Valentina Tanni: Bianco-Valente, Resonant Entity, 2009
(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 guided by the great systems of human thought: philosophy and religion. But science, too, has long been engaged in an attempt at unification.
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 now feel the need to develop a theory capable of gathering all the pieces of the puzzle into a single, great cosmic fresco. This dream seems to come true thanks to the string theory, positing the existence of a myriad of tiny vibrating strings 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 the world finds its strength in the conceptual collision of two ideas that are only apparently opposed: unity and complexity. The universe-system is unique because it is the fruit of inseparable elements – a skein of vital threads impossible to unravel. This indissolubility, however, does not make it immobile and immutable; it even increases its recombinant potential infinitely.
Bianco-Valente, long engaged in deep, underground and abyssal research into the less explored regions of the human mind and its relationships with nature and other living creatures, gather these suggestions and turn them into sounds and images. A poetic language capable of stimulating our less evident abilities and our unused senses, which rarely reach the limits of consciousness. The human being constantly emits and receives; it vibrates and resounds, communicates uninterruptedly with and, to a certain extent, 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 research, even though it may appear to be grounded in science and technology, is actually centred on man, the fundamental node 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 living being to use such a complex form of verbal communication. Two principal steps in man's evolutionary path, which set him apart from other animal beings, were: standing upright, which freed his arms and hands from the task of walking so that they could be used to manipulate the world, and the use of words, which closed the ranks of life in cohesive communities. Within a community, each personal experience was shared thanks to words. Both of these evolutionary events required considerable growth of the cerebral cortex, which is therefore the third element that distinguishes man from animals.
A magic, curative power has always been attributed to the word, as if it were able to enter inside us, changing our vital state. Prayer, through which humanity addresses the divinities, is made of words; many rites are made of words; psychologists create variations in our psychic balance merely using words.
In ancient times, people used to drink from cups engraved inside with particular phrases, believing that this would also let them absorb the curative energy of those words. Or they would let the water of a spring flow over statues decorated with ritual phrases, before drinking it. Even when the sound of the words we hear has faded away, their energy continues acting inside us. The words we have read or heard, the ones we have come across, have shaped us.
VT: It 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 in the face of time and the complexity of existence, whose deepest meanings are still undisclosed to him, even though he has learned to use, over time, formidable tools of abstraction, such as mathematics, geometry and the logical structures that animate the computers which we, too, use every day.
But perhaps that is precisely the point. In an illusory sense of self-sufficiency, we are increasingly withdrawing into the ivory tower built of cultural superstructures and technology, losing more and more our point of contact with the nature from which we were born and of which we are the expression.
We should go back to being a resonant entity; we should let the forms of energy coming from the Earth and the whole Universe vibrate within us.
VT: You are back in Rome with a solo show four years after 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 seem almost to be moving in slow motion.
Naples does not offer so many shades; we are madly in love with this place, except that, a minute later, we curse the day we didn’t leave it.
It is in this energy, partly destructive, that we feed ourselves though, this is our own 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