»Islands of Time« initiated by Niccolò Masini

Project

what shapes the identity of a nation and its culture?

Islands of Time initiated by the multidisciplinary artist Niccolò Masini explores the relationships between the intangible feeling of belonging and the construction of geographical identity.

The project analyzes collective memory as a representational construct trying to weave new textures in history and see otherwise. A central part of the research, will be the utilization and manipulation of found migratory archives and the use of living archives. The project unfolds from diaspora archives to arrive through research to multidisciplinary visual/cinematic experimentations. The study is centered as a means to observe tangible and intangible migratory processes, their mapping and traces, in relation to borders and colonization, and economic political processes that originated imposed fluxes of the labour force, with the aim to narrate other histories.

»Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already completed definition, which specific cultural practices represent, we should instead think of identity as an ongoing ›composition‹: never complete, always in the process of, always embodied within and not outside representation.« Abbasi, Hasti (2017)

Islands of Time, officially supported by the Miller-Zillmer Foundation, will be part of the 2020/22 Global Exhibition Program / Project Anywhere, an exhibition model for art at the outermost limits of location-specificity. Project Anywhere is a vehicle for illuminating artistic research and projects that take place outside traditional exhibition circuits. At the cessation of Project Anywhere’s annual global exhibition program, all hosted projects will be presented at the biennial conference Anywhere and Elsewhere at Parsons Fine Art in New York City. Project Anywhere is supported as part of a partnership between the Centre of Visual Art (University of Melbourne) and Parsons Fine Art (New York).

»I’ve been thinking and reading about the spatial inequalities and a lot about lines and dividing factors. And also about numbers. Because that’s what the division is about. Numbers of population, salaries, housing size, wealth, Gini coefficient. It all comes down to a single number. So it’s very clinical in a way. But also makes for beautiful geography if you look at it from above. The lines running through cities to divide them by wealth. Like the photo you sent of the crack in the Earth. The experience might speak about the idea of mapping and tracing. And divisions? Yes, whether they are cultural, economic or social. Composed of separating lines and gaps. Because many cities were built the way they are. Do you know what happened during the apartheid in RSA? So, these divisions are constructed and are not natural. And you can see it through maps and drone’s footages.« Marisha Flovers in conver-sation with Niccolò Masini for #IslandsOfTime, Genoa / Cape Town

You see, through certain kinds of spatial engagements there might be a transfer of empathy because of your ability to experience yourself in that way. Would you be able to acknowledge anything different than your own perception?

LIVING ARCHIVES (2017/2021) – Various sizes, Installed study research view of collected “Living archives materials” found in Italy, Argentina, Canada, and Australia.

Locations

Location 01

Memory as a form of resilience – El Boujdour Refugee camp (MA/WS), Western Sahara territories.

Location 02

On hope and inheritances –Genoa, Italy.

Location 03

An Island as a bridge for memory – Salina, Aeolian Islands, Italy.

Location 04

A land as a construct of memory – Dairoux, Argentina.

Location 05

Seventeen minutes till paradise –Ventimiglia and Menton, Italian/French border

»Memory As A Form Of Resilience«
LOCATION 01 – EL BOUJDOUR REFUGEE CAMP (MA/WS)
Western Sahara territories – 2019

NOMADIC RESILENCE – Performance, El Boujdour Refugee camp / Western Sahara Territories - 2/16 November 2019In collaboration with Escuela de Formación Audiovisual Abidin Kaid Salehand and the ResistanceSahara Documentary by Sidal Ergüder - Zero state productions Ltd.

Nomadism as a form of migratory process, memory as a form of resilience - As part of the Islands of Time researchproject, the performance Nomadic Resilience took place in the Western Sahara territories, collaborating with El Boujdour Refugee camp, Escuela de Formación Audiovisual Abidin Kaid Saleh and the Resistance Sahara Documentary by Sidal Ergüder - Zero state productions Ltd. The research analyzed the harshness that divides and segregates the Sahrawi people, a living condition that keeps an entire nomadic population hostage in camps inside their own territories. Western Sahara has been disputed since 1975, when Morocco claimed the territory as part of the kingdom, and the Polisario (Frente Popular de Liberación de Saguía el Hamra y Río de Oro) fought aguerrilla war for the Sahrawi people’s independence. Morocco argues that the notion of Western Sahara statehoodis illegitimate and that the region’s resources are theirs. However, the Polisario’s self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is recognized by the African Union and Algeria, which has given the group military support for decades and currently hosts more than a hundred and seventy thousand Sahrawi refugees in confined camps. As a result, Western Sahara has been the stage for a growing human-rights conflict as well as significant regional geopolitical tensions. A 1991 ceasefire split the region between what Morocco calls its southern provinces and an area controlled by Polisario.

