Leonardo Regano of Bologna
Your new daily ritual ...
Dealing with social distancing. The current situation has cleared long lines and waiting in every aspect of our daily lives. If until yesterday everything had to be "fast", today we return out of necessity to "slow" even just to buy a bus ticket. What I'm wondering is: as long as we hold on?
We are dealing with a new time and space. What are you discovering or rediscovering about yourself?
We have been projected into an altered time, without moments of pause, where the days passed all the same. The perception was that of living in a unique moment, dilated and suspended where time was marked by the biological rhythm and not by the commitments that followed one another, as happened previously. I learned to stop and observe the sky, to read a book just for the pleasure of it or watch a film without the worry of an email to reply to. It was almost more of a holiday, in the luck of a job that has never been lacking even if it alternates with some moments of break. My conception of space, however, was practically annihilated, forced and confined in a few square meters; the only moment of relief was looking out the window or looking for a different reality, virtual or imaginary. Paradoxically today, when all this is practically over, I feel a strong sense of alienation in leaving this comfort zone and going back to living life as it was before.
Museums and galleries have reacted to the moment with digitalization and virtuality. What are your "strategies" for establishing new relationships?
I wondered about this aspect for a long time. It certainly cannot be argued that digitalisation and virtuality are able to replace the direct use of the work of art.. Their enormous diffusion in this period is therefore due to another aspect. There is an underlying fear that moved us all in this direction and it was that of being forgotten or, better, to be considered as a superfluous service to society. And without hypocrisy, the blame for this is ours alone, not the public. Art has become “superfluous” because we were not communicative enough. Especially those of us who deal with the visual arts. We have perched ourselves on a pedestal where our work has become only for a few, where we write only for professionals, where it sells only to people with a certain culture and a certain economic availability. Chi, against, did some communication to the public (why not, also ticketing) one's target has always been seen as an annoying mainstream producer. Mine is not an invitation to trivialize the contents but it is a mea culpa from which I believe we cannot avoid if we want to start again and heal the mistakes of the past. I think of that sad gaffe by the Prime Minister for whom artists are only "those who entertain us". In that moment, I believe that Giuseppe Conte represented the common feeling of the majority of Italians for whom the performing artist exists, the actor or dancer who lives for communication and direct relationship with the audience, while we visual arts workers are just a side dish, even a little nuanced if we want. So today we are welcome to start thinking about new ways to welcome visitors to museums and galleries and make them feel at the center of a system and no longer its "excess" part; and we must also do this with more empathetic videos and content in which people are speaking more and more often (directors, curators, mediators, students) and creating content, which can no longer be reduced to simple posts of images and texts – among other things, they are often very technical and not very attractive. And this is the "strategy" that I am personally pursuing, collaborating here in Bologna as an art historian with local institutions for the creation of videos that tell the public about their collections (the last one for the Lercaro Collection) and as a curator presenting an exhibition today at the Studio G7 Gallery, where I discuss this very topic, on the role of images in these months of lockdown, giving the visitor the opportunity to directly compare the two viewing moments during the gallery visit: the one mediated through new technologies by means of a virtual reality viewer; and that of the direct encounter with the works and with the curator who acts as a cultural mediator and welcomes visitors to the exhibition one by one.
How your way of working has changed?
I would have liked to answer that today there is less frenzy and more respect for "creative expectations". But I believe the slowdown in the pressures we are normally used to dealing with is now over and we are really very close to recovering the previous pace.
When all this is over: one thing to do and one never to do again.
One thing to do is to go back to traveling immediately; one thing you should never do again is eat bats and pangolins (I hope).
Leonardo Regano (Bari, 1980. He lives and works in Bologna). Art historian, museologo, independent critic and curator interested in the relationship between art and urban landscape, to gender studies and new generations. He has curated exhibitions for public institutions (including International Museum and Music Library, Bologna; Mar – Art Museum of the City of Ravenna; Palazzo Poggi Museum, Bologna; Museum Center of Emilia-Romagna) and private realities and galleries (among the most recent collaborations are those for Traffic Gallery, Bergamo; was born on 11 May, Bologna). He was among the coordinators of Progetto Zero… Weak Fist by Patrick Tuttofuoco, winner of the Italian Council 2017. In 2018 he coordinated Helen Cammock's Bolognese residency, winner of the seventh edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. From 2013 he is the curator of the events that the Laboratorio Degli Angeli dedicates, during Arte Fiera, to the problems of contemporary restoration. He is currently curator of the collective exhibition Chiaroscuro at the Studio G7 Gallery in Bologna. www.leonardoregano.com