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Like a Fragrance in a Room | norient.com 24 Jan 2022 15:07:59
Like a Fragrance in a Room
by Rebecca Salvadori
What happens when curation resists any form of guidance?
For Rebecca Salvadori, video artist and artistic co-curator of
NFF 2022, this led to a silent rush of creativity. An essay
about how context affects the working practice in three
steps.
→ This text is part of the Norient Film Festival in January 12–16 2022 (offline
& online)
Action must have a beginning, a middle and an end: observations under
pressure.
«The nature of the video camera really makes you focus
on the present. Since I have always been a diarist
filmmaker, not one who stages scenes with actors, it has
always been about the present moment … we are the
measure of all things.»
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Like a Fragrance in a Room | norient.com 24 Jan 2022 15:07:59
– Jonas Mekas
«When the intensity is there. It's the intensity that
chooses its medium.»
– Harald Szeemann
«The student comes to the teacher and begs him for
instruction. The teacher says nothing; he is just sweeping
up leaves. The student goes into another part of the
forest and builds his own house, and when he’s finally
educated, what does he do? He doesn’t thank himself; he
goes back to the teacher who said nothing and thanks
him. It is this spirit of not teaching that has been
completely lost in our educational system, says John
Cage.»
– Daniel Birnbaum
Reflecting on one’s capacity to generate an internal creative structure
reminds me of the masters I have encountered in different ways and at
different stages of my life. These encounters occurred in many unexpected
ways: while picking up a book from the living room table back at home and
reading a few scattered sentences, or via the experiences and attitudes I build
while connecting with my surroundings.
Hans-Joachim Müller’s Exhibition Maker, a text on Harald Szeemann’s
emphatic curatorial methods, provided one such encounter. Szeemann was
only 28 when he was appointed director of the Kunsthalle Bern, curating
exhibitions that he called «poems spaces», which took – in his own words – a
«controlled chaos» approach to curatorship. Visualizing an exhibition made of
«attitudes» rather than artworks, and a focus on the process rather than the
output, reconnected me with a broader tradition.
1. Beginning: Silent Reflections
While thinking about curatorship, I felt strongly drawn to this tradition and
knew that I needed to keep it in mind. As soon as possible, I walked down the
streets of Bern and into the Kunsthalle to see what it felt like to be there.
When I was 18 I participated in a three-month artist residency curated by my
father Remo Salvadori. His approach had an impact on me: he invited the 21
participating artists to focus on three dimensions of living, which are directed
towards oneself, towards others, and towards the project. When I was 22, Pier
Luigi Tazzi, a curator, teacher, art critic, writer, and friend, invited me to take
part in a group exhibition, «Rites de Passage», in the Netherlands. I was one
of the youngest in the group. He didn’t help me to understand how I was
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Like a Fragrance in a Room | norient.com 24 Jan 2022 15:07:59
supposed to participate in the show; he didn’t guide me or offer any form of
conversation about the work I was supposed to present. I felt disoriented and
alone.
In this process, I developed my own silent reflections. Filming other artists
installing their works, wandering around the city of Heerlen, and questioning
the value of my practice, I finally came to the decision to install a video piece
in a small analog television hidden in the art center library. During the press
conference Pier Luigi invited me to stand up and share the transformative
process I had undergone through being left alone. The entire experience was
meant to be a real Rite de Passage for me. And it definitely was.
I feel embraced by these attitudes, like a fragrance in a room. I feel guided by
a collection of varied interconnected experiences. I have interpreted
«something personal in the hands», the thematic backbone of the Norient
Film Festival 2022, as referring to the desire to consider individually lived
experiences.
2. Middle: Video Essay «Im Fluss»
This is a film portrait of a moment with Bernese musicians Ruth and Res
Margot, after I discovered the importance of the Swiss river Aare.
Thomas Burkhalter translating Res Margot
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The Bernese musician Res Margot constructs his own instruments, like this
flute. He says that he learns from the «turbulence» of the water, and that air
also has a similar «turbulence». As the flute is made of wood, it reacts to the
weather and changes everyday. Sometimes the turbulence is there,
sometimes it is not. For Res, the art of music is to control these turbulences,
to find ways to play with them. The lower you are underwater the higher the
pressure gets. According to Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian esotericist, social
reformer, and founder of the esoteric spiritual movement anthroposophy
(editor’s note), deep underwater there is light. If you make music or swim in
the Aare (a tributary of the High Rhine and the longest river of Switzerland:
editor’s note) you might experience states beyond explanation.
3. End: The Making of the NFF 2022 Program
To me, «something personal in the hands», the thematic backbone of NFF
2022, refers to the desire to consider a constellation of elements while
investigating the constantly evolving connections between moving image,
sound, and live performance: elements such as individuality, lived
experiences, and relations created over time. The motivating force in making
this program was the act of self-observation as a way to better understand
oneself as a subject and author. The fragmentation of the visual experience
and the tradition of portraiture are some of the reflections surrounding my
film projects and research. Mark Fell, Sandro Mussida, Leah Walker, Jack
Dove, and Rian Treanor, as well as FOLD’s club team, Giant Swan, and
Sculpture are, in fact, all part of a long-lasting fabric of relations. The
program presents an array of U.K. artists in dialog with a selection of Swiss
artists, such as Res and Ruth Margot and drummer and percussionist Julian
Sartorius.
«Environments at the edge of forever» is a program consisting of site-
specific interventions, such as Sandro Mussida’s participatory installation;
Mark Fell’s durational event, part performance, part workshop; and Jack
Dove’s pyrotechnic performance of unpredictable bright flashes. The
program brings to our attention the role of the audience as an active
contributor to the work, challenging the perception of time and space. The
club night «Golden Triangle», as well as the talk «Representing &
Representation, a Conversation about Club Culture», draw on my relationship
with electronic music and the communities which ritually congregate around
it. «Like a River Flow / Wie ein Flusslauf» reflects on how specific
environments might affect our creative practices, as well as the desire to
build a connection with the local music scene.
→ List of References
Llorca, Pablo. 1998. «Interview with Harald Szeemann». Vimeo.
(https://vimeo.com/520445174).
Birnbaum, Daniel. 2009. Teaching Art: Adorno and the Devil. Cambridge: MIT.
https://norient.com/rebecca-salvadori/fragrance-room Page 4 of 5Like a Fragrance in a Room | norient.com 24 Jan 2022 15:07:59
Birnbaum, Daniel. 2005. «Passages: Harald Szeemann». Artforum.
(https://www.artforum.com/print/200506/harald-szeemann-8991).
This text is part of Norient’s publication «Politics of Curatorship», published as
part of the Norient Film Festival 2022.
→ Published on January 06, 2022
→ Last updated on January 07, 2022
Rebecca Salvadori is an Italo-Australian video artist based in London. She has a
long experience of filming environments with a focus on non-
hierarchical/chronological layering and sequencing of audio to footage. Her film
works act as constellations of highly personal and willfully elusive heterogeneous
elements: multifaceted portraits of moments, people, and environments that can be
approached from different angles as they move in between personal and
transpersonal scales. Her work has been shown in major international institutions
such as ICA, South London Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, and Barbican Centre.
Salvadori is the co- founder of artist collective Tutto Questo Sentire, a part of A/V
duo Footage together with video artist Leah Walker, and artistic co-director of
Norient Film Festival 2022.
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