Speculum Celestiale
Vigna San Martino/Fondazione Morra, Naples, Italy
Frames from a video by Antonio Di Domenico (2011)
‘Do you know how many times
the World shouted at me from a distance
and wanted to kill me?
Do you realise how many times
the World shouted at me, close up,
so very close up,
and wanted to love me?
Poetry sustained me.’
These were the opening words of a poem entitled simply ‘Napoli’, with which London-based artist and writer Paul Sakoilsky grabbed and shook listeners part way through an all-night summer solstice event held by Fondazione Morra in conjunction with EM Arts at Vigna San Martino, Naples. It was written following a Hermann Nitsch action held at the same venue a little over one year earlier – Fondazione Morra houses a permanent yet changing installation dedicated to Nitsch’s performances – culminating in a huge feast, the ingredients for which were provided during the earlier ritualistic animal slaughter typical of the Austrian artist’s Dionysian performances.
This year il Banchetto Demoniaco (the Demonic Banquet) was presided over by Nitsch’s former assistant, Paul Renner – food artist, painter and sculptor – and included dishes such as Lucifer Rising (a soup of pig’s ears and tails), Il Cazzo di Antichristo (the ‘dick of the Antichrist’, an eel broth served over mashed potato) and God’s Head Soup (Goat’s Head Soup), amongst others. Held on the expansive grounds of the Vigna San Martino (San Martino Vineyard), as night fell the city of Naples, sprawling out onto the foot of Mount Vesuvius, provided a backdrop for an artistic exploration of the dialectic between humankind and nature through a sensorially layered performance. Involving between 10 and 20 artists performing within and alongside the carefully cultivated grounds, the event aimed at opening up the synesthesic possibilities offered by the combination of feast and the natural environment.
Throughout the event the vino bianco flowed – confirming that the wine god, Bacchus, needs no invitation when two or more artists are gathered – whilst the meal, served in a huge skull-shaped bowl made from pastry by one of Renner’s collaborators, Roland Adlassnigg, bridged the two poles of man and nature. This was a sensually tangible exemplar of the aim of the show, which was outlined in event co-organiser, Raffaella Morra’s accompanying text Dialectics of the Natural. The mercurial Renner, a master of decadent concoctions, became magus-scientist, ‘possessing the secrets of nature, but not becoming their master’. Like an alchemist restricted to the simplest of materials – the fruits of the earth – the artist-chef grinned both maniacally and with childlike glee as he teased, caressed and coerced animal and vegetable matter into compliance with his culinary intentions.
Above all, Speculum Celestiale reminded participants that there still exists an untamed and provocative Dionysian tendency within the arts that remains a vital element in cultural discourse. This was illustrated by, amongst other things, a semi-naked Sakoilsky ending up in the serving dish and inviting the audience to cover him in offal, rice or whatever was to hand. No-one seemed to mind that he was supposed to have dressed as a clown and be covered in custard. But it was that kind of night.
Naples – industrial, wheezing under the strain of traffic, yet situated in a kind of cradle of intensely vibrant human activity thriving against historical odds – forms a crossroads between the advance of technology and the power of nature, via the adherence of its inhabitants to a natural code (the nearby ruins of Pompeii providing, of course, a constant reminder of the danger presented by Mount Vesuvius). That code is expressed in the simplicity of the city’s food, but also in a palpable yet unspoken reverence both for the elements and for the climate, matched and balanced only by an irreverence towards authority. In such an environment the simple presentation of the city, of Vesuvius, of the solstice – a pagan feast – of wine and of food could hardly fail to impress. Yet, in a creative era such as ours – where audience participation, food, politics, gymnastics (for example, Allora and Calzadilla’s entry at this year’s Venice Biennale), or indeed, anything can be considered art – artists and curators need to be attentive lest the art itself is somehow lost within the wider spectacle. For the democratizing process by which anything can become art and anyone become an artist risks art losing its power to shake the viewer into a momentary crystallization of experience wherein the rational world gives way to a realization of a kinship with nature. This is vital to the political capacity of art, because it is at this point that the fallacy of the dualistic human/nature divide – which motivates much that is negative in our behaviour towards the environment and each other – is exposed. Yet too often ‘participation’ gives way to light entertainment; a day out, wherein the audience is encouraged to partake, rather than be moved or shaken beyond comfortable boundaries. One unfortunate side effect is an audience expecting to relate to art as they relate to everyday life. (Witness galleries and museums being gradually taken over by ever-expanding souvenir shops.)
Art, performance, poetry and the feast are ideal mediums for the channeling of the tangible energies present in Naples, particularly when the artists – as with Renner and Sakoilsky – are loathe to let the audience become complacent. On the night Speculum Celestiale was held it was not so much ‘mankind looking for a soul’ as Karl Jung famously had it, but wearied souls, beaten by the consumerist merry-go-round looking for their bodies, and finding them through a sensual engagement admixed with a very real notion of time’s passing as the sun – and its audience – died and were reborn between Mount Vesuvius, the volcanic Phlegraean Fields and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Long live Naples, and art.
Mike Watson
Mike Watson is an art theorist and writer based in Rome. He is currently writing a book entitled Joan of Art; Towards a Conceptual Militancy for Zer0 Books.
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