The project shows the double face typical of love relationship: intimacy and danger. The dilution of a great number of red match heads in water creates a solution capable of dyeing textiles. The colour is a soft pink, but it also has an upsetting shade. When match heads are in water they are totally inoffensive, but when the dilution dries in a fabric, it regains its dangerous flammable property. Therefore, pink pillows seem ready for an idyllic relationship, but they hide the possibility of an explosion.

Till Death Do Us Part

Some inflatable letters form the phrase “Wenn ich gross bin, werde ich Fuhrer” which in German means “When I grow up, I will be Fuhrer”. The letters lie on the ground like wrecks and the silver color transforms their cheerful appearance into dangerous warlike metal fragments. Stacked up and fallen to the ground, the letters have lost their meaning; on one hand, they show themselves as empty characters, on the other hand, they are ready to re-emerge from the ruins at any moment. In fact, it is not clear if the letters have just collapsed or if they are about to recomposed to form again the title. It is therefore the suspension emanating from the work that brings out an alarming atmosphere; from an initial moment of apparent joy, the letters instead reveal a worrying military horizon. The work intends to convey to the observer a subtle tension poised between a situation of playful innocence and the distressing possibility of underlying violence.

Wenn ich gross bin, werde ich Fuhrer

The artist searches for herself by asking strangers on the street: “Excuse me, are you Luisa Turuani?”; the question is obstinately posed to passers-by and the action is transformed into a physical and poetic journey. The action can therefore be defined as a “life-time-performance”, a gesture that is repeated without ever finding a definitive answer. The insistent “no” shapes an impalpable identity; the passers-by are therefore co-authors of an heroic and unsuccessful action. Apparently subjective, the search for identity has a collective horizon; the project infact reflects on digital platforms of communication: social media allows to reach people all over the world, and so it seems obvious to believe that we actually know the people on the net. Yet this knowledge is extremely superficial and human contact is becoming increasingly difficult. The performance is not an absurd way to refuse the use of social media, but it is an opportunity to reflect on what we actually know or what we think we know. Current society is exhausted by pursuing myths, heroes, models that show us who we should be; it is therefore easy to delegate our identity to politicians, influencers or anyone we deem “reliable”. By doing so, we believe we are perfectly suited to the world around us. Yet something is missing… “Looking for myself” looks sympathetically at this lack, un enigmatic identity, an emptiness that must remain so.

LookingForMyself

A chair is composed by eight wooden pieces; the fragments are not stably fixed, but they are placed in a precarious equilibrium. A video shows the artist destroying the chair and recomposing its parts to make “other chairs”. The attempts, dramatic and ironic at the same time, show similarities and differences between the original chair and the several new versions. The work rises some questions: when the wooden pieces fall on the ground, is it truly possible to come back to the starting point? What does unify the original chair and its copies? The project, tying different kinds of medias like sculpture, video and performance, highlights the vital and paradoxical nature of temporal dimension: only looking to the precariousness of reality we can see its eternity, as the link among the different versions can be found in a dimension of time lying above the linear time, in a continuous tension between presence and absence, instability and perpetuity.
  
  
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Chair(s)

The project weaves different media like sculpture, painting, performance and video; it delineates a reflection on the relationship between tradition and present. Five sculptures, representing famous protagonists of Greek myths, lose their status to become pure material. The artist uses the sculptures as massive chalks to create a big drawing on the black wall; this action causes also the statues to be reshaped by their own exploitation. At the same time, a black and white video shows the process of deconstruction and construction from the point of view of the statues. The installation creates a strange and fascinating identification between the public and the sculptures. The project puts in crisis the foundations of art to find which elements are essential today.
  
  
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I would prefer not to

I always remember the pleasure of being in balance on a minimal, thin, undefinable place. I decided to frame the image just above my ankles because I wanted to emphasize the solid and immobile presence of the sarcophagus. My intention is to try to exchange time with death: I attempt to make a deal with her, or maybe just a compromise. Some simple gestures, sometimes dramatic and sometimes ironic, wave heroically between something that is present and absent, mortal and immortal. As the action is a tragic and ridiculous attempt to negotiate time with death, the sound consists of a guitar that is looking for the correct tuning. Each cord is out of tune, but after some attempts they slowly become intone. The video plays in loop in order to allude an effort which is unsustainable and desirable at the same time.
  
