Artistic Statement
Each of the works we produce sets out to be, in the words of documentary film maker Thierry Garrel, a machine à penser – a machine for thinking; a work that has an element of public service and that is not simply a toy; a work that is an extension of human experience and sensibilities, and that is an expansion of our modes of expression; and a work that people in our working class neighbourhood can respect.
Our projects are rooted in our personal histories and our themes, civility and urbanity, deal with manners as a code. We explore the ways people behave with each other as citizens and private persons, navigating cultural and historical codes along a journey in which people decipher people. We create works for the foreign born, the young, the perplexed, the curious and the punctilious.
Urbanity is the quality or character of life in a city or a town. (The concept of urbanity, of the characteristically citified view of life, referred originally to the view of the world from Rome – the popes who took Urbanus for a pontifical name were expressing their solidarity with the city they ruled). All ordinary actions carry a code: there is a right way and a wrong way to do things in a given city (when in Rome do as the Romans do). The economic life of a city is fraught with the risk of incorrect manners, which can make or break a deal.
Travel, migration, confronts people with other places, other customs: travel makes people realize that things could be otherwise (Es koente auch anders sein, as Robert Musil tells us). Contemporary guides to manners, customs and mores can be found most often in the introduction of a traveler to a foreign culture in a travel guide.
We experience the Tower of Babel: as opposed to a leisurely journey, we are continuously bombarded with a multitude of codes, mores, customs in a concentrated urban space. Our projects will mediate this experience: from a ragbag of colorful shreds to Harlequin's costume.
Carlito Ghioni
Isabella Stefanescu
2008