Anri Sala: AS YOU GO

Drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Marcella Beccaria
Preview: February 25, 2019, 7pm

The exhibition takes the form of a “parade,” where video works (Ravel Ravel, Take Over and If and Only If) and their developing narratives travel across the entire space. Visitors can let themselves stroll with the flow, accompanying its nomadic substance across the consecutive rooms, gaining ground, or experience the itinerant works from a laid-back position, standing or sitting, as they pass them by.

“I am refining the parade as much as I can here in the studio. I cannot wait to join you in Rivoli for a little bit of reality, because I am spending too much time in simulations and the virtual.

I was thinking of giving the exhibition a title. AS YOU GO.

In English or Italian—MENTRE VAI?

Visually I find the English more musical (although Italian is a much more melodic language.) AS YOU GO looks like DO RE MI FA SOL…

Through this parade, the exhibition as a whole becomes a musical instrument that relies on the visitors’ bearings to gain its full dimension…

…until they belong together.

I am interested in the idea that there is no destination to reach, that the finality is in the trajectory…

And also in the awareness ‘que même si le delifé se déroule dans le présent’ (continuous present) ‘et simultanément dans toutes le salles’ (ubiquitously,) ‘la notion du future’ (future tense) ‘sera omniprésente. D’où aussi ce sentiment qui nous contraire quand on voit un film entrer dans la salle par la gauche après qu’on l’aie vu à l’instant sortir par la droite.’ The fact that the future (in a temporal sense) emerges from the back (spatially) where we just passed through produces ‘un trouble.’

That said, I do not think I have found the words to articulate the essence of this work.

Yes, how could you? They produce intervals, spaces in between bodies.”