  
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And it was evening, and it was morning

Never like today life is dominated by the fear of dying. We try to procrastinate death, or we ask it to come soon, but it is difficult to depict a triumph like the painters did in the XIV century. The performance is an ironic and dramatic attempt to prepare people to death. So, the video shows the artist jumping a rope made of barbed wire. Different types of jump give a rhythm to an action in which the habit to pain looks never enough.

  

Death Training

The video shows the episodes of the Point, the sculpture made of pluriball and scotch tape reporting the “Fragile” word as a warning. The screen shows two videos simultaneously: a static camera shows the events from the point of view of an external observer, while another camera shows the inner point of view of the sculpture. The observer can thus identify himself with the sculpture and at the same time amplify his vision. The video is composed by episodes, fragments without a structured narration but allowing a knowledge of the Point from different viewpoints. The Point is presented both as an object and a subject at the same time; thanks to this simultaneity, the observer can identify himself with the Point and feel pain or affection.

The transparency of two videos forces the observer to continuously choose on which one to focus his attention; in this way, each spectator can see the video in a different way, realizing a personal editing in his own mind. In other words, the project generates infinite stories into the story thanks to the personal point of view of the observer. The project is an ironic and uncanny attempt to give birth to inanimate objects. It also aims at seeing things in a new and different way: the vision is a complex act which involves not only the sight but also a series of elements related to sensibility, narration and time.
  
  
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From the point of view of the point

A synthesized voice conjugates the expression “stare benissimo” (“feeling great”). Starting from the present, going through the past and the future, ending with the imperative, the sense of “stare benissimo” (“feel great”) changes its meaning. The reiteration creates an anxious and claustrophobic atmosphere and the observer progressively doubts that there really was, or will be, a moment of happiness. Linked to the mechanic voice, the video shows colors moving very slowly reminding the sky of beautiful and clear day from the morning to the evening. The beauty is so strong that it seems unreal, and the observer asks himself if that splendor is fiction or not. The video quotes the famous Jean-Luc Godard’s film Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution: to the citizens of Alphaville is forbidden saying some words, like “crying” and “loving”; they can use exclusively some expressions, like “I feel great, thank you, you are welcome”. The video shows how the repetition of the same expression can be a motivator and a self-destruction act at the same time. The work displays an uncanny mechanized world where freedom is replaced by an apparently fascinating and desirable safety.
  
  

Io sto benissimo [I feel great]

The artist, dressed like a marshaller, simulates the poses of some famous classical Greek masterpieces. The iconic marshalling signals and the artistic language mix up and generate a polyphony full of references, familiar and mysterious at the same time. A marshaller can move huge airplanes using only a small amount of conventional signs; what does art move? The project probes the limits of language and shows that the loss of an unilateral sense produces a proliferation of viewpoints: on one hand, the richness of meanings amplifies the knowledge of reality, on the other hand, it makes the boundary between rationality and absurd more and more labile and confused. Light signals and gestures spread in all directions; in this way, the observer is disoriented and fascinated for something that looks familiar and absurd at the same time. The project guides the public into the space, but the simultaneity of multiple indications and the excess of meanings bring the public to feel puzzled and disorientated. The mixed feelings allow the observer to open his mind and see the space in a polymorphic shape: multiple senses are privileged over a static and univocal point of view. This is why all poses have the same duration, but their position changes every time.

The sound, produced by Paolo Romano specifically for this project, consists of contrabass chords partially modified with digital software so to create a classical and futuristic atmosphere.
  
  
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Untitled

Ctrl+Alt+Canc shows a series of Depositions coming alive thanks to a continuous process of destruction and reconstruction. As Christ is deposed from the cross, images are released from their body. The immateriality, or the unusual materiality of the digital world, forces us to redefine the perception of our body and the space where we live. Pixels fall more and more densely, then collapse and born again at every look of the observer.

CTRL+ALT+CANC

The video shows a series of traffic lights. The large quantity of traffic lights and the absence of sound make the image transfer from urban context to abstract painting. The movement of the colors seems a dance and the traffic lights are released from their function; therefore, the video is a pure, contemplative image. Despite the cyclicity of each traffic light, the overall chromatic composition never repeats: the colors change regularly but their relationship creates an image which is always new. The video puts together order and chaos, through the regularity of each traffic light and the unpredictability of the global picture; it leads the observer to a state of authentic contemplative state.

