Daniela Trincia, interview with Bianco-Valente, 2013
A red Renault 5 that seems to struggle up the hill, and six people, unintentionally split into two balanced and symmetrical groups of three, of different ages but united by the same action and passion; three others, driven by curiosity, watch from above, with feigned indifference and detachment, as if to say “I'm only passing through, killing time”… while someone is writing a sentence on a grey wall with light blue paint. This is the first image (although it is actually the last, number 43) that I saw on opening the zip folder that the duo Bianco-Valente (Giovanna Bianco, Latronico-PZ 1962; Pino Valente, Naples 1967; they live in Naples) sent me so that I could see the photographic documentation of their latest intervention in Bcharre, a small town in a Christian-Maronite community in northern Lebanon, stretching along the edges of the Qadisha valley, not far from Beirut, and birthplace of the celebrated writer and painter Khalil Gibran. In fact I should have started with the first image, in which Giovanna, sitting on a sofa, listens intently to a man while Pino is busy taking notes, of whom we see only the hand holding a pen and a notebook full of words: details that were probably important clues. But perhaps this backward journey through the photos, that is, from the finished work back to its development and realization, is also, unintentionally, a circuit that slowly seeks to trace the origin of it all. Like the Wind is, therefore, not only the title of the work created by Bianco-Valente during a two-week residency in this small town, but is also, and above all, an experience that is as much about life as it is about art. A “wonderful” experience, as they themselves told me during a long and pleasant three-way phone conversation, with voices chasing and overlapping one another in the enthusiasm of sharing their feelings and emotions, still strong and vivid…
Let's start with the classic questions, useful for understanding how this work came about and why…
Pino Valente: about a year ago we were contacted by curators Katia Baraldi and Laure Keyrouz ofFront of Art, asking us if we wanted to take part in the project A place for action. We were happy to take part right away because we're very drawn to Middle Eastern cultures which, although of a different religion, are very similar to us. So we accepted immediately. There was just one problem, the usual one, of not having much funding, so Front of Art worked to find private sponsors to make the project possible and mainly obtained technical sponsorships, such as that of the airline that let us travel from Italy to Lebanon whenever necessary. The basic idea is to bring contemporary art to peripheral places. It consists of three stages, each of which also involves local artists so that there can be an exchange. The first was this one in Bcharre in April, where we were present along with two other Lebanese artists; the second in May in Rocca Gloriosa in the Cilento area, again with us and two Czech artists, and the third will be in October in a town in the Czech Republic, where the Lebanese and Czech artists will be present.
Giovanna Bianco: similar projects are also carried out in Latronico, the town I come from, a very small village in Basilicata, to bring contemporary art out of museums and closer to non-specialists too.
P. V.: …it's also a way for us as artists to put ourselves on the line and weave the inhabitants' lives together with contemporary art, which doesn't have to be relational art by necessity. Even though the projects we've made have always related to the territory and the people, every time we avoid arriving with a predetermined idea, so that it's the place itself that pushes us to create the new work.
What was the Residency like?
G. B.: wonderful! First of all we lived for two weeks with a family who welcomed us as members of their own household; we even swapped beds, and they didn't stand on ceremony.
P. V.: moving, from a human point of view. We received the kind of welcome and hospitality just like what our parents used to tell us about, in which the guest is sacred. Lebanon is a mix of various cultures and each has left a trace. Take the food, for example: it's Mediterranean, they don't use spices and they use the same ingredients as us but combined differently, producing unusual flavors. We were also very struck by the writing and the music, which are tied to Islam but with Christian elements, and this short circuit fascinated us.
P. V.: the town is small, so after a while everyone knew us. For instance, when we went into a bar for a coffee, at the till they would say: “you're our guests, you don't have to pay.”
G. B.: this kind of hospitality can still be found in the south, in Calabria, Basilicata and Sicily, where everyone is very welcoming, an aspect we found there too. The first few days were about getting to know each other, while the second phase, meeting people, was very intense and demanding, because we talked with people and then transcribed their stories.
…and how did you find the family?
G. B.: it's the family of one of the two curators.
… so you felt a bit at home…
G. B.: yes! A chaotic home. Even though the town council had put a space with a computer at our disposal, we spent a lot of time at the house and the super-mom kept bringing food.
