Blackout

- Installation (Installation)

4 sheets of 270 x 135 cm

Rossella Biscotti

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In a broader sense, the meaning of ‘blackout’ —primarily an electrical failure or momentary interruption, opens up to new organizations, perceptions and different ways of experiencing time and space. Every person caught in a blackout must redefine the potentiality of public space, relate to strangers and invent new temporary forms of organization. A blackout acts as the breaking point of an established order, on a personal level as a loss of consciousness or on a collective level, as the temporary disruption of political institutions for example. This is a special blackout edition! was conceived in collaboration with the artist Rossella Biscotti in relation to the research on the term ‘blackout’, conducted during her residency at Kadist. Her enquiry in Paris started by looking into the city’s electricity and communication network, while she traced historical references of major power failures such as the New York blackout of 1977.

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Departing from social and political history, the work of Rossella Biscotti (b. Molfetta, Italy, 1978) transforms and modifies truth through a variety of mediums: sound, film, sculpture and textile. The artist employs a documentary-styled aesthetic to highlight the impossibility to fully account for a truth told to us and heralds a heterogeneous trans-social theory that asserts multiple realities. Her work questions how objectivity is easily given to historical documents and juridical actions and considers the past as an effective vector of possible change. Biscotti’s work reflects the active role art plays in the construction of contemporary knowledge, while questioning the legitimacy of history and of those by whom it was built.

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Colors:

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• consciousness.n.01
• break.n.13
• cognition.n.01
• legitimacy.n.01
• history.n.01
• tracing.n.01