Luoghi      (2023~

Work in progress

 

The original idea  came  in 2017  from a phrase from the film Nostalghia by Andrei Tarkovski (1980):

"Where am I when I am not dwelling in reality or in my imagination?"

The line is pronounced at Piazza del Campidoglio square, in Roma, by a friend of Andrei –the protagonist, named Domenico, a psychiatric patient who ends up immolating himself publicly .

Although Tarkovski himself claimed that the film wanted to reflect "the union with national roots, past and native places, family and friends ... a union that will accompany you no matter where your destiny takes you" It draws our attention how in the character of Domenico – as well as throughout Tarkovski's oeuvre–     Tarkovski resorts to that which is not expressible, that which could only be pointed out by means of alienation –or that which escapes  explanation, using formal resources which disorganize the narrative to prevent any  linking to a space or time , for it belongs to a non-real world. That non-real world  Tarkovski points at is in the mind of every observer, but it is different in each one.
The real space to which Tarkovski, or any other relevant  work of art will always refer to is the human mind, that belonging only to each person; The only realm we may  really consider universal and particular at the same time.

It is right there where the true value of an artistic work may reside: although it arises from a person in an specific environment and even reflects it, it lives into the actual  separation of the viewer's imagination from a concrete space-time position, that which  conforms the true essence of  human beings and also  of a particular human being, both at the same time. That is the world  one contemplates in any artistic work which points  beyond the contingent and - as  Tarkovski put it - "is  free from vulgar symbolism"  to aspire to that which  is commonly called transcendent.

It is therefore paradoxical that the most effective and powerful way of projecting any concrete cultural value  is realized precisely through elements which reside in spaces of the human mind, in those that are unique to each individual.
 
Hence this  new piece of Locus LRM Performance aims at that intangible element, that which is personal to each observer  but   is rooted  in our common history as a species.

David Aladro-Vico / Berta Delgado