Aqua Aura from Milan
Your new daily ritual ...
I tend to confuse night with day. In the morning I sleep, in the afternoon I try to make sense of my being in the world, with mixed fortunes to be honest. I spend the nights without will, dazed watching Netflix or some other Pay TV… I don't know?! Spy-Story sul Mossad, story da serial killer, Scandinavian black, things like that.
With which objects and spaces of your daily life are you interacting the most?
Bivouac in my study. I'm sitting in front of the computer trying to do something. For some time now, He and I don't have much to say to each other anymore. After a while I get up to make myself some coffee and things, in the next five minutes, they seem to be improving.
We are dealing with a new time and space. What are you discovering or rediscovering about yourself?
I'm discovering the depths of my fears and how difficult it is to capture concentration in certain circumstances. I found out, finally, how difficult it is to lend a hand to someone who asks you for help on the phone, in the midst of a coronavirus respiratory crisis; call for help, find some doctor spared from the infection who can urgently go to this person's home for a visit or for immediate hospitalization. In the following days, follow him, always by telephone, monitor his condition three times a day by asking him to constantly measure his values: temperature, symptoms, saturation. Evaluate his or her improvements, possible, worsening. Give him strength and convince him that "everything will really be fine". It seems like one of those things that can take away anyone's sleep.
What you're missing? Your personal experience of "absence" and "lack".
I miss the future.
Museums and galleries have reacted to the moment with digitalization and virtuality. What are your "strategies" for establishing new relationships?
No strategy. I'm staying here, secluded in my condominium as if inside a medieval tower. I observe the world from the window. A world that has narrowed to just four ways, those around home. Every now and then an ambulance passes by with sirens blaring. Only old relationships exist. Every now and then a phone call to some old distant friend or relative, colleagues or friends in the profession; to make sure everyone is okay, to find out how they are doing and if they need help.
How do you imagine the world, when everything will start again?
A gray blanket seems to have fallen between me and the "world to come"... Like an opaque veil. Beyond that I can't make out anything.
When all this is over: one thing to do and one never to do again.
Beh! First things first, forget the mask hanging on the bathroom hook, I would say. And never to be done again… Nighttime snacks in front of the TV.
New places and alternative spaces of cohesion have been born around you?
I thought that the cohesion spaces had already been repealed by the first decree, even alternative ones, I think so... but maybe I'm remembering wrong.
Anyhow, I have never torn my clothes for socializing and meeting places in general; even before, in unsuspecting times. With this new season of pandemic, however, my misanthropy has taken a quantum leap: after a while’ I started by suspending my social media accounts. Observe them from the outside, all my contacts, who were busy in the virtual world, They reminded me of those old Mel Bochner paintings entitled Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah…
At the beginning the various appointments from the balconies for songs and applause struck me but it lasted no more than two days. From my balcony I didn't meet interesting people and the music selection left something to be desired, and then… I'm out of tune.
It is always difficult to define the nature of Aqua Aura. Formally he was born in 2009 but I can't say whether it was ever really accomplished. Aqua Aura is me and, at the same time, it is the veil of modesty, the membrane that covers my face when reality manifests itself; when the otherness of the world approaches and demands an account of what I do. Aqua Aura is the unrealized palindrome, perfection and symmetry always missing. It is the lost arcana that bears in its name the revelation of the end. Before this I was many other things; I have worn many other masks. Over time I discovered the forms of science: Theoretical Physics, Cosmology and Microbiology. The implications inherent in their hypotheses have begun to dispute the primacy of "revelation" in art.
Latest project completed: NOCTURNAL FLIGHTS, solo show. VV8 Artecontemporanea Gallery, Reggio Emilia. Project not yet realized: a video with a provisional title FALLING IN SPRING, first work inspired by these months of pandemic, to be accomplished from here towards Infinity.
Reference galleries: Luisa Catucci Gallery, Berlin (DE); VV8 Artecontemporanea, Reggio Emilia; Civiero Art Gallery, Diano Marina (IM).
www.aquaaura.it