LUIGI COPPOLA

ENACTING POPULISM

2012-01-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

February 18 - April 22, 2012
Press conference: Thursday February 16 at 11h at Kadist Art Foundation
Opening reception: Friday, February 17 from 6 to 9 pm.

Alterazioni Video, Heman Chong, Luigi Coppola, Danilo Correale, Foundland, Nicoline van Harskamp, Steve Lambert, Oliver Ressler, Anna Scalfi Eghenter, Société Réaliste, Jonas Staal, Superflex.

A project curated by Matteo Lucchetti

Kadist Art Foundation is pleased to present Enacting Populism in its mediaescape, an exhibition curated by Matteo Lucchetti, following his residency at the Foundation.
Enacting Populism is an on-going project on the possible relationships between art practices and the populist mediascape that connotes the current political zeitgeist of Europe. At Kadist Art Foundation this project will develop into an exhibition that will take place during the last two months of the presidential elections campaign in France. The space here is interpreted as a sui generis political bureau, immersing the exhibition in an ambivalent environment where the works can be seen as elements belonging to a political party office where a campaign is being prepared.

The show is focusing on the European populism that has heavily influenced the public imagery on politics for the last twenty years. Its leaders and agitators understood at an early stage the shift that occurred both in portraying the figure of the politician and in the role of the political discourse in the mediascape. In fact, when political ideologies ceased to give shape to the political agendas, with the end of the Cold War, the Western parties started to progressively mirror this ending with the flattening of their positions in the public debate, starting to respond only to a general capitalism discourse about a global market that needed to find its way. From that point the political action softened the natural antagonism of democracy, thus creating a lack of opposite and distinct political projects. This situation left space for a popular frustration to arise and consequently demagogues articulated it. Therefore those who understood how the space of politics worked slowly moved from being representative to openly playing with its representation in the media.

EVENTO 2011: art pour une ré-évolution urbaine

2011-08-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

Urban art biennale in Bordeaux

Artistic Direction: Michelangelo Pistoletto and Cittadellarte

Joint Artistic Director: Luigi Coppola

www.evento2011.com

This second edition of EVENTO is centred on the participation of all kinds of public and the implication of artists that will activate collective creations. Approximately 250 organisms (non-profit organisations, local institutions, schools, etc.) are part of the different projects of the event.

Whether it be the strong mobilisation of music enthusiasts for the Sound Res with the active participation of the Conservatoire de Bordeaux Jacques Thibaud, but also the contribution of graphic designers and illustrators for arc en rêve and STEALTH.unlimited‘s project at the Abattoirs, EVENTO 2011is an event of contemporary creation that calls upon international artists as well as the creative abundance of the territory.

The Sites, real laboratories of open and shared artistic creation, are strong examples of this local implication. More than 60 non-profit organisations are participating, alongside the Halle des Douves association, in the project of Dutch artist Jeanne Van Heeswijk p, to offer a daily programme from 6 to 16 October, from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m.
The Evolving Theatre on Place André Meunier also calls upon the collaboration of structures and inhabitants of the neighbourhood, through all kinds of workshops set up from September.
The Central Parc project is mobilising many structures of the Grand Parc neighbourhood, whether it be the social and cultural centre, the animation centre, the Library, but also several associations. The latter were able to present their citizen approach at the stop of the mobile site at Grand Parc on 2 July. The mobile unit, which has been travelling across the territory ever since, offers to anyone interested in talking about his/her individual or collective approach of solidarity, the possibility to answer the Wanted ad that has been broadcast since June.

COMMUNITY ART The Politics of Trespassing

2011-07-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

Valiz/Antennae Series

Edited by Paul De Bruyne, Pascal Gielen.