Centered on the interaction between the Saharawis and their own living environment, the performance highlights the process of desertification as a representation of the Sahrawi’s nomadic culture de-territorialization process. The desert and its nomadic delimitations are imagined as an undivided epistemological unit, a territory in which the Saharawis are represented as an abstract entity extending beyond the boundaries of the confined community that forms it. The collected materials utilized during the performance act as embodiments of constructions of limits/boundaries, taking place through the denaturation of spaces, while spaces are redistributed, eradicating identities, and identities are subjugated by a control type of repression. The project traces those mobile limits that consolidate these confined communities’ “imagined” de-territorialization processes through living archives and unwritten knowledge.

NOMADIC BORDERS – Performance photographic analogic documentation. El Boujdour Refugee camp / Western Sahara Territories (2020)- Plastic, dust, bones, desert rocks, rusted metal, and paper. (Personal archive)

NOMADIC EXPERIENCE – Memory as a form of resilience, performance photographic analogic documentation (rendered installation view)- Performance: 6 x 2 m, Sahara’s sand, water, camp’s water, dust, pigments, and used engine oil on linen, 2019.Location 01 / El Boujdour Refugee camp (MA/WS), Western Sahara territories.

EL BOUJDOUR REFUGEE CAMP (MA/WS)Western Sahara territories – 2019

NOMADIC EXPERIENCE – Memory as a form of resilience, performance photographic analogic documentation. – Performance: 6 x 2 m, Sahara’s sand, water, camp’s water, dust, pigments, and used engine oil on linen, 2019. Photo credits: Gerard Aparecio.

»ON HOPE AND INHERITANCES«
LOCATION 02 – GENOA / VIA DEL CAMPO (IT)
Italy - 2021

SPES NOSTRA – Islands of Time – Location 02 – Site specific installation (2021) Collected location’s dust, ink on wood – 40x46x2 cm
Via del Campo, Genoa (IT)

Urban intervention during the second edition of Via del Campo Festival Biennal DIVAGO, Genoa (IT.)

»AN ISLAND AS A BRIDGE FOR MEMORY«
LOCATION 03 – SALINA, AEOLIAN ISLANDS (IT)
Salina, Italy – 2021

DI TUTTE LE COSE CHE TENDONO ALL’INFINITO / As for all things tending towards infinity. Part of the project research trajectory Islands of Time – Location 03 / Aeolian Islands, Italy. In collaboration with Curator Elettra Bottazzi, Associazione Culturale Amanei and Comune di Santa Marina Salina (IT).

Islands of time Location 03 focused on the Aeolian Islands’ mapping and traces in relation to migratory processes, memory formation, and diaspora. The Aeolian Islands are seven islands in the Mediterranean Sea and North-East of the Sicilian coast, and together, they compose an archipelago of volcanic formation located at the bottom of the Italian peninsula. These islands are named after the Greek god of wind Aeolus, who, it is told, made the islands his home while teaching the natives to recognize and foresee meteorological phenomena. Due to its particular nature and inconvenient geographical position, the territory is simultaneously open to others and closed off to the rest of the world.

“As for all things tending towards infinity”, the title of this part of the project, takes its name from Masini’s diaries, which he wrote in 2021 during his residency at amaneï, in Aeolian Islands. Masini landed in the archipelago to investigate the specificity of the Aeolian diaspora (second half of the Nineteenth century-first half of the Twentieth century) by collecting interviews and consulting public and private archives. The body of works produced during the research include objects, video, works on paper, and site-specific installations. These works re-acknowledges the epistemological reasoning behind the understanding of the migrant, imagining its comprehension as a shifting phenomenon rather than a stable and predetermined resultant.

DI TUTTE LE COSE CHE TENDONO ALL’INFINITO (notes)
Islands of Time Location 03 / Aeolian Islands (IT) – Typescript prints/nail, 29,7 x 21 cm (2021)
Di tutte le cose che tendino all’infinito, Amanei, Curated by Elettra Bottazzi.

JACOB’S LADDER – trilingual tryptic
Islands of Time Location 03 / Aeolian Islands (IT) – Framed risograph print 01/10, 46,5 x 34,5 cm (2022)
Di tutte le cose che tendino all’infinito, Amanei, Curated by Elettra Bottazzi.

