Concept
Solarium is part of the Solarpunk series, a speculative narrative that invites positive imagination in the face of the complex challenges brought on by change.
2061| What if the world was flooded? We would be gathering in resilient communities, sharing resources and hopes. Because we’re all on the same boat. Dis-astro (disaster), which literally means ‘with no stars’, because with no references you can get lost.
The installation consists of a vibrating platform and a ring of light that projects visitors’ shadows onto the walls. Dis-astro, literally “without stars,” because in a sea without reference points, you get lost.
The travelers find themselves gathered on a drifting raft; their bodies are the only presence on the scene, a bastion of hopeful humanity in search of footholds and landfalls.
Technical description
n.4 walls 6x3m, vibrating platform 6x6m, multi-projection, 360 LED pixels, 2 aerators, quadraphonic sound.
LOCATION
GRESART 671, Bergamo, IT
YEAR
2023
For over a decade, transmedia artists Saverio Villirillo and Gregorio Comandini have been exploring the relationships between humans and machines, producing works ranging from installations, exhibitions, and social practices. After founding NONE collective, the duo of architects and A/V artists continues their investigation into the threshold between perception, consciousness and imagination with artistic practices that induce the audience into a liminal state.
Through the language of new media, the artists aim to guide participants in their works into ecstatic states where the boundary between reality and imagination dissolves. Mental journeys are generated by overstimulated bodily senses, assuming a condition of permanent change between present and future, fiction and reality, possible and impossible.
The liminal state of altered consciousness arises from speculative narratives where the artists activate a liminal rite in which the audience takes on the central role of enchantment generator, thus constituting the fantastical substance, the magical matter that frees itself from a disenchanted world overwhelmed by a cynical realism. The duo defines a transmedial aesthetic characterized by dark environments, where light, video and sound construct cyclic patterns, sudden glimpses, suspensions and hypnotic crescendos that become disruptive energy and lead to an unexpected rupture.
Their installative and performative works resemble collective rituals where participants find themselves in a liminal state on the threshold of consciousness, identity and time, where social constraints can be temporarily dissolved and future perspectives can be questioned. The dissolution of order during liminality creates an ambiguous, fluid, and malleable situation that allows for the establishment of new customs and an individuation process.
Saverio and Gregorio’s works have been exhibited at Light Art Museum (Budapest/HU), Somerset House (London/UK), Fukuoka Science Museum (Fukuoka/JP), Farol Santander (Sao Paulo/BR), GresArt 671 (Bergamo/IT), Design week (Milan/IT), K11 Art Space (Guangzhou/CN), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome/IT).
They designed and realized historical and scientific outreach exhibitions including “Copernicus and the Revolution of the World” at the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum (2023, Rome), “Classico Pop” at the National Roman Museum (2018, Rome), the Italian Museum of Audiovisual and Cinema (2019, Rome), the Roman Museum of Santa Giulia (2023, Brescia).