Italian philosopher Antonio Negri has declared that “Every kind of change belongs to a form of community art,” inverting the convention that community art can be an integral component of social change and extending the rubric of art to propose a commons of all those striving to effect change in social, economic, technological and ecological arenas. So how do these endeavors influence and act upon one another? In Community Art, artists and theorists Tilde Björfors, Bertus Borgers, Paul De Bruyne, Changchengh, Luigi Coppola, An De bisschop, Miguel Escobar Varela, Jan Fabre, Alison M. Friedman, Pascal Gielen, Sonja Lavaert, Carol Martin, Antonio Negri, Alida Neslo, Tessa Overbeek, Lionel Popkin, Richard Schechner, Hein Schoer, Ricky Seabra, Jonas Staal, Klaas Tindemans, Luk van den Dries, Quirijn Lennert van den Hoogen, Hans van Maanen, Bart Van Nuffelen and Karel Vanhaesebrouck explore the practices of artistic and social movements in western and non-western societies.

BUILD YOUR LEADER

2011-04-21T08:16:00.000-07:00

performance

Grote Markt Antwerpen - 30 april 2011

VIDEO OF THE PROJECT

a project by Luigi Coppola

realized in the frame of Enacting Populism curated by Matteo Lucchetti

with Luigi Coppola, Sven Goyvaerts, Margareth Kaserer, Matteo Lucchetti, Esther Severi

images and editing by Claudio Cavallari

produced in the context of the residency in Air Antwerp

with the support of a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies)

Antwerp 2011

ENACTING POPULISM

2011-02-20T14:27:00.000-08:00

AIR Antwerp / residency jan- may 2011
An ongoing research on the possible relationships between art practices and populist aesthetics

Curated by Matteo Lucchetti
with Francisco Camacho, Luigi Coppola, Danilo Correale
in collaboration with Extra City, Antwerpen

Enacting Populism blog

NEUTRAL ECOLOGICAL BODY # SEOUL

2011-02-20T10:27:00.000-08:00

performance as part of the exhibition "Rich Disorganization"
Seoul Art Space Geumcheon - august 2010

I wear a screaming mask, in order to give voice to several philosophers, intellectuals and activists who have or have had a clear vision on the crisis of the current system and give us visions about the future.

Partecipants in the conference (through a temporary passage from my body)
Vandana Shiva (1952 India, philosopher, environmental activist)
Slavoj Žižek (1942 Slovenia, philosopher, critical theorist)
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975 Italy, poet, intellectual, film director, writer)
Joseph Beuys (1921-1986 Germany, artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art)
Doal Kim Yong-ok (1948 South Korea, philosopher)
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948 India, political and spiritual leader)
I will do my best to translate and expand their message.

RICH DISORGANIZATION

2010-08-22T07:29:00.000-07:00

Seoul Art Space GEUMCHEON
performance and exhibition august - september 2010
photo: Luigi Coppola "Neutral Ecological Body #Seoul, 2010

Participating Artists:
김명남 Kim Myoung-Nam, 김지수 Gisoo Kim, 노재운 Rho Jae-oon, 루이지 코폴라 Luigi Coppola (Italy), 극연구소 마찰 The Pure Theatre Laboratory Machal, 무빙밀머리(박찬국) Moving Milmeory, 박능생 Park Nung-Saeng, 수퍼피쉬스! SUPERFISHES! (Korea+Israel), 스튜디오 우하하 Studio Woohaha, 윤주희 Youn Ju-hee, 이기일 Lee Kiil, 이수영+리금홍 Lee Soo-young + Lee Geum-hong, 이세옥+최수환 Rhee Sei+Che Swann, 이호진 Lee Ho-jin, 인진미 In Jin-mi, 장석준 Jang Suk-joon, 정정주 Jeong Eeong-ju, 조습 JoSeub, 제프 슈무키 Jeff Schmuki(America), 천영미 Chun Young-mi

The exhibition highlights ways of interpreting the space of Geumcheon.
Twenty first-term artists from four countries stayed in the Seoul Art Space Geumcheon for two months to one year. The exhibition’s theme Rich Disorganization was proposed to metaphorically present the artists’
new dreams, their individuality, diverse perspectives, and the possibilities of a newly evolving city from viewpoints different from thoseof administrators and local residents. These strangers who enjoy traveling alone, leaving their home voluntarily, and moving to new places anonymously shed light on Geumcheon from the perspectives of
collectors, urban scholars, and detectives.
Their gaze on this region appears inconsistent yet poetic with the intersection of various voices. Moreover, the scenes these artists rendered are mere manifestations of their individual concerns for life here,but have nothing to do with regional issues such as the reality of migrant workers residing here, and reckless development of this area mixed with industrial and residential facilities.
However, individual scenes resident artists rendered acquire meaning of its presence through structuralized, symbolized representations as cultural images, and the memories, reflected by this region’s artifacts and images they collected, are not individual but collective. Can the artists’ aesthetic attempts to add new identity to this declining area save its concealed, forgotten moments of the past?