  

Wheat Field with Crows

The project is composed by a series of drawings spread around Milan. A thin white line links the chewing gums traces on the asphalt: these traces seems stars and the drawing become a constellation. The chewing gums are people’s trace, their refuse, but also the temporal stratification of their trail. The urban context so is the artwork’s generator, as the drawings depend on the different amount of chewing gums in the streets. The artwork is realized by the whole city, including the unconscious people who throw away their waste. The drawings do not exhibit constellations that already exist, but potential others. The project would like to open mind to the obvious things that surround everyday life, paying attention to what people trample on without looking. The artwork is an apparition, the uncanny and surreal amazement of finding a constellation on the street.

  

Sky trap

Present age is characterized by a frenetic transformation, it is made of sudden acceleration and breaking, impellent deadlines and endless updates. The consequences are tragic because the society is exhausted and deprived of time, the most important and essential resource. **1 second 1 gram** raises questions about the value of making time as well as space; the project offers an experience characterized by gratuity and grace; in the end, the action empowers the individual within a community.

From a practical point of view, the performance is an individual and collective action at the same time. At the entrance, visitors are asked how much time they desire; their decision is personal, inviolable and not retroactive. The required time is converted in a quantity of clay, according to the ratio: 1 second = 1 gram. Visitors can freely shape the clay for the duration established at the entrance; timers monitor the duration available and warn when the time is over. Visitors then leave the clay in the space, clean their hands and can get out of the space. As the performance go on, an exposition of sculptures is progressively generated.

The performance explores the value of time and reflects on human attempts of controlling, sculpting and consuming the temporal dimension, an element which is becoming more and more elusive in our era. The action takes inspiration from the lack of time and the anxious struggle of being always up to date in the current society. The action makes possible different kinds of answers, it lends time and opens an interval giving people the strength of going back to everyday life with the ability of making space and time. The visitors can ask time, take it, shape it, hold it in their hands, stroke it. The performance allows the collectivity finding the time which had been lost; in other words, it is an action not aiming at the realization of a commercial product, but at reviving a sleeping desire.

**Project supported by the Italian Council (11th edition, 2022), the program aimed at supporting Italian contemporary art in the world promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity within the Italian Ministry of Culture**

1 second 1 gram

Small landscapes, textures and memories… the pleasure of holding a jewel in our hands leaves the place to the risk of these drawings potentially breaking at any moment. Preciousness is linked to fragility. The idea of “smoking the color” expresses a salvific and poisonous meaning at the same time. On one side, the vivacity of the colours suggests a childish, pure and simple joy; on the other side, it’s precisely the colour which makes a cigarette even more toxic and destructive. Maybe, if we used these smoking papers, we would have coloured lips… Maybe, it is only by burning that art can still shed some light.

Art seriously harms you and others around you

Present age is characterized by a frenetic transformation, it is made of sudden acceleration and breaking, impellent deadlines and endless updates. The consequences are tragic because the society is exhausted and deprived of time, the most important and essential resource. So, the project donates a desirable and missing amount of time: the quantity of time is converted in a quantity of clay, according to the ratio of 1 second = 1 gram of clay. People can take time, shape it, hold it in their hands, stroke it.

**_1 second 1 gram_** \- **_5’_** was born to reach people all over the world: people can shape time when and where they prefer thanks to the special kit. The plastic bag contains 300 grams of clay (= 5 minutes), a timer and the instructions for use: set the timer to 5 minutes, start and enjoy your time! Each package is not made industrially but it is a unique piece handmade by the artist; so, the kit is a medium and a work of art at the same time. In “The white cities”, Joseph Roth asks to the readers: “Who owns the days we stole to ourselves?”; the performance makes possible different kinds of answers, it lends time and opens an interval giving people the strength of going back to everyday life with the ability of making space and time.

