Valentina Tanni: Bianco-Valente, Resonant Entity, 2009
“I started looking for waves and vibrations never reached, conceiving tools to pick up and transmit them”.
(Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, 1941)
Since ancient times man devotes himself to the pursuit of meaning. The meaning of his existence, of life on Earth and of the whole Universe. A millenary search guided by one single intuition, able to pass through centuries and cultures: the unity of everything. This journey towards the ultimate root of existence has been leaded by the great systems of human thought: philosophy and religion. Even though science is equally interested in attempting union.
After having analyzed, resolved and dismantled the matter in all its levels – from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale, from galaxies to subatomic particles – scientists are now willing to elaborate a theory collecting all the puzzled pieces into one, big cosmic fresco. This dream seems to come true thanks to the string theory, assuming the existence of small vibrating ropes hidden in the depths of the sensitive world, of which they represent the ultimate and indissoluble components. The real and true threshold of the existent. If everything existing were effectively made up of small vibrating rings, the matter properties would be much more similar to “ways” of being than to intrinsic qualities. Thus the Universe could be assumed as an endless symphony of resonant strings.
The aforesaid reality takes place in an imperceptible context, invisible to human sight – and to the most high-tech tools – which could be hardly conceived and pictured. However physics and mathematics postulate its existence always with greater conviction, forcing us to question the concept of matter – as well as the ideas of space and time- bringing up the solidity and impermeability perception of all surrounding us for discussion again.
This fascinating outlook on world finds its strenght in the conceptual collision of two, only apparently opposite ideas: unity and complexity. The Universe system is unique because is the issue of inseparable elements – a living-wire skein impossible to unravelled. This indissolubleness, however, does not make it immovable and immutable, it even increases endlessly its recombinant potentials.
Bianco-Valente, involved since ever in this deep, underground and abyssal chasing in the less explored parts of the human mind and its relationships with nature and creatures, collect these suggestions and turn them in sounds and images. A poetic language capable of stimulating our less evident abilities and our unused senses, which rarely reach the limits of consciousness. One human being issues and receives continuously; vibrates and resounds, unceasingly communicates with and partly determines the surrounding environment. Morel’s words cross our mind, the scientist who is devoting his life to the construction of a machine capable of capturing and registering human “transmissions”, described in the masterpiece of Adolfo Bioy Casares:
“A person, an animal or a thing, are, in front of my equipment, like the station broadcasting the concert you are listening to. If you open the receiver of the olfactory waves, you will smell jasmines pinned on Madeleine’s breast, without seeing her. If you open the sector of tactile waves, you will fondle her hair, smooth and invisible, and learn, like blind people, how to know things through your hands”.
Q&A – Conversation with the Artists
Valentina Tanni: "Resonant Entity " refers to a theory, not yet demonstrated, but followed by the contemporary physics. Once again your search meets science concepts and suggestions. How do you elaborate these influences? How do they turn in images, visual stories, poetic creations?
Bianco-Valente: Our search, apparently seems to be found on science and technologies, but is focused on man though, the crux of all our works. We used to employ electronic means, it’s true, but our works derive from words, from reflections and intuitions composing the thread of the speech begun when we met.
There is no real difference between Bianco-Valente and Giovanna and Pino: with words our work grew up as well as we, as persons.
VT: With regard to words, another main subject of this exhibition is the power of language, the capacity of writing and words to influence the human being, to please, to harm and to move. Where does this idea come from?
BV: Man is the only among all human beings to use such complex way of verbal communication. Two principal steps in man evolutionary path, which made him different from other animal beings were: the erected posture, allowing him to free his arms and hands to be used to manipulate the world, and the use of words, closing ranks of living in united communities. Within a community, each personal experience were shared thanks to words. These events allowed the human cerebral cortex to grow, thus laying down the third elements that distinguishes man from animals.
A magic, rather curative power has always been assigned to word, as if it was able to go inside ourselves, changing our life condition. Prayers, humanity address to divinity, are made of words; rites are made of words; psychologists create variations in our psychic balance merely using words.
In the ancient times people used to drink in cups where particular sentences were written in, assuming that the curative energy of those words could have been absorbed. Or to drink water falling down from a source passing over statues decorated with ritual sentences. Even when the sound of the words we listen has disappeared, their energy continue acting inside us. The words, read or heard, or came up built up ourselves.
VT: Its seems that your search is organized as a system of crossed references. It is like if every project contains a link, a big or small assonance with the other ones. Is it so?
BV: As we said before, man is the thread unifying all our works, who daily experiences his own limits facing time and the existent complexity, which deep meanings are still undisclosed to him, even if he learnt to use over time exceptional abstraction means, like maths, geometry and logical structures animating computers which we, as well, use every day.
But that is the point. We are deluding ourselves to be self-sufficient, shutting ourselves in the enchanted castle of cultural overtones and technologies, loosing more and more our point of contact with nature, from which we were born and we are the expression.
We should come back to the “resonant entity”; we should leave energies coming from the Earth and Universe vibrate.
VT: You are back in Rome with a solo after 4 year from Adaptive (V.M. 21 contemporary Art, 2005). How does the destination place influence your work? What are your relationships with the Eternal City?
BV: The specific architecture of the space influences the creation of a work more than the city itself. We are inclined not to change the contexts, introducing our works in the space.
It seems stupid for the people who live in Rome, but this city always gives us a sensation of peace and quiet, we love walking by the old centre where time seems to slacken, people are relaxed and are quite moving in slow motion.
Naples does not offer so many shades, we drove crazy for this place, but all of a sudden we curse the day we didn’t leave it.
It is in this energy, partly destructive, that we feed ourselves though, this is our personal “permanent” centre of gravity, which lets us feel its attraction force when we are around the world.
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Excerpt from Entità risonante, Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome, March 2009