THE DREAMERS – Canvas
Islands of Time Location 03 / Aeolian Islands (IT) – Framed risograph print 01/10, 42,5 x 37 cm (2022)
Di tutte le cose che tendino all’infinito, Amanei, Curated by Elettra Bottazzi.

A WILL TO DANCE THE DANCE (installed view)
Part of the project research trajectory Islands of Time – Location 03 / Aeolian Islands, Italy – Single-channel video installation on vertical screen – 09’40’’ [looped] (2022)
Di tutte le cose che tendino all’infinito, Amanei, Curated by Elettra Bottazzi.

TRECCIA – Composed object
Islands of Time Location 03 / Aeolian Islands (IT) – Nail, rope, 120 x 55 x 5 cm (2022)
Di tutte le cose che tendino all’infinito, Amanei, Curated by Elettra Bottazzi.

AS FOR ALL THINGS TENDING TOWARDS INFINITY – laddar
Islands of Time Location 03 / Aeolian Islands (IT) – Antique ladder, burned wood, 160 x 41 x 7 cm (2022)
Di tutte le cose che tendino all’infinito, Amanei, Curated by Elettra Bottazzi.

»A LAND AS A CONSTRUCT OF MEMORY«
LOCATION 04 – DAIROUX AND BUENOS AIRES (AR)
Argentina – 20211

TO BE MADE OF DUST AND ERRANT TRAJECTORIES – Single-channel video essay installation – 10’06’’ [looped] (2022) Part of the project research trajectory Islands of Time – Location 04 / Daireaux provence, Argentina. In collaboration with Curator Renata Zas, Pablo Caligaris / La Ira De Dios, AOS Residency and MUNTREF – Museo de la Inmigración Buenos Aires.

“You see, through certain kinds of spatial engagements there might be a transfer of empathy because of your ability to experience yourself in that way. Would you be able to acknowledge anything different than your own perception?”

As part of the Islands of Time research project, the work To be made of dust and errant trajectories plays within the relationship between the farming industry and the migratory processes that originated within there-formulation of the Argentinian territory; their strategies, convergences, and layering firmly gaze upon the capitalization and civilization of the land and its habitants. The cartographic and territorial division of the world fostered to accomplish extractivist activities in the so-called “new” world. Therefore, the violence of the civilizing project results in its relation to its territorial errancy, problematizing the dichotomy between its systematic exploitation and divisionism. Focusing on the European migration within the country, the territorialization fostered by the “la Campana del Desierto” occupation expanded within limits constituted by its political aim. The re-distribution of land from the migratory policies between 1830 and 1950 opened a path in exploring how mobility influenced memory formation and belonging. Composing the understanding of the elements describing the phenomena that occurred within different processes of territorialization includes a multiplicity of factors. Within this subdivision, what’s left should not exist merely to benefit privileged minorities or exploitative measures, calcifying within the constitutive elements composing history. In dialogue with local institutions, collaborators, and partners and due to several field-research phases throughout the country, thetrilingual text plays at the interplay of the representation of memory and the archive. The video essay aims tore-considering how mobility affected the boundaries of those who migrated, those who remained in Europe, andthose who have been excluded from this re-allocation process. All the particles of life’s stories intertwinewithin a past and possible future to divert from a clear consequentiality of the so-called Modernity’s constitutiveelements.

TO BE MADE OF DUST AND ERRANT TRAJECTORIES (frame captions) – Single-channel video essay installation – 10’06’’ [looped (2022)
Part of the project research trajectory Islands of Time - Location 04 / Daireaux, Argentina.

»SEVENTEEN MINUTES TILL PARADISE«
LOCATION 05 – VENTIMIGLIA (IT) / MENTON (FR)
Italian and French border – 2018/2021

In collaboration with AUT AUT 357 collective, Pietro Castelli, Alessandro Gorla and Nicola Giordanella.

SEVENTEEN MINUTES TILL PARADISE (frame captions) – Single-channel video installation – 08’15’’ [looped] (2022)
Part of the project research trajectory Islands of Time – Location 05 / Ventimiglia (IT) and Menton (FR).

Artist

Niccolò Masini

Niccolò Masini is an artist, filmmaker and researcher whose work stands at the intersection of narrative and craft, but also poetry and anthropology. His work seeks to provide a vehicle for observing tangible and intangible migratory processes, mappings, and traces in relationship to borders and colonization, together with the economic and political forces that have imposed precarious labor conditions and attenuated other histories. Entwining moving-image, creative methodology, experimental ethnography and teaching, his research engages with the limits of the possible and the impossible by recognizing a starting point in the re-discovery of the indeterminate, the unknown, the unquantifiable. Scrutinizing the inheritances carried within the politics of time, space and memory, recent projects revolved around questions of displacement, diaspora, territorialization/deterritorialization processes, and the histories and legacies of colonialism.

