreams on Florence’s Lungarno Serristori in spring and another video in the exhibition.
Interactions: in the Anna Banti room anyone can turn emotions into notes by moving their hands like an orchestral conductor.