P. V.: and we talked a lot, but in different languages.
G. B.: they speak French, English and Arabic fluently and we were struck by that. It's a small community, but they probably start studying languages from childhood, and they are very cultured people, which also impressed us a great deal.
P. V.: they're very active and quick, despite the difficulties they face, such as electricity. Every day they have six hours of electricity and then the following four hours without power, and so on. When there's no electricity, they can draw on the generators provided by the town, but obviously they have to use them carefully. Everyone lives like this, even in Beirut. Naturally this also has repercussions on the work.
You said that you normally go to a place without a precise project. How did what you eventually made come about?
G. B.: at first we were afraid we wouldn't manage it, because fifteen days is too little time to conceive a project and carry it out, to the point of considering the idea of living these two weeks as a first step to think it through and then, at a later time, coming back to produce it. The first few days were spent getting to know the area: they introduced us to the various local associations and had us visit the town, where the landscape is beautiful; until the 1950s/60s the village had stone houses, which were then knocked down and rebuilt in concrete, but almost all of the new buildings were left unfinished, with an open, incomplete third floor. And this is a very strong contrast, which we noticed right away.
P. V.: everyone talked to us about this past when the landscape was more harmonious. Consider that Bcharre is close to the ancient forest of the famous Lebanese cedars, to highly regarded ski resorts, to the oldest Maronite monastery of Saint Elisha. The idea came right after that. No one talked about the war, about the Syrians who control the territory. Consider that every 40/50 km there are checkpoints where cars have to slow down and turn on the interior light to be identified. Syria puts strong pressure on Lebanon, and images of the conflict don't reach Europe, but they themselves don't talk about it either. Moreover, during the conflicts, Lebanese fought against Lebanese, and for this reason they have no unknown soldier, because they fought against themselves. We reflected on this detail, on this unexpressed fear and anguish, and we invited them to bring out what they kept inside; from the elderly we tried to get them to tell us what they missed from the past. People began to open up to us, to tell us their stories, and we were always very careful not to talk about the war. And talking with them, we noticed that most of them hate these concrete walls. So we began to draw phrases out of their stories; and the most meaningful ones, about ten, we decided to write on these walls to soften them and put these stories back into circulation.
G. B.: we also talked a lot with the young people, who were very protective toward us, trying not to send us to Beirut alone, for fear the war might spill over.
P. V.: after identifying the phrases, we went to the mayor for the relevant permits. At first we met with a lot of distrust, which then gradually dissolved. We discovered that every community has a calligrapher whose job is to write banners in beautiful Arabic script to warn the population about something. So the first step was to contact this calligrapher, who traced the outlines of the phrases, and we began to paint. But even transcribing the phrases wasn't so straightforward. We were fascinated by certain phrases, but written language is very different from spoken language, so we couldn't transcribe them exactly as they had been told to us, otherwise they wouldn't have worked, and it was necessary to transform them to make them public, consulting with people who worked with the language, each of whom always changed some detail.
G. B.: in fact, one day, while we were going ahead with painting these phrases, a car stopped and a person got out with a piece of paper in hand to make us understand that it would be appropriate to make some very small changes to a few phrases. This transcription work was complicated too. For example: an old man told us that when he worked in the fields people helped one another, and if someone was in difficulty they would leave money under a stone anonymously. And he told us, “we were like a heart laughing in the middle of the field”: a phrase of great poetry that we wanted to transcribe exactly as it was, but instead we had to make small changes.
P. V.: or, a young man, telling us about the valley that is sacred to them because it's where the first Christians took refuge, said: “when I immerse myself (with the double meaning of immersing oneself in the valley and within oneself) with a single glance you can embrace heaven and earth”, but instead we had to write: “when you go down into the valley with a single glance you can embrace the earth and the sky”: in short, we had to correct the wording. But in the end, the meaning of the work isn't the phrases but the fact of having written them together with so many people who joined in, one at a time, drawn in by our project. For example, we saw a wall we liked a lot but it already had writing on it, and they told us: “don't worry, we'll fix it for you”, and so they whitewashed it and got it ready. In the end there were two or three groups working at the same time. But the important thing was the actions. The work cannot be separated from all of this.
