Atlante della Fertilità
|
Nel 2008 ho iniziato a scrivere, a Napoli, un poema sulla memoria di alcuni flash visivi ricorrenti della mia esistenza. La cui valenza, nell'atto della loro prima stesura, si rivelava consona al racconto di una città legata ad atti ed azioni frammentarie e incongruenti ma necessarie e naturali per la sua sussistenza quotidiana. Nei mesi successivi ho insistito sull'attenzione e sulla rivelazione di questo prolificare di frames personali, per l’edificazione poetica di questa città, che, nelle mie intenzioni, man mano che elaboravo, poteva tradursi attraverso un racconto poetico di un territorio che stavo vivendo come luogo stantìo della mia vita. Napoli mi sembrava un polo su cui calibrare le figurazioni di scrittura poetica per le varie e successive stesure del componimento stesso. Terminato il poema nell'autunno del 2009, ho poi cercato di aggiungere ad esso un rilievo visivo, che amplificasse alcuni motivi che sottostavano all'essenza stessa di tutto il mio impegno artistico.
A questo scopo, durante un mio soggiorno avvenuto nell'autunno del 2009 a New York, ho iniziato a lavorare ad alcuni collage e alla stesura di taccuini, di schizzi e disegni. L’elaborazione di questi nuovi materiali |
mi ha fatto rendere conto che il poema in versi e il relativo processo di proliferazione e accumulazione di rappresentazioni, erano tutt’altro che chiusi, e, al contrario, continuavano a svilupparsi nel lavoro visivo che stavo realizzando a New York. Di qui, l'idea di trasformare il poema, e il relativo processo creativo che l'accompagnava, in un “Atlante di immagini” che mi è piaciuto considerare come Atlante della Fertilità, in omaggio all'incessante e feconda accumulazione di intuizioni, di memoria e di rappresentazioni succedute. Ma soprattutto come riguardo al celebre Atlante Mnemosyne di Aby Warburg. Proprio pensando all’impegno di Warburg per il suo Atlante ho, infine, desiderato e immaginato allestirne uno. In uno spazio fisico in cui immagini, suoni e architetture riuscissero a suscitare, per chi lo avesse attraversato, un personale processo di vivificazione emotiva ed affettiva di intrecci immaginativi e interpretativi. Dove la poesia, liberata dalla monotonia e dall'asfissia contemporanea del supporto cartaceo, potesse spingerlo in percorsi inediti e destabilizzanti.
Domenico Mennillo |
Atlante della Fertilità
In 2008, in Naples, I started writing a poem about the memory of visive flashes that have been recurring throughout my lifetime, whose value, in the process of the first drafting, was consonant with the story of a city bound up with fragmentary and incongruous but necessary and natural acts and actions for its daily subsistence. In the following months, I insisted on the attention and revelation of this proliferation of personal frames for the poetic construction of this city, which in my intentions, as I elaborated it further, could translate into a poetic tale of a territory which, in that certain moment, I was perceiving as an outmode place of my life. Naples seemed to me a pole on which to calibrate poetic writing figurations for the various and subsequent draftings of the composition. After completing the poem in the fall of 2009, I decided to stop with the writing process itself and to add a visual part to the poem, with the aim to put in light some reasons laying behind the essence of my artistic commitment.
For this purpose, during my stay in New York in the fall of 2009, I started this visual work by drafting sketches on notebooks, and by working on Photographs, papers, cardboards from local markets, objects found in the street, materials to be used for collages.
The processing of these new materials made me realize that that the poem in verse and its process of proliferation and accumulation of representations were far from closed, and on the contrary, they continued to develop in the visual work I was making in New York. Hence, the idea of transforming the poem and the creative process that accompanied it into an "Atlas of Images", that I liked to consider as Atlante della Fertilità ("Atlas of Fertility"), in honor of the never-ending accumulation of intuitions, memories and representations, and, above all, as a recognition to the famous Atlas Mnemosyne by Aby Warburg. Indeed, it was by thinking about Warburg's commitment to his Atlas that I finally imagined setting up one. Creating a physical space made up of images, sounds, and architectures, I wanted to give the possibility, to those who crossed it, to venture into a personal process through which to revive the emotionality. of imaginative and interpretative interweaving, where poetry, unleashed by the monotony and contemporary asphyxiation of paper support, could push visitors towards unpublished and destabilizing paths.
Domenico Mennillo
In 2008, in Naples, I started writing a poem about the memory of visive flashes that have been recurring throughout my lifetime, whose value, in the process of the first drafting, was consonant with the story of a city bound up with fragmentary and incongruous but necessary and natural acts and actions for its daily subsistence. In the following months, I insisted on the attention and revelation of this proliferation of personal frames for the poetic construction of this city, which in my intentions, as I elaborated it further, could translate into a poetic tale of a territory which, in that certain moment, I was perceiving as an outmode place of my life. Naples seemed to me a pole on which to calibrate poetic writing figurations for the various and subsequent draftings of the composition. After completing the poem in the fall of 2009, I decided to stop with the writing process itself and to add a visual part to the poem, with the aim to put in light some reasons laying behind the essence of my artistic commitment.
For this purpose, during my stay in New York in the fall of 2009, I started this visual work by drafting sketches on notebooks, and by working on Photographs, papers, cardboards from local markets, objects found in the street, materials to be used for collages.
The processing of these new materials made me realize that that the poem in verse and its process of proliferation and accumulation of representations were far from closed, and on the contrary, they continued to develop in the visual work I was making in New York. Hence, the idea of transforming the poem and the creative process that accompanied it into an "Atlas of Images", that I liked to consider as Atlante della Fertilità ("Atlas of Fertility"), in honor of the never-ending accumulation of intuitions, memories and representations, and, above all, as a recognition to the famous Atlas Mnemosyne by Aby Warburg. Indeed, it was by thinking about Warburg's commitment to his Atlas that I finally imagined setting up one. Creating a physical space made up of images, sounds, and architectures, I wanted to give the possibility, to those who crossed it, to venture into a personal process through which to revive the emotionality. of imaginative and interpretative interweaving, where poetry, unleashed by the monotony and contemporary asphyxiation of paper support, could push visitors towards unpublished and destabilizing paths.
Domenico Mennillo
