"Psychologia Balnearia "CD Release in june 2011

ABOUT "PSYCHOLOGIA BALNEARIA"


Psychologia Balnearia is born during a 6 weeks residency in the French thermal city Plombières-les-Bains (summer 2010). I was invited by the association Les Jardins-en-Terrasses, and the FRAC Lorraine. I lived there for 6 weeks, searching for inspirations and meeting new people, inhabitants, "curists" and tourists. During my residency, I recorded some sounds, and more specially I looked for the drops of water, working on the metaphysical theme of time. It was very favorable being in a thermal city in which water was everywhere, I could feel the very peculiar and psychological atmosphere of time stillness. In the meanwhile, I met Alphonse Anougna, a jazz musician, during my stay, and I proposed him to collaborate with me on a CD. We both found it interesting to mix both sound illustration and musical composition, while we discovered our respective creative world, music and visual art.
The achievement took one year long, and has been presented in the city of the residency, in Plombières-les-Bains, in the beautiful site of the "jardins-en-terrasses" in june 2011.
The 13 tracks of the CD matched both natural sound registrations and specific musical compositions. I let Alphonse Anougna feel free in his compositions, I wanted him to reflect on the concept of drops with his own thoughts, feelings and musical background, I did'nt want to influence him too much, I'd rather looked for a strong and balanced exchange on the subject. It’ is the result of an eclectic CD,  from melodic pieces to more afro-jazz and experimental rythms.
The feeling of the duration and the repetition is important, it naturally follows from the drop of water. The rythm is at the same time hypnotizing, spellbound, relaxing, or even annoying... we can hear it differently, it all depends of our own state of mind. Psychologia Balnearia is a CD to listen more than once, unrestrainedly, with the idea that time will bring you through a lot of interpretations.

The CD includes also a 36 pages booklet, with texts, photos and drawing made during the residency.

There is also 4 videos called untitled #1, untitled #2, untitled #3, untitled #4 (psychologia Balnearia). All are describing a contemplation of landscape or an observation from my room. I just try to render an impression of slowness, in order to concentrate always more about one peculiar image, throughout the duration and the nearly still image.

"Psychologia Balnearia" was the first title given to the first edition of one of Hermann Hesse’s autobiographical writings "A guest at the Spa". It considerably gives the state of mind and the emotions I could feel during my stay in Plombières-les-Bains, giving at the final project the old and enigmatic charme of the old-fashioned spa.

untitled #3 (Psychologia Balnearia)-video, 7min09

untitled #2 (Psychologia Balnearia)-video, 2min54

untitled #3 (Psychologia Balnearia)-video, 4min18

untitled #4 (Psychologia Balnearia)-video, 3min40

http://psychologiabalnearia.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/psychologiabalnearia
http://www.anougna.com/
http://www.jardinsplombieres88.com
http://www.fraclorraine.org/

stimolazione patriottica, 2010

(vidéo, 4min, 2010) 

(Italian national anthem words scroll on the screen, llike a karaoke,  but the music is missing)
video 4min
created at the occasion of the Italian unity150th anniversary, Villa Santena, Turin, Italy

Donnez vous un instant de détente... (give yourself a break...)

(this phrase is scrolling horizontally and unceasingly on the screen)
video installation loop
Residency in the nursing home Notre Maison, Nancy, France
2009

visiting the exhibition "Bientôt une nouvelle exposition!"

On last september, We, Alexandra David and I, were in art residency in a nursing home in France. We lived there for a month, we ate and slept there, we met old people and all the staff. from this very interesting experience, we did an exhibition curated by Vincent Verlé (curator of the CAB in Grenoble) in october 2009.
Here is the video of the exhibition inside the nursing home.
more photos are visible on the blog MDR (blog of our residency)

GREENHOUSE (SUMMER) e VILLAGE GREEN - progress from june 19th to september 13rd 2009

GREENHOUSE SUMMER
Sophie Usunier – Domestic Conditions

curated by Claudio Cravero

The exhibition takes place in the indoor spaces of The Park of Living Art and it is included in the Art Program directed by Piero Gilardi. The show is the first solo exhibition of French artist Sophie Usunier in Turin (Neufchâteau, 1971, lives and works between Milano and Nancy), and it reflects on the different situations of control of the natural forces. Then, the title “Domestic Conditions” refers to the themes of domestication, a kind of human tame on the environment, and vice versa, of the environment on the human being. In the project, with the adjective “domestic”, in fact, Usunier intends to highlight those opposite powers, strongly linked and connected.
In the main space, the installation Les Vents Contraires takes place with fifteen wind fans, that even blowing refreshing the air they seem to snuff out the greenhouse. Through their windsocks, the installation creates a dynamic Aeolian system that the visitor can disturb and modify only passing through.
Then, in the video Whirling dervish flies, the artist presents a summer flies’ dance shot with a fixed camera under a kitchen lamp. Here, the condition is not real because the domestication displayed is due to a Sufi song that seems to hypnotize the flies.
Also with Les Empaillés and Nature morte, such as the other works in the exhibition featured by anthropological messages, the artist wants to emphasize the shifting border of the animal wildness, that is a kind of human viewing attitude to animal species. This attitude is well known as “icon” (Roberto Marchesini), where the animal represents bad and good human habits, since the fairy tales teach with the man’s zoo-morphology.
Finally, by reflecting on the domestication, Usuniers’ works seem to remand to some lines of Le Petit Prince written by Saint-Exupery, where “apprivoiser” (to tame) means to create links and relations between living species in the same environment.

