Margherita Remotti - Interview with Bianco-Valente, 2003
Margherita Remotti: How did the Bianco-Valente duo come about?Bianco-Valente: We met and fell in love with each other in 1994, and we immediately went to live together in a beautiful house/studio in the heart of the Quartieri Spagnoli, here in Naples.
We discovered the true passion of our lives late, in fact we don't come from an art institute or academy. One of us has a degree in Film History and the other abandoned Geology studies. In 1995 we started everything from scratch.
MR: How does the work of creating a piece together unfold?
BV: First of all by talking, telling each other our dreams and visions in the morning, or our desires and fears.
Going around in the late afternoon to clear our minds, only to end up with smog and confusion.
The night we started living together, a conversation began that has essentially never stopped; it's the engine that drives all the dynamics we're at the center of. Art and non-Art.
MR: Do you ever argue?
BV: Of course, what a question.
MR: What do you think you have more or less of compared to artists who work alone?
BV: We don't envy artists who work alone much; the thing they definitely miss out on is that while working (sometimes even hard) nice little unplanned moments can open up... sure, it slows the work down, but they're all very pleasant interludes.
MR: In your case, as a couple of artists made up of a man and a woman, does it often happen that people assume the couple is also one in private life?
BV: We think it's inevitable that prolonged closeness turns a working relationship into something emotional or sexual; it even happens to managers with their secretaries, let alone us, who don't even wear a tie or a suit.
MR: Is that how it is?
BV: Yes
MR: And how does being a couple in life relate to your partnership at work?
BV: Being an artist has no fixed hours or holidays, you know, and that's true for romantic relationships lived with passion too.
In the end you basically wear both hats at the same time and live your day, and any further distinction becomes superfluous.
The thing that bothers us most is that sometimes the intense stress caused by work tends to stir things up between us, but now we're used to it and know how to release these negative tensions.
MR: Have you ever thought about what might happen if one day you decided to no longer be a couple in life?
BV: Yes, sometimes we happen to imagine the end of our story, and each time with different scenes and a different ending. But there are so many variables at play that it's not possible to predict from here what might actually happen.
MR: Have you ever thought about starting to work separately?
BV: No, right now it wouldn't make sense, but the future around us is very vast and full of possibilities.
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January 2003