In case of loss

In case of loss

One day in the Autumn of 2013 I discovered quite by chance from an employee of the Moleskine company that every year, after just a few months any unsold diaries are reclaimed from bookshops and then go immediately to be pulped.
I must confess to having been quite shocked by this revelation but subsequently I was sufficiently motivated to ask the company if it would be possible to have the unwanted agendas before they were destroyed.
On the one hand to rescue them, and on the other to simply get hold of them.
I wanted to embrace those very safe-keepers of symbols, ideas and spaces not made use of. Chronicles untouched and autonomous, locked away and yet simultaneously open to limitless possibilities.
“In case of loss” are the four words which you see on lifting the cover of every Moleskine, printed on the very first page. They represent the prospect of losing something and the possibility of rediscovering it.
The installation will comprise 365 Moleskine with the succulent seeds of pomegranates grown in my own garden introduced within. I have inserted one between each page representing each and every day.
I redeemed the diaries in an attempt to lose and then rediscover myself incorporating every outstanding idea, hence I won’t feel to have neglected any of them just as long as they can be preserved, as seeds, in time immemorial.
So in an attempt to extend time, I wished that every day could last fully 365.
On the 31st of December 2014, I walked all over the diaries which I had placed on the potstone floor of the banqueting hall of Chiavenna’s Palazzo Salis, retracing my year all the way back, and celebrating it.
Under my weight I felt the seeds surrendering their juices to the paper.
The final phase will involve me arranging the Moleskine anew on the ground, opening them in order to reveal the daily seed and the printed pattern which will have been transferred onto the pages.
Simultaneously, in an adjacent space, a video in loop will be projected documenting the performance.
The shooting and editing were the responsibility of Francesca Amato Arragon e Ruggero Mantovani, aka FAARM. http://www.faarmweare.com
The soundtrack was conceived and produced by Francesca Giomo e Fabio Bonelli.
http://musicadacucina.it http://www.fromthemountains.com http://www.musicabuji.com
I appreciate hugely the contributions made by my artist friends in the project, playing an integral and stimulating part, combining their time with mine, and thereby enhancing it enormously.

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Comments 1

Daniël Stragier
9 years ago
Buon lavoro

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