The exhibition Greenhouse (Summer) and the progress of the Village Green is made possible by the sponsorship and the collaboration of Città di Torino, Compagnia di San Paolo, Centre Culturel Français of Turin and the FRAC – Lorraine (France), and the Galleria Piacentia Arte of Piacenza.
for informations:
PAV - Parco Arte Vivente
Via Giordano Bruno, 31 - 10134 Torino
tel. 011. 3182235 - www.parcoartevivente.it - press@parcoartevivente.it
open hours: from wednesday to friday: ore 15.00 – 18.00; saturday and sunday 12.00 – 19.00
entrance: full ticket 3 Euro, reduced 2 Euro, free to Abbonamento Torino Musei / Torino Card

Intermezzo

(un poco mosso ma non troppo), video, 15min, 2009

Whirling Derwish Flies, video, 2008

THROUGH THE GLASS, 4 simultaneous projections on the 4 walls of a room, 7 mn, 2006

Backward and forward motion, lost of all sense of space, vertigo, giddiness…marked by the permanent rhythm of the grinding chain of the swing. We can’t see who swings, it is like a ghost, a sensation, a breath making part of the surrounding space, it is a all. When, suddenly, by chance, a little girl appears in the middle of the video, she comes and breaks the monotonous swing, she fits into the video as an elementary part of it. She concretises the emptiness, she materialises at once the breath, she gives some humanity back to what it is behind the “Window”, behind this sensation.

"Quote Rosa", Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan, 2006

COURT-CIRCUIT, video, 8 mn, 2003

The chemist's neon sign is a symbol that attracts us, whether it is in or out of its usual context. It is more than a signboard, it plays with the sound of the streets and the city. It is like a target for a human sized video game. This cross has the capacity to focus attention on it.
Changing its disposition by projecting it on the floor and out of its context, it becomes an entertaining and rhythmic sign. It goes being the sign for a chemist to looking like the dance floor of a nightclub.

"[…] Sophie Usunier presents a live snake behind a glass screen in the courtyard. It has always been considered as a dangerous animal, cruel and wicked, but in this case the artist shows it like something positive and good. In Mythology it represents Esculapio, the god of medicine, and has become from antique times till today, the emblem for medicine, doctors, chemists, and a symbol of health and recovery.
In both case, the artist creates a "Short-circuit". What we know as a sign of care and safety she makes into a hypnotic and disturbing element, while what is usually seen as a danger becomes a sign of wellbeing and positivity."
(Elena Bordignon, curator, 2003)

DENOUEMENT, video in loop, 2004

Life goes on, with our common sounds of traffic and building sites. We build, we construct, we destroy, and we rebuild. It's a never ending back and forward motion of doing and undoing, of hard working and serious life. Meanwhile, my hands knot and unknot a fine chain. Even though this work might recall knitting or needlework, or even saying prayers on a rosary, it is only an appearance as the doing and undoing is endless, like the apparent uselessness of living.

CHIMERES, scuptures, installations, video, 2001

Not objects but light and shadows

Sophie Usunier works on concept contradictions.
Her works hold “contrast” original strength.
It is as they were offering us a glimpse of their very opposite.
Is it a hesitation? No, it is not.
It is just a way to ask and experiment questions.

The works included in this exhibit all represent a contrast between shape and shapeless.
Thus the audience might become part of it through routine or discovery.

Glass monsters become modern exorcists of the fear for the unknown.
Gargoyles’ belligerence together with carillons hypnotic strength become a new Chimera.
The glass harpy is dangling in the air.
Comparing the two we realize the latter seems heavier.
It is a strange creature that has anything to do with the audience’s idea of form and interaction.
Yet inexplicably its own abnormality is intimate and fragile.
We should hide and protect our fears instead of hiding brutalizing them.
I don’t know if this is due to our opinions or to our emotions.
Although I am sure the harpy is something pure, almost crystal clear.
Since it has nothing to hide - no “deviant thoughts” - it may emerge.
Since it has no stated containers, it is unable to contain too.
Its own substance makes it unreal.
This glass monster is the very immaterial element of its corporeity.

Paraffin hands have a specific, familiar shape.
Yet they turn into an apparition, becoming fascinating and beautiful ghosts.
They are inside a small studio, as they could be in a convent cell or inside a mine.
They are static, still aiming to perfectly understand what they will have to do.
Theirs is a prey, but while the mind is struggling the hands get distracted and play with their negative, their own shadow.
Their attention is absorbed in the only action related to their very form.
They outline an unreal space: Shadows on the wall.
Instead of reproducing their strength, they create their double, a game, a monster, a black shadow too; everything but their solidity.
Elements that the pure and elusive hands already hold.
They all can be used up and disappear the very moment they struggle to “brighten up”.
This is true creation, joyful and unforeseeable too.

The plasticine sphere is the most recognizable shape of all.
Yet it becomes a symbol of monstrosity.
Its own substance is impenetrable, and opaque, becoming mere surface.
It is an unforeseeable “being”, we do not know what to expect.
It looks like a solid and real body, but if we touch it we “break” it modifying it too.
It is inorganic but we fear it can spoil though.
It is like men looking for perfection.
Plasticine is hardly worked to turn it into a ball, it aims to perfection.
One can keep on turn it from one side to another, but the focus lens cannot focuses it.
It is both the very apotheosis and paradox of men’s actions from Plato to nowadays.
Men intervene to heal the gap between idea and substance, soul and body aiming to give a real shape to ideas and vice versa.

The sphere is controlled by movement itself.
There is a video of hand working a plasticine sphere, like an obsessive and unprovoked action.
It seems almost care-free, like a child’s action.
The confrontation moves between presence and image.
It finally creates a whirlpool, inducing a state of anxiety, and the silence resulting from overturned proportions too.
The small ball we could keep in our hands it is no longer under our control though.[...]
(Lorenzo Bruni, curator of the exhibition, galery Arte Note Contemporanea, Arezzo, 2001)