He holds a BFA in Animation and Illustration from the European Institute of Design – Milan (2011), a BFA in Audiovisual Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy of Amsterdam (2015), and an MFA in art praxis and research at the DAI / Dutch Art Institute of Arnhem (2021). Winner of numerous prizes, competitions, grants and residencies, his work has been exhibited internationally in countries such as: The Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Argentina, USA, Korea, Indonesia, Africa, North Macedonia and Japan. In 2018, he was awarded the Best Young Artist Of The Year (Painting & Sculpture) by the GAMMA competition and GM conference of Tokyo.

His current artistic research is focused on the ongoing long-term project, Islands of Time, a trajectory exploring the relationships between the formulation of intangible feelings of belonging and the construction of geographical identity. Under the support of the Miller-Zillmer foundation of Berlin and Project Anywhere program, the research includes on-site field research phases into different locations, which are all situated in geographical borders, borders of migration and/or political displacements: El Boujdour Refugee camp / Western Sahara territories (2019), Genoa / Italy (2020/2022), Ventimiglia - Mentone / Italian France border (2021), Aeolian Islands / Italy (2021) and Buenos Aires / Argentina (2021). The project attempts to transcend linear conceptions of time and instead approach issues such as memory and movement by considering past, present, and future as deeply entangled within a global geopolitical context.

Exhibition – Project Anywhere

Islands of Time is part of the global exhibition programme 2020/22 / Project Anywhere

Project Islands of Time, among other fascinating artworks, has now been published in the ongoing biennial publication Anywhere IV, by the Centre of Visual Art (The University of Melbourne) and Parsons Fine Art, Media and Technology (New York). At the cessation of Project Anywhere’s annual global exhibition program, all hosted projects will be presented at the biennial conference Anywhere and Elsewhere at Parsons Fine Art in New York City.

Exhibition – Amaneï Gallery

Islands of time. As for all things tending towards infinity — curated by Eletrra Bottazzi

Amaneï Gallery | www.amanei.com | Santa Marina Salina | Aeolian Islands 3 June - 5 July 2022

Niccolò Masini´s practice and research can be taken as a political act of seeing and feeling, in which he articulates central themes such as the politics of displacement, memory, language, temporality, identity, and territoriality. For years he has been collecting and documenting many of the processes that manifest themselves in history through an empirical method of observation and analytical study; in his latest works, he focused mainly on the phenomenon of diaspora.

As for all things tending towards infinity takes its title from Masini’s diaries, which he wrote in 2021 during his residency at amaneï, as a result of a long period of research spent in theAeolian Islands. Masini landed in the archipelago to investigate the specificity of the Aeoliandiaspora (second half of the Nineteenth century-first half of the Twentieth century) bycollecting interviews and consulting public and private archives.

Researching, writing, consulting, and collecting archival records are methodologies widelyadopted by contemporary art and post-colonial theorists, a practice that amaneï's residencyprogram has been promoting and facilitating by hosting artists and researchers since 2016.

The exhibition opening on 3rd June is the first artistic product of the research period spent in the Aeolian Islands. A body of works on paper, video, and site-specific installations, typical of Masini's multidisciplinary approach, is on display in the gallery spaces. A recurring symbol in this body of work is the ladder, which carries for the artist the peculiarity of the Aeoliane migration: it was not always a motion to escape poverty; in fact, the islands were fertile and full of profitable activities from winemaking to fishing, from pumice mining to trade. In this context, the Aeolian migrant initially emigrates by choice and views travel as an elevation of status and social mobility/advancement, but also as a spiritual and moral understanding. With its movement of ascent and descent, and especially of balance, the ladder is also an admirable expression of tension and conjunction between sky and earth, between finite and infinite, transcending the distance between past and future by "eternalizing" the space of memory. Indeed, its performative and dynamic character makes possible the process of re-framing its socio-cultural identity in other places. Memory's performative and dynamic characteristics make possible the process of construction/re-construction. The feeling of belonging to a place/territory within a set of spatial and historical references, is found through memory, the type we build when we are distant from imaginary or physical "places" we come from, and in some way, we might find ourselves belonging too.

amaneï |via risorgimento 71 | santa marina salina – isole eolie