Alessandra Redaelli from Milan
Your new daily ritual ...
I am discovering the slowness. the rediscovery of slowness, the rediscovery of slowness: the rediscovery of slowness. the rediscovery of slowness, the rediscovery of slowness. the rediscovery of slowness, the rediscovery of slowness, the rediscovery of slowness, already knowing that we will queue, that time will open wide, there is no attempt to fill that expansion by anticipating it, but we find ourselves walking slower, looking up at the sky, the architectures of buildings that we had never observed or perhaps the new life that takes place on the balconies. And then there is time for oneself and for the family, we linger at the table, we find ourselves talking a little more.
It is as if space has found a fourth dimension to explore. The paradox is that this amplified time cannot be filled as one would like with creativity. Io, at least, I am not able. I write, Yes. Very, very much. It is my therapy. But the mind wanders, it is constantly trapped in spiraling paths, loses track of thought. And everything falls apart.
How your way of working has changed?
The distances are virtually bridged with the interlocutors and then we try to look ahead, to think and build new projects and above all to think of them already in that new alphabet and with those new ways that in the "after" that awaits us will become the norm. This is the bet, because everything will be different.
What you're missing? Your personal experience of "absence" and "lack".
I miss the interaction. I miss the crowd, people, the inaugurations of the exhibitions, the feverish chaos of fairs, the chatter, the accidental or long-prepared encounters that are the salt of my work. I'm from Milan, the crowd is in my DNA: I miss the crowded subway, well yes. I miss the people who swarm in Piazza del Duomo, the groups of laughter in the street, the noise. I find the silence of this city, oggi, chilling.
When all this is over: one thing to do and one never to do again.
It certainly pays to treasure what we are learning about ourselves, about our life, on relationships with the people around us and on the possibility of giving new depth to time: we hope not to miss this opportunity. What I will never do again, personally, it will be postponing something I wish to do, deluding myself perhaps to find later, at a later time, a more suitable opportunity to do so. The opportunity is now. If you are not sure, mine will be a: "Yup! Immediately".
To date, what have been the immediate consequences of the spread of Covid-19 on your work for you and what do you think the long-term consequences may be?
As always happens in the face of a great crisis, I believe that the whole world of art will be forced to rethink. The abrupt halt we are experiencing with regard to exhibitions, the inaugurations, the fairs will likely result in a cruel selection. The hope is that it is a selection that leads to quality. And to a deeper awareness - both on the part of professionals and institutions - of what an immense opportunity art is, for the culture of a country and for the people who live there.
Biography: I live in Milan, I am a journalist and this I have done for years, collaborating for Art (Cairo publisher) and having from those pages the opportunity to meet artists and professionals with whom the collaboration has often turned into friendship. At one point I found myself taking care of curating exhibitions, an activity that immediately won me over for the possibility of entering even deeper into the poetics of artists. Today I work on both fronts, curating events in galleries and public spaces and collaborating with Art and the sister magazine Antiques, with Espoarte and also with True chronicle, on whose pages I tell the artists between genius and recklessness. I teach Elements of Journalistic Education at the Aldo Galli Academy in Como and I have published four books with Newton Compton: the wise Keep calm and learn to understand art, 2015; The secrets of modern and contemporary art, 2016 and 10 things to know about contemporary art, 2018; in 2017 the novel Art, love and other troubles (link).
The last two exhibitions I opened were Paul Kostabi's one-man show A New Yorker of the Docks, in Turin, to the gallery Casati Contemporary Art and Sabrina Milazzo's solo show Melting pop in Varese, also Point on Art