Category: Exhibitions

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livingequipment

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎Respigar Espinhos

RESIDENCY 09/2024

ESTAÇÃO COOPERATIVA de Casa Branca, Casa Branca, Portugal

"Muta" (2024)
“Muta”. (2024)

In 2024, Michela Dal Brollo and Inés Ballesteros participated in a residency in Casa Branca, an old railway village inhabited by a few dozen of people in the interior of the region of Alentejo in Portugal. Our focus during the residency was to work with the ingredients and natural materials that were available locally at that time and, with some abundance, spices of plants that manage to survive the heat of the driest season of the year in a decertified landscape, some of them centuries old, others arriving from distant lands, some wild, and some domesticated.

During the residency, we processed the plants we collected into food and biomaterial recipes, gathering as well some seasonal local recipes from neighbors. 

This research was presented and transformed into an artistic video titled: Respigar Espinhos and a sculptural piece named MUTA, created with biomaterials. The two works were shown during an open event and exhibition at the museum Terras de Ferro. The interplay between these two works invites reflection on the landscape and territorial resources through the metaphor of the recipe. The final exhibition was accompanied by a food event where we prepared recipes discovered during the residency, cooked with living equipment tools: Cum-panis and Mud fire.

RESPIGAR ESPINHOS 

short film

The film Respigar Espinhos presents itself as an experimental archive of biomaterial and food recipes research, accompanied by spatial and environmental reflections. The film highlights the connection to the local landscape, blending traditional knowledge and various processes of food recipes and biomaterial experimentation.

Inspired by thorns, mucilage sap, and fibers of local plants, the artists humorously personified the vegetal ingredients of the presented recipes, prompting reflections on the reciprocity between human bodies and plant bodies.

The movie was shown at Museum Terras de Ferro, casa Branca, Portugal and MUSE Museum, Trento Italy 

MUTA

Sculpture

In the Alentejo tradition, women sew patchwork bags for bread made from fabric scraps. This technique inspired the creation of MUTA, pieces sewn together from self-produced bioplastic and plant-based papers. Muta is reminiscent of a map and skin left behind by a hybrid creature. The materials from which MUTA is made are derived from heat-resistant plant species such as cactus thistles and acorns, capable of surviving arid landscapes.

Produced in the context of the artistic residency at  ESTAÇÃO COOPERATIVA de Casa Branca  

with the financial assistance of the European Union. Culture moves Europe.

LIST OF EXPLORED RECIPES

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livingequipment

Memorie future – Disseminati

SOLO EXHIBITION and PERFORMANCE 6/2023

Memorie future, S. Osvaldo church, Rovereto,Italy

Solo exhibition:

“The monographic exhibition at S. Osvaldo is entirely dedicated to the project Living Equipment: portable spaces, by Michela Dal Brollo and Ines Ballesteros, and is articulated between their visionary inventions and the documentation of their use in performances carried out in different cities in Europe between 2019 and 2023.” Elena Righini (curator)

Part of the exhibition showcases sculptural tools used during the workshop-performance. The ‘Parol della Polenta’, a typical Trentino pot supported on a tripod is used to mix ingredients and pieces of storytelling to prepare gelatine used for printting.  The gelatin was then pureed into other clay sculptures called ‘Laghi’.

Performance:

“To elaborate on this relational installation Michela and Ines drew inspiration from trichoptera, small creatures that live in rivers or lakes. These aquatic insects have a soft and vulnerable exoskeleton, so they build their own ‘shell’ using their saliva and materials found in the surrounding environment. Depending on the environment, the created shell changes color and shape, sustainably adapting to the space. Their method of assembly inspires the artists, who create, together with the participants of the interactive workshops, a collage of ideas, which are then expressed through gelatin printing. A collective habitat is thus created, founded around the gelatin according to the specificities of the place involved in the process”. Elena Righini

Elena Righini curated the exhibition. The exhibition took part in the program of Memorie Future organized by Spazio Piera and il Funambolo associations. 

Thanks to the partnership of Scuola di S. Osvaldoando and La Foresta who supported our project.

The sculpture “Laghi” was shown and performed as well during the festival Osvaldo Oltre e Oltre in the form of a workshop  to make collective drawings

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livingequipment

Pigtails & Pigeon Wings – Board Game

EXHIBITION / BOARD GAME 05/23

Antwerp Art Weekend, Archipel, Antwerp, Belgium

“Pig Tails and Pigeon Wings” is a board game that shows the causes and effects of critical or small actions that contributed to transforming the neighborhood of Den Dam in Antwerp for how we see it now. To realize it we were inspired by events that happened or could have happened in the past. Investors, social housing, the ring project, artists activating the vacant space of the old slaughterhouse of the city, new housing projects, peripheries, pigeons, rats, and all the pigs and cows that passed through the space, neighborhood actions, small actions, and big moves brings you back and forward in the game.

The game was presented on the portable table “Rotula” during the exhibition Vanishing Past(s) in Archipel in the context of Antwerp Art Weekend.

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livingequipment

Art go East

EXHIBITION and INTERVENTION IN PUBLIC SPACE 10/2022

Biennial for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany

In the context of the ART GO EAST biennial we participate in the exhibition “To enchant” at Poege Haus In Leipzig together with the artists, Aleksandra Majzel, Gijs Watershoot and Rien Schellemans

We use the exhibition space as an open studio space to organize an intervention in public space.

“The living equipment” intrudes a small portion of public space. We proposed to the participants a game to create a story by reimagining infrastructures and characters of the surrounding space. Each invented character, needs another participant to complete and animate it.
The Gelatinografo and cum panis were the devices used to imagine a place with other relationships and gravity. The intervention in public space concludes with the creation of a small publication.

Fotos: Nathalie Valeska Schüler

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livingequipment

Dis-Connected

EXHIBITION 05/2022 

Antwerp Art Weekend, Vleeshaak  Archipel site, Antwerp, Belgium

“One bird had two long wings and four wheels instead of legs. It could become two or more and when necessary come back as one creature. They could fold and unfold, flip and twist. Now they wander the city in search of places to temporarily build their nests, their form and function remain flexible and change quickly, infiltrating the inner rhythms of the city. They unfold a backpack and fire comes to warm the guests and bring a meal together. At the end of the day, the bird feeds a blue gelatine with their stories. The stories melt and the jelly expands and multiplies.“

Five of the Living Equipment: Cum-Panis, Gelatinografo, Bibliotek, Ruotala, and our Mapping Tool have been staged in the group exhibition “Dis-connected” during the “Antwerp Art Weekend,” in the Vleeshaak, Archipel.

By exhibiting indoors, the habitat of “Living equipment” is transformed giving more attention to their sculptural values. In the exhibition, it was possible to concentrate on how we subvert the logic of usual design objects, such as tables, wheelchairs, or parapending merging their functions and changing their anatomy. 

The “living equipment” are shown as objects with personalities, experiences, and stories about the world outside the exhibition, where they create unforeseen circumstances. 

The narratives produced were shown through prints about the stories and drawings of experiences lived in public spaces elaborated into new narratives.