GUARANTEES ON THE CONTINUITY OF THE SPECIES

2010-06-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

Performance by Luigi Coppola
(30') 2010, Bressanone - Brixen (BZ) - ITA
with the young people of the On- Stage School of Arts, Bozen

photo: Andreas Marini

ARTS IN SOCIETY. BEING AN ARTIST IN POSTFORDISM TIME

2010-04-12T03:47:00.000-07:00

In his contribution to this publication the Italian philosopher Paolo Virno argues that art has been dissolved in society like an effervescent tablet in water. The arts have become an essential component of the post-Fordist production process and have to a large degree lost their autonomy. Taking up the challenge of the views of Virno, Hardt and others concerning the place and function of art in society, this book’s authors consult high-profile international figures from various artistic disciplines and endeavour to gain insight into the changing circumstances in which today’s creative processes arise and take shape.

The ways in which the world of art has evolved in recent decades is traced in discussions with, among others, the visual artists Michelangelo Pistoletto and Thierry De Cordier, choreographers Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Sang Jijia and Willy Tsao, theatre director Pippo Delbono and pop musician Matthew Herbert.

Arts in Society sketches a provocative impression of the manner in which prominent artists, theorists and art intermediaries relate to economic, political, social and ecological issues. It presents an instructive narrative about power and impotence, cynicism and utopia, and nihilism and engagement aimed at all those who presently dare to call themselves artists and everyone who wants to understand and defend the importance of the role of the arts in society.

In association with the Research Group Arts in Society, Fontys College for the Arts

Pascal Gielen and Paul De Bruyne (eds.), NAi-Publishers: Rotterdam, 2009.

With texts by Luigi Coppola, Marie-Josée Corsten, Michael Hardt, Gert Keunen, Rudi Laermans, Sonja Lavaert, Karel Vanhaesebrouck

http://www.naipublishers.nl/art/arts_in_society_e.html

ANNO UNO - TERZO PARADISO

2009-12-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

Performance, Teatro Regio Torino, 6 nov 2009

by Michelangelo Pistoletto

curated by Luigi Coppola

with the people of Corniglia and Cittadellarte

realized for Artissima Teatro, Blinding the ears curated by Andrea Bellini

Mama by Gianna Nannini, chorus orchestration by Riccardo Ruggeri, inspired by the work Third Paradise / Mama by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gianna Nannini

Photo: Enrico Amici

ATTI DEMOCRATICI / DEMOCRATIC ACTS

2009-10-12T11:20:00.001-07:00

After stops at the Democracy Biennial in Turin and the Festival Fabbrica Europa in Florence, from 15th to 30th October 2009 Lungomare and LOSS will present the third edition of the Atti Democratici project in Bolzano. The project will unfold in a series of performances, workshops, screenings, urban interventions, meetings and lectures, and a free press journal on the basic principles of the Italian Constitution.

16 – 30 October 2009 Ex Magazzini doganali – Stazione di Bozen-Bolzano, via Renon

curated by Angelika Burtscher, Luigi Coppola, Daniele Lupo, Judith Wielander

with: Lauren Alexander (designer, South Africa), Marco Angelucci (journalist, Bolzano), Franco Arminio (writer/townologist, Irpinia), Ei Arakawa & Nikolas Gambaroff (performer, New York), Carlo Bachschmidt (Genoa Social Forum), Brave New Alps (Designer, London), Tania Bruguera (performer, Cuba), Yael Davids (performer, Israel), Cornelia Durka (designer, Berlin), Ghalia Elsrakbi (designer, Damascus/Amsterdam), Jack Henrie Fisher & Popahna Brandes (designer/writer, Brussels), Shilpa Gupta (performer, Mumbai), Thomas Kager (political scientist, Bolzano), Merijn Oudenampsen (sociologist, Amsterdam), Cesare Pietroiusti (artist, Rom), Andrea Segre (director, Rom), Maria Rosa Sossai (curator, Roma), Ziga Testen (designer, Ljubljana), Daniel van der Velden (designer, Amsterdam).

