ART-PRESENTATION: Please Come Back

Claire Fontaine, PLEASE COME BACK (K.Font), 2008, White fluorescent tubes, steel mounted on a scaffolding structure, motion detector, Installation at Galerie Chantal Crousel-Paris (20/12/08-31/1/09, Photo: Florian Keinefenn, Courtesy MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century ArtsThe prisons we currently live in, under constant surveillance, are our cities, where any manifestation of difference is controlled and mapped in a huge archive that can be used against us, though supposedly created to protect us. A dystopian imaginary connected to urban space has emerged parallel to the vision of it as a utopian solution for human coexistence (Part I)

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MAXXI Museum

Now that global communication also means global control, that the sharing born out of the Internet and social networks as dismantled our privacy, the word prison takes on very new meanings. The exponential development of digital technologies, the advent of the social networks, the use of Data, have progressively and inexorably changed our society which is witnessing the collapse of the philosophies of social and urban sharing and the establishment of new regimes that in the name of security are stripping us, with our consent, of every intimate and personal space. The exhibition: “PLEASE COME BACK. The world as prison?” composed of three sections: Behind the walls, Outside the walls and Beyond the walls at MAXXI starts out from these considerations and seeks an answer to the question: what would we like back in our lives from the paradise lost of the modern age? The exhibition takes its title from the work of the same name by the collective Claire Fontaine, born out the artists’ thinking about the society at large as a space of imprisonment and our uncanny position in it. On this basis, PLEASE COME BACK takes as its investigative focus the condition of contemporary society under the control of the power system, explored in both its physical dimension and in its metaphorical meaning. The first section, Behind the walls  features artists who have had direct experience of prison, because they have been detained, they have made it the subject of their work or because they grew up in environments in characterised by the looming presence of prison. They include Berna Reale with a video telling the story of the light of the Olympic torch within Brazilian prisons, Harun Farocki who uses films from the surveillance cameras of the Corcoran maximum security prison in California and Gianfranco Baruchello with his interviews with prisoners in the Rebibbia Civitavecchia jails. In Outside the walls we find the works of those artists who have reflected on the prisons we cannot see, on the surveillance regimes capable of transforming the contemporary cities into true open prisons. Among them are Superstudio which with their “Continuous Monument” had prophetically imagined a model of global urbanization alternative to nature, Mikhael Subotzky, who is presenting video materials supplied by the Johannesburg police, Lin Yilin who with his performance reproduces an example of privation of liberty to test the reactions of the citizens of a Chinese city Haikou or in Paris and Rä Di Martino who transforms Bolzano into the backdrop for a scene with mock tanks. In the last section, Beyond the walls the protagonist is the theme of surveillance as a dominant organizational practice, an all-pervasive phenomenon throughout our following 11 September. Among the works presented in this area, the practice of “War on terror” becomes the protagonist in Jenny Holzer’s investigation, Simon Denny’s project is inspired by the Snowden revelations, Jananne Al-Ani reproduces the perspective of the drones exploring various Middle Eastern sites, while in his work Zhang Yue prefigures future wars or a plan for the destruction of the United States. On presentation are works by: AES+F, Jananne Al-Ani, Gianfranco Baruchello, Elisabetta Benassi, Rossella Biscotti, Mohamed Bourouissa, Chen Chieh-Jen, Simon Denny, Rä di Martino, Harun Farocki, Omer Fast, Claire Fontaine, Carlos Garaicoa, Dora García, Jenny Holzer, Gülsün Karamustafa, Rem Koolhaas, H.H. Lim, Lin Yilin, Jill Magid, Trevor Paglen, Berna Reale, Shen Ruijun, Mikhael Subotzky, Superstudio and Zhang Yue.

Info: Cirators: Hou Hanru and Luigia, MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Via Guido Reni,4 A, Rome, Duration: 9/2-21/5/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri & Sun: 11:00-19:00, Sat 11:00-22:00,  www.fondazionemaxxi.it

H.H.Lim, The cage the bench and the luggage, 2011 , Galvanized steel and aluminium suitcase with padlocks and chain, 484 x 216 x 228 cm, Collection of the artist, Exhibition at MAXXi, Photo Cecilia Fiorenza, Courtesy MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts
H.H.Lim, The cage the bench and the luggage, 2011 , Galvanized steel and aluminium suitcase with padlocks and chain, 484 x 216 x 228 cm, Collection of the artist, Exhibition at MAXXi, Photo Cecilia Fiorenza, Courtesy MAXXI

 

 

Elisabetta Benassi, The Bullet-Proof Angela Davis, 2011,Exhibition at MAXXi, Photo Cecilia Fiorenza, Courtesy MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts
Elisabetta Benassi, The Bullet-Proof Angela Davis, 2011,Exhibition at MAXXi, Photo Cecilia Fiorenza, Courtesy MAXXI

 

 

AES+F, Inverso Mundus, 2015, Exhibition at MAXXi, Photo Cecilia Fiorenza, Courtesy MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts
AES+F, Inverso Mundus, 2015, Exhibition at MAXXi, Photo Cecilia Fiorenza, Courtesy MAXXI

 

 

Shen Ruijun, Lake (Thunder Series) (Detail), 2009, Ink, tempera, watercolor on silk, 43 x 51 cm, Courtesy the artist, Gallery Yang & MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts
Shen Ruijun, Lake (Thunder Series) (Detail), 2009, Ink, tempera, watercolor on silk, 43 x 51 cm, Courtesy the artist, Gallery Yang & MAXXI