E42, E.U.R. VITA ELEMENTARI. Solo exhibition in Gallery OH!, Stichting Kunstbevordering v.z.w. Brussels. 1996. Curated by Philippe Braem.
This piece consisted of the Super-8 film E.U.R. from 1993 screened directly under the enlarged photostat copy of a found black & white early photograph of E.U.R. and 22 photographs taken by us, presented on the wall in 6 plastic maps.
The installation is a portrait of the southern suburb EUR in Rome, Italy. It explored this residential, business and administrative part of the city as it was in the 1990s. EUR is burdened by history, as it was originally chosen by Benito Mussolini to illustrate his ideal of a modern city, a plan aborted by WWII. Jadran and Åsa were interested in how this exaggerated vision had developed and its contemporary condition, its public spaces, architecture and the life being lived there. This piece is partly a result of their interest in Michelangelo Antonioni* and Pier Paolo Pasolini* through which they discovered EUR, and several travels to Rome.
*Michelangelo Antonioni filmed a big part of his movie L'Eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962) there. A total solar eclipse creates temporary darkness. The film has anticolonial and antiracist content.
*Pier Paolo Pasolini lived in EUR with his mother from 1963 until his assassination in 1975. Pasolini criticised the society of consumption heavily describing it as neocapitalist and the new fascism.
E.U.R. Super-8 film from 1993. Filmed in EUR and the Vatican, Rome, Italy.
* The film and series of photographs contain and illustrate an atmosphere and a randomly found diversity as we strolled around in E.U.R. They do not represent personal views, and include likes as well as dislikes.
22 photographs taken in E.U.R.
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Text handed out at the exhibition:
E.42. was first presented as a vision and plan for the World Exhibition in 1942, and it's main concept was Universality.
The building of E.U.R. (in south-western Rome) started in 1938, was stopped by the second world war, and continued from 1951 until today.
The vision of an ideal, new city in town plan, architectural styles and inhabitants (a people of poets, artists, heroes, thinkers, scientists, wanderers and sailors...) was strong.
Today E.U.R. is the seat for many administrative state institutions, business companies and museums, and has become a popular residential area. P.P. Pasolini lived and worked in EUR from 1966 until he was murdered in 1975.
VITA ELEMENTARI indicates a condition where people in the trinity of soul, mind, heart confront with past, present and future.
- What am I?
- How do I reach, and stay, in the condition of vita elementari?
- When do I pass the line, and start to produce / consume losers?
Newspaper clip from article about Emmanuel Levinas and his thoughts around the Other.