http://www.attidemocratici.org/

BREATHE IN BREATHE OUT

2009-06-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

Performance with Yingmei Duan
(40') 2009
Cavallerizza Reale, 1st Democracy Biennale Torino; Fabbrica Europa Firenze
Photo: Christian Fusco

"Breathe In Breathe Out" is the third collaborative performance project between Luigi Coppola and Yingmei Duan.
The stage is installed with a large pulley system of ropes. The ropes connect the audience to different objects: a microphone, a book of the law, a bucket of water, a chair, a table, a knife, and some rubbish bags. These ropes also hold the artists, and the audience can interact with these ropes and pull the performers and the objects as they wish. It is almost as if they have a remote control to command the performance.
One cage with a living white rabbit is free among the other tied objects. On the stage there is also a stopwatch on stage timing the performance.
Within the pulley system/spider web the artists represent symbols of moral, social, religious constriction and denial of freedom, in which the audience has an active role and a possibility to move and transform the performance.

ATTI DEMOCRATICI / DEMOCRATIC ACTS

2009-05-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

Ricerca applicata sul rapporto tra arte e democrazia sviluppata da un network di artisti, curatori e teorici
Applied research on the relation between art and democracy developed by a network of artists, curators and theoriticians.

curata da / curated by Luigi Coppola and Marko Stamenkovic

24 - 25 april 2009 BIENNALE DEMOCRAZIA
05 - 23 may 2009 FESTIVAL FABBRICA EUROPA /

contributi artistici / artistic contributions
Angelika Burtscher & Daniele Lupo / Luigi Coppola / Yingmei Duan / Dariusz Fodczuk / Carlos Motta / Michelangelo Pistoletto / Juan Esteban Sandoval
contributi video film / video film contributions
Unmasked curato da Elise Youn and Carlos Motta, prod. New Museum di New York
Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler / Petra Bauer / François Bucher / Mary Billyou / Paul Chan / Jim Fetterley /Annelisse Fifi / Jim Finn / Ashley Hunt / Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen/ Lin + Lam / John Menick / Jenny Perlin / Dmitry Vilensky / Angie Waller / Susan Youssef
contributi teorici / theoretical contributions
Angelika Burtscher & Daniele Lupo / Branko Brezovec / Cesar Brie / Luigi Coppola /Yingmei Duan / Dariusz Fodczuk / Benoît Lachambre / Esteban Mihalik / Andrés Morte /
Carlos Motta / Andrés Neumann / Michelangelo Pistoletto / Juan Esteban Sandoval /Patricia Rivadeneira / Marko Stamenkovic / Marco Valerio Amico / Elvira Vannini
progetto sostenuto da / project in collaboration with
Prima Biennale Democrazia Torino / Fabbrica Europa Firenze /Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto / Casa della Creatività di Firenze /
Sistema Teatro Torino / Ambasciata di Colombia in Italia / Lungomare Bolzano.

AS WE WANT YOU

2009-02-12T06:39:00.001-08:00

Performance with Yingmei Duan
(30') University of Applied Sciences Nijmegen, The Netherland, 2009
Photo: Rob GielingThe performance is a collaboration between Yingmei Duan and Luigi Coppola on the occasion of the festival “Beauty, Ugliness and the Sublime”. Their performance relates directly to this premise of the festival.
The performance is held in a space in which the walls are covered in mirrors. The audience sits in two rows. The two performers stand at different sides of the space, rather than looking at each other directly, they look at the reflections of their body in the mirrors. Slowly they begin to move towards each other and meet in the middle of the room.
Coppola starts to undress Duan. He concentrates his attention to her and actively tries to change and move her body according to his own wishes. He also encourages the audience to observe and touch her while she remains passive. This gesture gives the impression he wants the audience to support his idea of beauty.
Whilst this is happening Duan appears hesitant. Her face looks confused and full of questions. She occasionally smells Coppola and various people from the audience that approach her.

