TOUJOURS is a collaboration between Istituto Svizzero and a group of students of our Bachelor of Fine Arts program and was developed in the class of Nadia Graf and Thomas Julier. The large LED screen placed on the roof of the corner building in Piazza Cavour, Milan—where not only the exhibition spaces of Istituto Svizzero, but also the Swiss Consulate and the restaurant ‘Swiss Corner’ are located—serves before and after Christmas on selected dates: ‘toujours’ as a display for a series of artistic works and interventions. The Piazza is a place where people pass by every day on their way to work, a place that is very familiar to them. The display: a place of public announcements—anonymous and distant. But currently also a place that remains open to the public during museum closures due to the pandemic. A platform for culture-creating impulses, a shared screen.
On December 18, 19, 21 and 22, four students present their works, a second series follows in January. What commons the artistic works is their playful approach to the site, which is as everyday as it is exposed, and their examination of the peculiarities of the curved LED screen and its almost gigantic size. Furthermore, the students’ works are also a reflection on the presence of screens in public and private life and the questions of how they change our perception of the world, or how digital media generate new forms of publicity. In this case, it is not only the people of Milan who are confronted with a screen while viewing the artworks in Piazza Cavour, but all of us. As a stage for joint discussions about the artistic works via videoconference, screens were in fact omnipresent in the process of creation as well. Accordingly, screen culture was a theme that accompanied the development of the works: at home, in class, in dialogue between members of the Istituto and ZHdK, and finally in Piazza Cavour.
Artists:
Suphansa Buraphalit, Elena Corvaglia, Julius Peter Jenny, Lisa Elena Mauriello, Jonas Tim Moser, Viviane Johanna Porret, Sebastian Eduardo Roldan Palomino, Carlo Schwager, Rebecca Solari, Jan Stolze, Saskia Sutter, Flavia Trachsler, Zoé Wagner, Anastasia Wey
Piazza Cavour, Milan, Italy
24/7 on 18-19, 21-22 December 2020 & 11-21 January 2021
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