  
**Project supported by the Italian Council (2022),** 

**Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity, Italian Ministry of Culture.**

1 second 1 gram - 5’ 

The "dotsdots" are an interval, a pause, a hesitation, perhaps a hint of embarrassment. Three climbing holds are hammered into the wall horizontally, equally spaced, next yo each other; similar to three suspension points, they allow neither an ascent nor a descent. Blue reminds me of the thin blue line in children's drawings. They call it "sky"... We rush everywhere and it is often difficult to stop and simply stay in one point, perhaps suspended from the ground, without necessarily having to go somewhere. Thinking only of gravity, of weight, of a thought that, who knows, might come. I would like to always keep three points close at hand and, while waiting, think of the nakedness of my mind as a clear and full space. You stick, stay there for a while... I think they have a cathartic power.

dotsdots

“Killing me softly” is a flag of peace whose coloured bands are composed of tanks of the Risk. The difference between the general vision of the work and the detail generates a disturbing disorientation and a conceptual rolling made of paradoxical questions and answers. On the one hand the work suggests a desire for peace, but on the other hand the plot, made up of very small tanks, makes us think of the dubious ways in which peace is often achieved: violence, oppression, hatred. To what extent does the end justify the means? Simone Weil, in one of her dazzling texts, asked: “What prevents me from gouging out that man’s eyes, even if I have permission and it amuses me?”. I think that my project wants to embody this question, or rather embody a desire for deep meaning concerning the essence of the human. From a practical point of view, each band is composed of 840 pieces, for a total of 5.880 plastic tanks. It is an extremely threatening object because the barrels of the cannons simultaneously point at the observer, but on the other hand the small dimension of the tanks transform it into a very fragile, shy, almost embarrassed thing.

Killing me softly

A jewel, a pearl, a light concretion; its appearance is fascinating and attractive until the discovery that the artwork is entirely made of plastic, transforms the previous appearance into an uncanny sensation. The beauty is not only something charming but also an unpredictable and disturbing force which can challenge human’s certainties.

Vanishing Point

Parasite changes meaning every time it takes place. The artwork is always ready to modify its shapes because of its polymorphic nature. So, the project shows multiple senses thanks to the different versions. Without highlighting any versions particularly, the observer can create his owns stories and meanings. Parasite is composed by a series of black twisted garbage bags. The kinking transforms the plastic into something that looks organic and biologic but also grotesque and weird. On one hand, the material remembers something related to human body, like a big intestine or strange brain; on the other hand, the gloomy and terrifying presence suggests an unpredictable and awful situation. The project brings out the relationship between natural and artificial bodies: what looked well-known and obvious, now appears mysterious and strident.

Parasite

The body stands still, the gaze is distant. The whole weight leans on the left leg, while the right arm raises an ice cream cone. Time passes and the color slowly starts to melt, it blends, it waters the fingers, the palm and then the arm, beyond the elbow, down below. On one hand, the quote of the Statue of Liberty recalls a source of liberation, on the other hand, the melting of the ice cream shows a tragic and ironic situation at the same time. The action points to a blind alley, nobody will come, but even if someone came, they would not want to be there. Nothing happens but the evidence of time passing by, the glorious magnificence of the pleasure of being now.

But this is not the day

The space is similar to a huge clepsydra. Time and space are connected: a line moves during the day and reduces the walkable space until people cannot enter the room. People change their perception of space as time passes and walkable floor becomes smaller and smaller. At the end of the day people cannot enter the space but they can contemplate it. The space seems empty, but it is actually full of the passed time. “Sinfonia n.1 \[zoom in\]” consists of a series of drawings showing maps where space is represented according to temporal measurements instead of spatial proportions. Some drawings are plausible whereas others are unrealistic as for instance the passage of time over 100 years. The drawings show that it is possible dwelling time as well as space. 

The video “Sinfonia n.1 \[zoom out\]” shows many dots freely moving in space. If we could zoom in the frame, would we see people running quickly in the room? Or dancing wildly? Or walking upside down? Maybe. The video doesn’t give answers but let us fantasize.

Symphony n.1

A huge box moves along the narrow corridors of a flat. The box moves like a machine but in reality, there is the artist inside who moves it very slowly. The object goes back and forth without a destination, but the slow action makes the performance seem heroic and surreal. The artwork is an attempt of giving birth to the inanimate matter. On one hand the video shows how objects, robots for example, are becoming similar to human, on the other hand it reveals how human is losing vitality and becoming more and more similar to objects.

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Luisa Turuani