The exhibition is the culmination and conclusion of a long period of research by Luana Perilli into the collective intelligence regarding difficult legacies, fluid identities, creation and the use of the language in the public space. Her research into the relationships between art, city planning and community extended to the observation of the sharing of spaces and languages in the public places of Berlin during her residence at “ZK/U – Centre for Art and Urbanistics”. The center is situated in the public park in Moabit, a district well-known for its diverse migrant community, mainly made up of Turks and Lebanese who arrived after the Second World War and is still welcoming new refugees until this day.
The video Otto (2016-2018) is examining the unique dialect-language created in integration by immigrant and local children from the playgrounds and refugees shelters in Moabit. The video features moments of workshop on international playgrounds. The artist is interested particularly in the creolization of language, and in dialect as an expression of one of the most interesting phenomena of collective intelligence, generated by the dialectic tension between the heritage sphere (language, education, body, history) and the public sphere (spaces, appropriation, interaction, tension and spontaneity).
The second work of the show, a double video screening titled Leo-streben (2015-2016) is focused on architecture of the German capital re-used as a form of collective “digestion” of the difficult legacy of post-war Germany. It’s a study that develops in the public space as a place where the collective intelligence is able to reinterpret the problematic issues of the past. In this case, the bunker converted into a free climbing gym, completely inverts its original significance, accompanied by the contrast with the activity of the ants that process into pieces the roses gathered around another bunker turned into a park.
The work is also an homage to the two personalities that have inspired the project over the years: Leopoldo Wojaczek Perilli, the artist’s father, who was born to a German mother and Italian father after the end of the Second World War and Nazi occupation of Rome, and who was forbidden to learn or speak his mother tongue; and Leo Winkel, a German engineer and creator of the conical Winkel tower bunkers that are still impossible to destroy today, and that have therefore been abandoned or subject to redevelopment.
The third work where the spectator is confronted with the enigma of the birth of language and of language learning is Polari (2018), dedicated to an old language that has survived over the centuries because of its function in protecting and promoting resistance in the gay community in Britain during the 1970s; the luminous text scrolls across two LED panels, accompanied by an enigmatic ceramic sculpture titled Bilingual self-portrait (2018).
With this exhibition, the artist gives shape to her long research into collective intelligence that begins with a difficult personal story, but which then extends to public spaces and different communities, interweaving the threads of a subject matter rich in ideas and references in order to reflect on the enigma of language and the importance of new hybrid and fluid languages for the future generations.The project has been already exhibited in Rome, in Auditorium Parco della Musica in 2018, curated by Anna Cestelli Guidi.
The exhibition has been realized with the support of the Slovak Art Council.