G. B.: at first the mayor and also some private individuals had placed certain vetoes, but in the end even people who saw us invited us to write on their walls. Also consider that the mayor had banned the use of posters.
P. V.: whereas he allowed us to make these writings. Even with the stories, one led to another and they would tell us to go to this or that person. It was all word of mouth.
In your opinion, why did this involvement take hold among the inhabitants?
P. V.: because of how we presented ourselves: yes, we came from outside, but we chose to write in Arabic, and this was much appreciated on their part because everything is written in French or English, and moreover we used phrases from their own stories and so we were, in a way, the means of putting these reflections back into circulation.
G.B.: they were phrases about themselves, their memory.
I saw that the phrases were done in different colors and I wondered whether each shade had a particular meaning …
P. V.: at first we had thought of using black, but then dropped that idea because they associate it with political messages and war, and so decided to do them in color.
Who helped you carry out the writings?
P. V.: at first it was just the two of us, the curator Katia Baraldi, the calligrapher and a fine arts teacher who came with a class of children with whom we made the first piece of writing. Then one day a bus arriving from Beirut stopped, carrying older students who got off and began reading what we had written and asked if they could help us. Word spread and other kids came along, and in the end we ran out of brushes.
When I saw the images from Bcharre, I immediately associated them with the video Resonant Entity from 2009, as though that attempt to write on water, with the ink dispersing, then took shape in this work …
P. V.: yes, good observation. In fact they are very close: in both there's the idea of intertwining, of mixing characters.
Over time the writings will lose their consistency: do you plan to go back to Bcharre to check on their condition? To restore them?
G. B.: the work was conceived as permanent.
P.V.: They'll take care of it.
In your opinion, what did it leave behind in people?
G. B.: What has stayed with us of those people is the experience of collaborating, and so of friendship. And above all a store of experiential memories.
Can art unite people?
P. V.: we can't separate our life from our work; the two are perfectly integrated and it isn't possible for us to develop a piece of work independently of what we do. And they appreciated this action. When you change a public situation you trigger reactions in people and you set energies in motion.
…and as for the timing?
P. V.: two weeks is too syncopated and stressful a timeframe for this kind of work, with moments of great tension. For this reason, different timeframes have been planned for the project's subsequent stages: a first phase of getting to know each other, then a phase of developing the project in one's own country of origin, and finally the last phase of realization.
Future plans?
P. V.: a new public art project, which we like a lot because there's always the idea of history becoming a bond between people. If it goes ahead, for the first time we'll use a technological medium, but for us the medium doesn't matter, what matters is what it's about, trying to work with concepts that are as universal as possible.
A few days ago, I attended a talk and one of the speakers said that the peculiarity of art is its gratuitousness — do you agree?
P. V.: art is gratuitous, especially when it's placed in a public space, because in any case it changes that space, like architecture: whatever is placed in a location alters its sociability, the way people are together. It doesn't necessarily activate relationships.
G. B.: because it triggers other attitudes.
P. V.: like Naples, which is subject to continuous changes that coexist without any break in continuity. Otherwise the place goes dark, dies, is without soul.
…and what's the purpose of your art?
P. V.: it springs from who we are, from how we see things.
G. B.: it also becomes an attempt to find a way to connect people with one another.
P. V.: we're interested in seeing how much stories are the bond between people; how much a plurality of stories creates social fabric.
So is it based on collective memory?
P. V.: No, not on memory, but on bonds and differences.
A particular episode?
P. V.: in the house that hosted us there were no keys on the doors, including the bathroom door. So, when the door is closed, it means the bathroom is occupied; when it's open, the bathroom is free: at first this was a bit disorienting, but you get over it right away because you see that it works.
In 2010 you created The Unbearable Calm of the Wind, and in this work too the word wind returns: why is that? What value do you give to the wind? The wind, in any case, seems to be a natural element that resonates strongly in the Middle East — I'm thinking of the book and the film The Kite Runner which, although set in Afghanistan, has points of contact with Lebanon …
G. B.: good observation. The concept of wind is a project we've been carrying forward for some time. Conceptually, we work with something impalpable, like relationships. The wind is important because it's an element that brings about change, transformation, like seeds carried by the wind that give rise to other things — it's an element of diffusion.
An adjective that could describe this experience?
P. V. and G. B.: (at the same time): Wonderful!
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July 2013