Towards the solo show at MoCA

Friday 1st of July 2016

The piece I will be presenting at MoCA will be a sculptural interactive installation, which will react to the presence of the audience in the Pavilion and, when touched by people, it will conduct a choir of three Chinese opera singers. The choir will sing numbers, which will be extracted in real time from a database containing the forecast of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (Index).

Shanghai hosts one of the largest Stock Exchanges of China, together with Shenzen and Hong Kong. The artwork will be a site specific installation: it will be comprised of a structure built in extruded aluminium and panels or flags, made out of neoprene coupled with jersey.

The panels will be screenprinted with Bare Electric Paint; a conductive paint that allows to transform non conductive surfaces, into sensing components.

So far I have used the paint and a good selection of conductive materials, ranging from copper, to steel and aluminium on a range of supports; and as my background is in printmaking, I have been working mainly with screenprinting such paint on paper.

This time, also thanks to the skills of the great talented printer Faye McNulty, I will try to achieve similar if not better results on the neoprene, quite an unusual surface to work with.

Fabio Lattanzi Antinori

My practice encompasses sculpture, print, sound, poetry and interactive installations and it attempts to provide an understanding of the process by which notions of belief and the perception of reality are being shaped and shared between the world of corporate systems and the individual. More recently, my artistic research has focused on the world and language of the International Finance, as after all, as Neil MacGregor once defined it, the whole financial system depends on voluntary acts of faith. It is precisely this fictional aspect of money, the co-operational act of agreeing on its value and its consequent moral obligations that derive from such a shared view of reality that drives my interest and artistic production. I incorporate elements of the invisible yet pervasive domain of digital technology and responsive materials in my works, in order to manifest that which is otherwise intangible; coded surfaces and data informed structured so become a tool of investigation of the constant act of negotiation that goes behind the system of information we call tangible reality. My process is often collaborative and research based. From collaborating with RCA graduates in developing an innovative sensor based technology, to working with English and Chinese opera singers to create interactive artworks with a strong choral vocal component, to commissioning data analysts, scientists and a financial astrologer to forecast the value of International Finance markets, to working with an economist and explore ways to re-imagine the market driven society through language and poetry. Selected solo shows comprehend the MoCA Shanghai (2016), Ryder Projects (London, 2016), Museum für angewandte Kunst, (Vienna 2013); selected group shows comprehend the National Museum of Science and Technology (Milan, 2017), the Holon Museum (2017), the Galerie Für Gegenwartskunst (Freiburg 2017), the Odessa Biennale (August 2017), the participation in the Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art (Hangzhou, September 2016), the Kaunas Biennale, (2015), PiArtworks Gallery (London 2015), the Guest Projects (London, 2015), New York University (2015), the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (on-line, 2015), the Watermans Arts Centre (London, 2015 and 2014), the V&A London (London, 2014), the Contemporary Art Terminal (Shenzen, 2013) the Open Data Institute (London, 2012). Public collections that have acquired my work include the V&A (London), the Villa Lagarina Civic Museum (Rovereto) and the Crespina Civic Museum (Pisa); private collections include the Open Data Institute (London) and various private collections in Trento, Milan, London and Rome.

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Fabio Lattanzi Antinori