Timebender | Nabuurs&VanDoorn

Timebender | Nabuurs&VanDoorn

Part of the online project Confini during Covid-19.

Awareness. Shooting. Consciousness.

'Confini' is an instaproject born from a 'wrong' shot, from a quick story on instagram to tell a day of my artistic residency; from a shot without focus from the studio window before leaving the ViaFarini Archive at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. Without focusing.

On March 2, 2020 at 6.40 pm the confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Italy were 2.036. Containment measures had already been taken, red zones had been established in some parts of Italy, while Milan was in the yellow zone like the rest of Lombardy. Two days later schools across Italy would be closed.

The glass marked the subtle line between inside and outside, an invisible and reflective diaphragm. And in fact it reflected, and allowed to reflect. In this case, it reflected the archive, the knowledge contained in the books and magazines. In their own way, frontiers that widen other frontiers.

Borders.

I was thinking about the recommendations about interpersonal distances and how this would change our relationships with others: with loved ones, with family and friends, with fellow residents, and also with people on the street, with strangers.

I was thinking of the privilege of spending this suspended period in a studio like this: a nice place to work, if we really had to be put to 'confinement'.

I thought of the idea of being limited, of seeing our personal freedom reduced. But also of the idea that our freedom is always limited, by physical limits, by natural and human rules, by our mental boundaries.

There are times when we can't focus. Or in which we understand only after we did it instinctively.
I thought of a format to be proposed primarily to the inhabitants of the residence and those who frequent the Archive, to friends of ViaFarini, and by extension to the world of art and beyond, to those who live in this situation of confinement like us and want to participate to the project.

Each person has 15 seconds a day, each day can decide whether to use them or not, in which each person films their own boundaries, their daily lives.

I think of vertical videos, made with the smartphone, telling of this suspended time. I think of instagram stories to be published on social media and to be enclosed in an insta- project, to narrate this story, to leave a trace, but also to involve people, to connect them. I think of the use of digital tools as a link. I think of the community that can be temporarily gathered around this project, of the reflections that can arise from it. Visual layering. Virtual neighborhoods.
confinis: (lat., adj.) neighboring, the one who owns a neighboring property

a project curated by Vera Pravda
with the collaboration of ViaFarini DOCVA