Postcard from Naples

By Mike Watson

The art world in Naples has gained renewed energy thanks to the re-opening, in 2013, of the MADRE museum – which is situated in the city’s historical centre – and, since 2011, the ongoing renovation of the Lanificio (or ‘wool mill’), formerly the cloisters of the Church of Santa Maria in Formiello, in the district of Porta Capuana.

By bringing together independent artists, artisans, designers and gallerists, Made in Cloister presents an independent cultural reality which will work alongside the city’s museum spaces. Current inhabitants include sculptor Jimmie Durham, who recently fell in love with Naples relocating there from Rome. Durham has his studio in the former ecclesiastical complex and will shortly begin to run sculpture workshops for local inhabitants there. Meanwhile, gallerist Dino Morra is preparing to open his new space in early 2015, having relocated from the more affluent Neapolitan district of Chiaia. Dino Morra’s third space since opening in 2012 will have the capacity to host artists in residence during periods of research and will have a strong focus on site specific works. It will compliment an existing gallery scene which includes Galleria Fonti, T293 (who operate a second space in Rome) and Lia Rumma (who also has a space in Milan).

Made in Cloister is one example of how both private and independent interests are fundamental to the provision of a cultural programme in Naples, a situation reflected across Italy where foundations and even occupied spaces enjoy a close working relationship with both state and council run museums. In Naples this can be seen, for example, in the close working relationship between Museo MADRE and Fondazione Morra Greco with which the MADRE recently co-presented their solo show by Franco Vaccari, entitled Rumori Telepatici (‘Telepathic Static’), an overview of the septuagenarian’s practice, which explores the notions of contingency and identity through photography and film. Vaccari’s work focuses on the off kilter perspective of the banal and the everyday. A series of photos were presented next to large scale QR Code’s, which could be read by smart phones. One QR code, placed next to a photo of the Isle of Wright Festival, taken by the artist – in 1970, in which hundreds of revelers face the camera, smiling – delivers the question: ‘Do you see anyone with a camera?’. This self-reflexive piece plays on the history of photography as a medium associated with audience participation. At the 36th Venice Biennale of 1972, the artists displayed a photo booth at the Italian Pavilion, inviting the public to take and display their own portrait photos, which were shown as strips on the wall of the Italian Pavilion – a sort of collective portrait.

Franco Vaccari, from the series ‘Photomatic Italia’ (1973-74)

In Naples, Vaccari also showed unseen strips from the series ‘Photomatic Italia’ (1973-74), which were made the same way in the region of Campania. These early ‘selfies’ display a sense of humour and also relative lack of self consciousness in the Italian population long before the advent of smart phones and facebook. The empowering aspect of photography is thrown into question in an age in which we have all become subjected to a constant flow of images which need constant updating and commenting upon. Vaccari puts the public in a position to recall a time prior to the smart phone, by using that very device as a tool.

A similar self-reflective tendency can also be seen in Walid Raad’s solo show ‘Preface/prefazione’ at the MADRE, which runs until 19 January 2015. The Lebanese artist’s first solo show in Italy includes, on the museum’s ground floor, the ongoing cycle ‘Scratching on Things I Could Disavow’ (2007–ongoing), a project about the history of art in the Arab world, particularly relating to space and the way in which museum spaces in the middle East have appropriated the dominant language of the Western art institution. Museum style boards and displays as well as appropriated photos of generic gallery spaces contributed to the feeling of a museum that had been somehow disassembled, echoing the way in which the museum practices in the West are appropriated in the East. In the middle of the installation a large wall comprising two expansive white boards looks as if it has been literally ripped out of a generic museum space.

Walid Raad, Scratching on things I could disavow, Preface to the third edition (édition française), Plate III, 2013. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Beirut/Hamburg.

On the museum’s second floor, the show continues with The Atlas Group (1989-2004), a fictional collective conceived by Raad as a means to explore the impact of the protracted Lebanese civil war via an archive of falsified artworks and documents. There are, for example, two photographs of heavily bombed-out buildings with colour coded dots marking bullet holes according to the size of the area of impact and the origin of the country which manufactured the bullets. The series to which the two photographs belong, Let’s Be Honest, The Weather Helped (1998), presents a kind of cartography of the personal as well as impersonal affects of conflict.
A strong programme of educational events, talks and screenings characterize the cultural life of Naples, with Lia Rumma, for example, regularly supporting collective projects by the students of the city’s Accademia Dell’Arte. At the Faculty of Architecture of the Federico II University of Naples, students have occupied the building’s third floor over successive generations providing dark room, woodwork and sound recording facilities as well as a radio station and a lecture room. Such a reality exists alongside the daily functioning of the University and is tribute to the pragmatism of its staff and students. The facilities make use, so far as possible, of donated and found materials, whilst students and locals are trusted to contribute to costs.

Meanwhile, seminars and outdoor performance and film events are regularly held at Fondazione Morra which hosts the Museo Nitsch, dedicated to the work of Austrian Actionist Herman Nitsch, famous for his actions involving animal sacrifices and staged crucifixions. The museum currently holds a temporary retrospective of Actionist painting – ‘Azionismo pittorico, ecesso e sensualità’ – alongside a permanent installation comprising artefacts from Nitsch’s staged ‘plays’, including his 130th action held in the Vigna San Martino, a vineyard in the hills of Naples, in collaboration with Fondazione Morra.

In June of this year veteran experimental musician Phill Niblock – who is often described as the Grandfather of noise, a title he laughs at – played an audiovisual set at the Foundation’s 14th annual Independent Film Show in collaboration with Katherine Liberovskaya. His closing set featured characteristic dense drones layered with microtones, creating a nuanced dissonance comprising warm timbres to the accompaniment of documentary film footage Niblock shot in Eastern Asia, portraying the repetitive labour of rural communities. Listening to the mantra-like, repetitive tonal layers against the backdrop of Mount Vesuvius and the city’s night lights, it was a bit like being at the crossroads of history, between the rural Far East and Industrial West (with both being at the cusp of globalized hyper-capitalism), between Naples’ three-thousand-year-old history and its current bohemian energy (a sort of Mediterranean Berlin?) – like being in a space outside time.

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