GHOST AND I

2008-11-25T02:56:00.000-08:00

Performance with Yingmei Duan
(30') Lungomare Gallery Bolzano, Italy - 2008
showed in partecipanti, connessi e in-dipendenti, Parallel Events Manifesta 7
photo: Ivo Corrà
The attention is focused on the crisis of European culture and the schematic construction of new social models. It would be a continuous and futile attempt to define new scenarios of social relationships, based on the consolidated culture of the Old Continent. The ghost is the advancing of the indefinite, incarnated by cultures that we can hear are coming, but are not able to identify. It forces them to join in the game and seek in desperation for new models of social order.
Through the construction of simple and direct performative actions, the artistic duo, composed of the Chinese artist Yingmei Duan and the Italian Luigi Coppola, work on activation, shaking-up relational mechanisms that criticise passivity and encourage taking the stance of a conscious and direct social actor. The duo also work on distances, fears, and the political and cultural divides that separate European culture from that of Asia.

PARTECIPANTI, CONNESSI E IN-DIPENDENTI

2008-09-17T02:47:00.001-07:00

THREE DAYS OF PERFORMANCE AND PRESENTATIONS 11., 12., 13. 09. 2008
partecipanti, connessi e in-dipendenti a project by Lungomare & Luigi Coppola Parallel Events Manifesta 7
with Ana Borraho & João Galante (Portogallo), Yingmei Duan (Cina/Germania), Luigi Coppola & Loss (Italia)

photo: Lü Nan, performance To add one meter to an anonymous mountain
The performance weekend at the Lungomare Gallery proposes territories of observation and analysis of the contemporary performing language. “Participants, connected and in-dependent” presents performances which have the shared interest in working on the "aesthetics of relations" and on audience participation, at times subtle and ironic, at times explicit and provocative.

AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN

2008-09-01T06:18:00.000-07:00

Action in public space /video by Luigi Coppola
realized in the context of the project: Untitled Portrait in collaboration with Isak Immanuel and Yuko Kaseki.
Shinjuku subway station, Tokyo, 2008

AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN from Luigi Coppola on Vimeo.

ACTS OF ORDINARY DEMOCRATIC EXERCISE

2008-08-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

ACT N. 3 CITTADELLARTE, UNIDEE PROGRAMME 2008
WORKSHOP / PERFORMANCE Luigi Coppola & LOSS

The System accept the principle of majority.
The Members accept the rules decided for the functioning of the System and Symbols of Connection chosen for the representation of the community.
Through the election all the members have the possibility to become Delegate.
The election is coming out through an explicit vote.
All the mechanism is visible and transparent:
rules, condition of becoming part at the System, nomenclature, proposals made by the Members, outcomes of the votes, performance modality, consequences of transgressions concerning rules.

ACTS OF ORDINARY DEMOCRATIC EXERCISE

2008-07-24T02:45:00.000-07:00

ACT n. 2 Prato - Fabbrica Europa Festival, 2008

PERFORMANCE Luigi Coppola & LOSS (40')

The project is a succession of artistic, political and sociological experiments in which the process as well as the mechanism of the Democratic Creation System, is clearly exposed.
Each community to reach the definition of a Democratic Creation System choose the System Rules.

ACTS OF ORDINARY DEMOCRATIC EXERCISE

2008-07-24T02:28:00.000-07:00

ACT n. 1 Torino
PERFORMANCE Luigi Coppola & LOSS (40') 2008

DEMOCRATIC ACTS are experiments of creation in a system defined by rules and symbols stipulated by a community through a democratic process.
DEMOCRATIC ACT intended as a Exposed Primitive Democracy: each community defining their System, elect a Delegate with the potential of creating actions, relations, images through the body of the Represented in the space.

