K_lab
interacting on the reality interface
César Meneghetti
In collaboration with Enrico Blasi, Sam Cole e Matthew Mountford
Cured by Simonetta Lux and Domenico Scudero
Inauguration: 3rd December 2008, 18:30h
Wednesday December 3rd at the MLAC - Museum Laboratory of Contemporary Art, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, inaugurates the multimedia exhibition K_lab - interacting on to reality interface, an art project by César Meneghetti developed with Enrico Blasi and Sam Cole and Matthew Mountford.
The event is curated by Simonetta Lux and Domenico Scudero.
During the 1970s the Keita Valley, in Niger went throught a period of terrible crisis. Landslide heavely hit the agricultural production and the area was also hit by desertification, deforestation, increase of population and rural exodus. The draught caused a catastrophe for more than 100,000 inhabitants of the area. At the beginning of 1983, the Italian agency for cooperation together with the Government of Niger, developed a program for the Rural Development of Keita aimed to relieve the affected area and helping its development: almost 30 million new trees were replanted and the natural advance of the desert was halted. The rebirth of Keita is mostly due to the extraordinary activity of its inhabitants. In between June and November of 2007, during several missions César Meneghetti, Enrico Blasi and Sam Cole participated in the daily life of the local population. They collected people’s testimonies, exchanging their thoughts, emotions and basic concepts of existence. It was This was the basys for the creation of created the “laboratory K”, an artistic multidisciplinary and interactive project. An observatory, a container of ideas, of cultures and suggestions generated from that experience. The material collected was edited and developed in this first phase of the laboratory and the result were: 22 videos, an 8 channel video-installation (meneghetti/cole), photographs (blasi/meneghetti) and soundscapes (mountford). The aim is to express the morphologic harshness of the desert and interpretate the territory. Portraits, details, testimonies, landscapes reveal the deep sense and the representation of “place”. The borders of reality and the technological interface, the document, the narration, the sociological work on the field converge, launching a multiple approach on a single object of observation. Reality and imagination ultimately establish an unusual relationship of complicity with the spectator. The event is part of cycle IPERCONTEMPORANEA 1 of the MLAC directed by Simonetta Lux and cured by Domenico Scudero, with the contribution of the Lazio Region “Multimedia Application Technologies on contemporary art".MLAC will be this first piece to present this work in progress.
