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A new "stone age" in Carrara (Italy)
"Opera Bianca": a tale of marble born from the meeting of Art and Industry
by Giorgio Blanco
In recent years what has been missing most from initiatives promoting stone and marble has been their true anchorage to local productive, artistic and cultural tissue. While admirable, these undertakings by individuals or groups have not always been rooted in the area that could have enhanced their significance and broadened their resonance. The international fairs devoted to marble and stone working technologies, italian or in other countries, can be exempted from this crique since they fulfill their commercial and cultural duty in an institutional context separate from the "strict observance" of local "know how", of the delicate culture typical of an area, of the "local feeling" that exists more in a sense of belonging than in big numbers. Fairs instead live on big comparisons, on well-known artists, and only rarely the "culture exhibits" show signs of attention to the new things of worth, which tend to emerge laboriously. In brief, it is the old problem of recognizing and give legitimacy to the avangarde, which has always had a hard time emerging and taking root. In Italy land of fertile, universally recognized creative activity, the tendency in recent years has been to settle on the "noted few" (because it is better not to take the risks). But image is not evrything. And sooner or later someone will have to decide to take the responsability for choosing, for daring to propose new routes. Certainly, selection is seldom easy and always risky. You need experience to tell the wheat from the chaff. You need sensitivity to judge a real artist, not only through his or her works but above all through their potential, trying to foretell future developments in language from the artist's personality and, in the last analysis, from his or her innovative ability. This selective sensitivity was shown right from the start by the ways in which "Opera Bianca" Association was instituted, from its very beginings promising initiatives of sure interest.
1. The "Opera Bianca" ("White Work") Association
This "Opera Bianca" association was conceived as a multidiscipline workshop in which to experiment and propose new solutions for producing and enjoying contemporary art. The purpose of the association is to incentivize and stimulate dialogue between the world of art and the worlds of business, institutions, schools, academies, the social weave, critics and professionals (architects, designers, graphic artists, set designers) through events, exhibits, performances, symposiums, conferences and other cultural activities, including training and updating courses. This constant attention to a dutiful link between art and industry is intrinsic to marble working itself, throughout its history and traditions. In fact, art and industry have always coexisted in Carrara, but there are still too few occasions for shared reflection and mutual stimulation. Occasions which, on the national and international level, are instead more and more frequent and sought after, with close ties established between the fronts of production, creativity and artistic experimentation. Paradoxically, these occasions often involve works using marbles produced in Carrara (or in any case in Italy) and thus the stone "know-how" that is a wholly Italian prerogative. And the Apuan Alps extraction basin ( its reference district) is, as we know, an international reference point not only for marble but also for its working. Because the term marble does not stand for "mater" but for a "material" that since antiquity has been intimately linked with its working, that is, with the technical procedures, artistic languages and traditions that have historically taken root with the cultures they belong to. When we think of it more as an architectural element, sculpture or other manufacture than as a block or quarry. So we most opportune this initiative intended to revive - right in Carrara - a dialogue that has been too long fragmented, if not actually interrupted.
2. "Andata e ritorno, per vedere" (" There and back, to take a look"), the first initiative
"Art and Industry" was the work sphere the "Opera Bianca" Asssociation chose to present itself to the city with its first event open to the pubblic. The show was held from July 21 to August 12 on the premises of the Carlo Telara Marmi e Graniti works 1) and was intended to reopen dialogue between the creative work of a group of artists and an active industrial site. Albeit temporary, the dream of making industrial ( attention: not artisanal) activity coexist phisically with artistic work posed quite a number of contradictions and operational problems gave "added value" to the undertaking as a whole. The idea was ti install artistic works and installations in active productive plants, not on their edges but fully integrated with them and actually right in the work areas. This was achieved both through types of works that utilized the operating potential of the plants and machines themselves, and through works of an ephemeral nature that became included in tims of non-production. In both cases important results of an expressive and symbolic nature were reached that could not have been achived in other contexts. "Andata e ritorno per vedere" was the title chosen for the first event and evokes the idea of atrip, of a period of absence as a necessary condition for taking an unusual look at the reality of the routine. Living in Carrara - but also just visiting it - one cannot be indifferent to the presence of marble and the collective life that rotates busily around this material (it is said that in Carrara one is born and lives and dies of marble). This awareness, these images and these stimuli gave birth to the idea of creating a "Città altra" ("An Other City"), a place foreign and familiar at the same time. In brief, a dream, a place of tales that are probable yet able to release us from the real, disclosing unimaginable yet perfectly recognizable scenarios. Tales able to re-evoke what we belived had been lost to oblivion and which instead, lying in the deepest layers of our consciousness, constitute the basis of our emotions.
3. The place and the event
The guideline for the event was seeking a dialogue between creative activity and a place heavily conoted by industrial work. The site, covering 25,00 m2, was a sawmill with gangsaws for marble and a big work bay for storing and handling marble blocks and slabs. The bay borders on the railway line. Alongside is an abandoned house. The catalogue states:" The whole to reinterpret, to "stage", to accompany the visitor through sculptures and installations along a route of reading the place differently from usual". The wound from the entrance to the rail line, from which one could take a new look at the mountain whitned by piles of debris. The route was conceived as a maze one enters, not with the intent of find something in it, but to follow its windings to the turning point, from which one can exit renewed: "One enters, exits, enters anew to rest or re-depart, but in any case to see things in a different way, with the eyes of a stranger". The twelve stops along the route, as listed and commented on in the catalogue, were:
The event was conceived mainly for nighttime enjoyment. Therefore it was from twilight on that the set of installations was more suggestive, in a timeless atmosphere, and its loveliness was enhanced by a skilful use of sound and light. Jean Paul Canalini composed the background music, using excerpts and sound effects taken from his own rich archive.
( From Marmomacchine International 35/2001- Promorama)
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