11.22.03
Interactive Video-Audio Installation
by Masbedo
Dialogues taken from Rester Vivant by Michel Houellebecq and adapted for the project by Michel Houellebecq and Masbedo
Actors: Ramon Tarès (Fura dels Baus) and Patrizia Zappa Mulas
Original soundtrack by Quite and Maurizio Salerno
Produced by Marco Puntin for LipanjePuntin artecontemporanea
The duo Masbedo (Nicolò Massazza e Jacopo Bedogni), after having already collaborated with French writer Michel Houellebecq in 2002 producing artworks and installations for an exhibition titled Il senso della lotta, is going to present its new project, 11.22.03 (an interactive video-audio installation), next February in Madrid on the occasion of ARCO ’03 (Hall 9 Stand 9 G 237 - Galleria LipanjePuntin artecontemporanea).

This time the two artists together with Michel Houellebecq have adapted an original dialogue taken from Rester Vivant, an essay published by the author himself in 1997 (Éditions Flammarion, France). The project gets its title from the entire length of the interactive installation. Basically the whole project is structured on a dialogue between two faces: man and woman (the masculine and feminine sides of the same person) who confess themselves as if naked in front of a mirror. Together with the video projections the installation includes an original soundtrack defined by the composers themselves as a Technological Requiem mixing classical choruses and synthetic sounds; five actors wearing white overalls act inside a dark room, on the actors’ overalls/bodies projections of caressing hands, bacteria and a digital snowfall are performed. Spectators (maximum 20 at a time) once inside the dark room will have to put on headphones in order to watch and hear the installation in its whole. The text, interpreted by important theatre actors such as Ramon Tarès (Fura dels Baus, main actor in OBS) and Patrizia Zappa Mulas, has intentionally been translated into Spanish as far as this language is generally considered more violent and full of passion than any other European language.
11.22.03 is about the importance of the structure in a human body which has made its choice: to survive as a living suicide on the bounderies of life.

11.22.03 concerns indifference, disease, lack of love, death; about being base people to be true and about the quest for truth.
Masbedo are Nicolò Massazza (1973, Milan, Italy) and Jacopo Bedogni (1970, Sarzana -La Spezia-, Italy).
They live and work in Milan (Italy).

All of our art pieces arise in the shadow of a force to us still unknown. Even though we are aware of our artistic intentions, smoothing the idea as artisans, talking, drawing, writing, we cannot liberate ourselves from that intense sacral pulse that grows into our art. This becomes amusing considering our pronounced atheism, but things happen in art like it does in life. Since the beginning, we wanted to deal with uncomfortable and cumbersome thematic, trying to enclose to the poetic also the obsessions of what’s contemporary by photographing narcissist human beings, installing sensations and fears always striving to relate to the viewer with a direct "action-interaction"; a sort of a scenic theatre of the image which ends up being our existential scenic curtain.
We will never use the definition "Contemporary Art"; we perceive right away that sort of presumption and creativity that often is confused with fashion, glamour and design. What we do is represent ourselves, living in first person our art pieces. Today, in the society we live in, we spend ninety percent of our time as spectators and the remaining ten as artists. Our works are then soaked with this social psychological context, and never leave it behind: desire, competition, fear are all part of out characters. This obstinate representation of pain is actually our only way of liberation. Technically we use photography, video, installations, music, and we try to exploit as much as possible the different technologies to talk about humanity. Who says that poetry can only be written? As artists we are at our art’s service, conceptually and aesthetically, we find collaborations and contamination because we believe the only possible future for art will be found in the union, becoming all workers into one’s factory. The making of a movie is the best example. The direction without the collaborations is nothing. This way the actors of our art pieces have to endure our creative siege, they have to interpret it, twist it, stain it, purify it and then by the end redeliver back to us our initial idea enveloped in the aesthetic. Here’s the scenic curtain we were talking about, the contamination, the unconscious, and the direction. Our works are born talking, then they are written... this is the transition: spectator (to watch the reality and be curious) artist (to create with the natural aesthetic development of the idea, choice of the expressive media photography, installation, video, music) worker (manual operation). Each one of these transitions determines a dutiful work on us. This is the sense of our fight, our sacrifice, and the emblematic sacral aspect before described.
MASBEDO
 
 
 
Selected Group Exhibitions
 
2003
Arte Fiera, LipanjePuntin artecontemporanea, Bologna (Italy)
  Corpo sociale, Galleria Pack, Milano (Italy)
  MiArt, LipanjePuntin artecontemporanea, Milano (Italy)
2002
Il cuore, Fondazione Mazzotta, Milano (Italy)
  Sogno e Follia nella fotografia contemporanea, Le bureau des esprits, Milano (Italy)
  Artissima, LipanjePuntin artecontemporanea, Torino (Italy)
2001
Interiors, ISAD, Milano (Italy)
  Requiem, Lugano (Switzerland)
  Erotica mente, Varese (Italy)
2000
Solitude, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, London (England)
  Solitude, Casa delle Letterature, Roma (Italy)
1999
MiArt, Fabbrica Eos, Milano (Italy)
 
 
Selected Solo Exhibitions
 
2004
Centro Fotografía Universidad Salamanca, Salamanca (Spain)
  MACRO, Roma (Italy)
2003
Arco - 11.22.03, LipanjePuntin artecontemporanea, Madrid (Spain)
  11.22.03, LipanjePuntin artecontemporanea, Trieste (Italy)
  11.22.03, 56° International Film Festival, Locarno (Switzerland)
  11.22.03: The Backstage, 56° International Film Festival, Locarno (Switzerland)
  11.22.03, Studio Albanese, Vicenza (Italy)
2002
Il senso della lotta, Palazzo dell'Orologio, Roma (Italy)
  Il senso della lotta, Palazzo delle Stelline, Milano (Italy)
2001
The Last Supper, Fabbrica Eos, Milano (Italy)
2000
L'intenzione di amare, Spazio San Carpoforo, Milano (Italy)
1999
La ragione trasparente, Comune di Aosta, Aosta (Italy)
 
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