TO (untitled portrait and ocean)

2008-06-24T02:53:00.000-07:00

Performance with Yuko Kaseki Isak Immanuel
With musical contributions from Kanoko Nishi, Theresa Wong, and Zachary Watkins
Farmlab, Los Angeles
New Langton Arts, San Francisco
june 2008

To (untitled portrait and ocean) is a meeting of performance art installation, videologue, and intimate dance theatre remapping anomie, travel, and the gravity of location. The work is pieced together by an international collaboration of artists from three different countries: Luigi Coppola, Yuko Kaseki (Japanese Butoh dancer and physical theatre artist based in Berlin working with cokaseki and inkBoat), and Isak Immanuel (interdisciplinary performance and visual artist and founder of the Floor of Sky series in San Francisco). With amplified bicycle/sound sculpture and musical contributions from Theresa Wong, Kanoko Nishi, Zachary Watkins, and Maruta/Phnonpenh MODEL.

As an ongoing site/city specific work, "To" creates a series of theatrical tableaux taking apart and re-piecing the quotidian, bizarre, and fragile ways in which people meet, miss, mirror, glimpse, erase, and trace one another. Following the dynamics and deviations of a fugue (in terms of the musical, psychological, and linguistic paths) the work is created from a multiple voice perspective. Just as the word fugue is traced back to the Latin “fuga” (flight, running away; especially: flight from one’s country, exile, banishment; escape; or to flee), the artists each develop a line framed in the real and imagined cityscapes of uproot. This layered motion is framed by an international dialogue highlighting the social opacities, mental baggage, and overall weight, wonder, and often desired amnesia of travel. The work rests in discursive space, questions of return and the personal carrier space of one’s everyday life that can fall open when parallel lives collide.

ACTS OF ORDINARY DEMOCRATIC EXERCISE, n. 1 Torino

2008-05-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

UNTITLED PORTRAIT (bright transit)

2008-01-15T02:34:00.000-08:00

PERFORMANCE FOR VIDEO Taipei - Taiwan, 2007.
Project by: Luigi Coppola, Isak Immanuel, Yuko Kaseki. Realized during the artistic residency at the Taipei Artist Village, Taiwan.

The video is part of the project Untitled Portrait an international collaboration between three performing artists from four different countries re-questioning a sense of anomie and the state of the outsider amidst travel, the city, and the non places.
The subtitle (Mario Rossi, John Doe, Erika Mustermann/Nanashi-Gonbee) is comprised of the names for unknown or unspecified persons in Italy, The United States, and Germany/Japan - the countries of the artists own nationality and domicile.
photos: still video of the Taipei project by Luigi Coppola, Isak Immanuel, Yuko Kaseki

UNTITLED PORTRAIT - Taipei -

2008-01-01T08:30:00.000-08:00

Performance with Isak Immanuel, Yuko Kaseki.
Taipei Artist Village, Beiping St cross streets, (Taiwan) 2007

DON'T GO TOO FAR

2007-12-12T20:55:00.001-08:00

PERFORMANCE -
Hualien Cultural Centre - Taiwan (30')-2007
“Don’t go too far” is an advice for caution. Don’t take risks. Don’t choose an unknown course. “Don’t go too far” is an attempt to restrain.
The performance is an act of resistency of this concept.
The Taiwanese artist Chou Meng Yeh collaborated in the performance with live written text on site.
Photos: Chang shu-man

DON'T GO TOO FAR

2007-12-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

VIDEO OF THE PERFORMANCE

I'M HERE FOR YOU

2007-10-12T07:39:00.000-07:00

PUBLICATION, 2006

realized by Luigi Coppola, Christian Fusco. Still video: Claudio Cavallari, Ruth Sergel

in: errors deceits mistakes n°1, Costractedworld, edited by cneai= France, 2006. Contributors included: Oreet Ashery, Jen Budney, Jota Castro, c.cred | collective creative dissent, Garry Gray, Institute for Modern Architecture,LOSS, Rodrigo Mallea Lire, Elizabeth Newman, Ylva Ogland, Camilla Pignatti, Lisa Radford, Kati Rule,Sislej Xhafa.

SOMETHING IS CHANGING

2006-08-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

PERFORMANCE FOR VIDEO (5'35'')

directed by Claudio Calvallari, Luigi Coppola

Torino winter olimpic games. Prod. Loss 2006