SECOND LIFE – Paola Romoli Venturi
Participatory performance by Paola Romoli Venturi
Friday, October 27, 2023, from 3:30 p.m.
SIDE EVENT AS PART OF THE FESTIVAL DELLA SCIENZA 2023
https://www.festivalscienza.it/programma-2023/second-life
Centro Studi – The Bogliasco Foundation
Villa dei Pini, via Aurelia, 2 e 4 – Bogliasco, Genova
free admission with reservation – for info and reservations mail: eventi@bfge.org – tel. 0103472376 – 0103470049
On the occasion of the Festival of Science 2023, the Bogliasco Foundation proposes SECOND LIFE by Paola Romoli Venturi is a participatory performance aimed at the creation of a collective work. A side event, with free admission with reservations, that will take place on Friday 27 from 3:30 p.m. at the Villa dei Pini, Via Aurelia,2 and 4 Bogliasco, Genoa headquarters of the Bogliasco Foundation Study Center. For info and reservations mail: eventi@bfge.org – tel. 0103472376 – 0103470049
The public is actively involved in the Second Life project through a participatory action led by Paola Romoli Venturi with the assistance of Roberta Buccellati. Each participant is invited to bring a small object whose memory, memory, IMPRESSION they wish to fix. Each person tells his or her memory to the artist and to everyone present. The narration takes place while turning the wheel of the intaglio press present in the Villa dei Pini.
The artist will guide the audience through a performative journey aimed at the creation – using the technique of direct relief printing – of a collective work with the different imprints on paper of the objects/memories.
The audience will leave the object/memory with the artist along with a piece of paper in which they will write what second life they imagine for the object, which in this way will definitely enter the ongoing Second Life project becoming: a witness of the past, characterizing the present and conditioning the future.
The public is invited to bring objects with a history or that have finished their journey, no more than 0.5 cm thick in cloth, wool, leather, metal, plastic or paper. For example, combs, keys, buttons, photographs, letters, postcards, tickets, coins, clothing and accessories such as shirts, scarves, handkerchiefs, wallets, petticoats, nightgowns etc., home textile items such as doilies, potholders, embroidered pillowcases etc.
This is an artistic reflection on the concept of memory. Paola Romoli Venturi works with the memory contained in abandoned or no longer used objects, on their evocative nature and their potential “second life.” Through the different steps of the performative act, the artist recalls the mental paths, tactile and visual imprints of our memories. He constructs memories through different stages: acquiring, consolidating, recalling. The artist collects objects (acquiring their memory, their history) and as a first step passes them through the intaglio press, fixing their imprint on the paper. He thus makes reliefographies in direct form. Reliefographies evanescent and present at the same time, they are imprints on paper that fix a trace of memory recovered from oblivion. They are the memory of the object and its form. Memories that are layered through the audience’s involvement. Paola Romoli Venturi began her Second Life project during her residency at the Bogliasco Foundation Study Center.
Bio Paola Romoli Venturi was born in Rome, where she lives and works. Her artistic research is linked to the value of transparency as a means of communication. ‘Transparency and suspension predispose the visitor to “look through,” not to look away to observe things to reflect’ this is the inspiring thought behind her performances and installations exhibited in Italy and abroad. In his work he touches on social issues, creating spaces designed by light shadows and sounds, using different means of expression pictorial sculptural, audio video and site specific performative installations.
The Bogliasco Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports the Arts and Humanistic Disciplines by offering Residential Fellowships at its Study Center located in Bogliasco, Italy, where artists and academics from around the world meet, nurturing and actualizing through their work and cultural identity our cultural heritage in a universal dimension of global reflection and interchange. www.bfge.org