October 14-18 2021

SANTA CHIARA, TURIN

ITALY

Marco Cordero, Chora, Turin, Italy. 2022

Marco Cordero - battiscopa (2021) - books / se ascolti bene brilla ancora (2017) - graphite, resin

chora

by Marco Cordero

From October 14 to 18, 2021, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Santa Chiara, Turin

chora, a project sponsored by the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti and realized with the collaboration of the Young Singers of Turin and Carlo Pavese.

Curator of the project: Enrico Zanellati

Critical text by Roberto Mastroianni

With the collaboration of the gallery A Pick

The Young Singers of Turin participating in the inaugural performance on Wednesday, October 13 are:

Chiara Castellani, Lia Cordero, Elisa Franchino, Gabriele Gobbi, Federica Marchese, Virginia Mastromauro, Giulia Rostagno, Alice Palumbo, Luca Pavese, Nicolai Pavese.

Carlo Pavese, director

The show includes

improvised parts

Traditional American Indian, evening rise

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nocturne K438 (Se lontan, ben mio, tu sei)

For many years, Cordero has been studying the forms and limits of human presence in the world through a lateral view that unites sculpture, material research and the symbolic dimension in an innovative and original perspective that uses the medium of knowledge and culture as a material of expression and as the content of artistic devices. From this point of view, the book, understood as a material support and symbol of human knowledge, becomes an object of intervention on which the traces of the human presence in the world are sedimented. Books are assembled, burned, excavated and sculpted by the artist's hand to give form to sculpture-installations that become stratified semiotic devices, capable of representing human actions in an iconic way in relation to space and, at the same time, an allusion to that encyclopedic content that tends to coincide with human cultures themselves.

If metaphorically the paper support becomes sculptural material, in order to highlight the traces of human action and the sedimentation of social and anthropological interpretations that appropriate causality to transform it into reality, the cultural content of the books becomes an allusion to a symbolic universe capable of holding together form and becoming, idea and matter, flow and structure.

In the past, we have seen Cordero's works stage portions of reality through the excavation of single volumes or the accumulation of installations, while today we can witness an ambitious project that brings together a large-scale installation and a performative action, aiming to unite scriptural and vocal dimensions in an attempt to give form to a metaphysical space that the philosophical tradition has designated as "Chōra."

Plato is the first to fully thematize the Chōra (Χώρα) in the Timaeus. From this text onward, the term will take on particular importance in the history of philosophical thought, especially with regard to the themes of understanding the human subject, the limits of language and rationality, and the inaccessibility of everything, to the use that has been made of it in twentieth century philosophy by Heidegger, Derrida and Kristeva, becoming a fertile stimulus for theological and religious reflection, for the theory of architecture and geography and for gender studies (the feminist debate, in particular). For Plato, the Chora is a third type of reality, complex and indefinable, pre-existing the creation of the world and admitting no corruption. This passive and at the same time welcoming dimension, which provides space for whatever is to be generated, is described by the Greek philosopher through images and metaphors such as receptacle, matrix, space, nurturer...

What is the Chōra? Plato, in the cosmogony of the Timaeus, describes a universe composed of two "species": the intelligible and the sensible, ideas and matter, but he realizes that there is a lack: the element of union, of connection. What constitutes, in fact, the ontological link between the two kinds, what holds together and, at the same time, separates the two dimensions, what is the border between them? These are not only theoretical questions, but also questions inherent in other areas of human theory and practice: in an architectural project, for example, what is the boundary between design and construction, or in human expression, what is the boundary between presence, action, ideality, or between writing and vocality? All of these questions delineate an open space between the opposites of which reality is constituted, in which humanity and reality are dynamically placed in a continuous dialectic between flow and structure.

From this perspective, then, the Chōra is presented as the "invisible and formless receptacle ... of the whole of becoming" (Ti. 49a, 52b). An entity that does not belong to either species, and is therefore described primarily in the negative, as "intermediate" between sensible matter and intelligible ideas - hence the definition of the third kind. Chōra is the place, the space of creation, which is traversed by everything: a spurious entity, which of the sensible sphere, of corruptible matter, certainly has the indeterminate, hence mutable, character; and of the intelligible sphere, of incorruptible ideas, on the contrary has the necessary character, in that it is itself postulated by necessity. This term thus becomes a way of expressing the "contradictory and elusive character of human reality". This term thus becomes a way of expressing the "contradictory and elusive character of human reality," which takes on a relevant interest in contemporary philosophy and theology, by opening "to contemporary man an empty and impassable space for the tragic in history, which does not explain it, but welcomes it, [...] announces the practical gratuity of welcoming it." Thus, "Chōra does not pose a radical critique of the metaphysical question, but rather of its totalizing claim," thematizing the dimension of possibility and becoming in relation to the human presence and condition in the world.

In short, this indefinite and metaphysical spatiality takes on the value of a "matrix" of reality, becoming capable of welcoming within itself all the phenomena and particular elements, inserting them in a universal dynamic that governs the very formation of reality and of the human being.

Marco Cordero, moved by a "Platonic" intuition, decided to explore this indefinite space, questioning the value of the symbolic matrix that allows the creation of an anthropic space in which the status and dignity of man are linked to the cultural tradition and the singularity of the human person.

Thus, after being hosted at the Monde Verità in Ascona, this sculptural-installative and sound performance finds its place in the baroque spaces of Bernardo Vittone's Santa Chiara, offering an aesthetic reflection on the spiritual and ontological dimension of the formation of the human being. Originally conceived as a conventual church of the Order of Poor Clares, this octagonal church appears as a building of limited dimensions, as it was designed to accommodate only the small community of the convent and not an entire parish community. The original dimension of recollection and meditation thus becomes preparatory to the reception of an esplanade of books covering the floor, in which is sculpted the silhouette of a person reading. This sketch of a reclining figure, who in getting up has left her negative and taken with her all that she has "read" and which has been in a way her "bed", in its double meaning of : "bed" as a bed, as a space that welcomed her and as a set of "words read" that constitute today, in a way, her cultural and spiritual identity, represents an indelible trace of human presence in the world alluding to a singular and plural dimension of humanity in its socio-historical becoming. The silhouette, animated by a cantor/performer, who rises after producing a vocalization that triggers the music sung by the Young Singers located in the loggias of the church, energizes an iconic representation that would be static in itself, proposing itself as a metaphor of human praxis in relation to that metaphysical and hybrid space that serves as a matrix of reality: the Chōra.

Writing and the traces of existence thus become spoken and sung words, in a dimension of improvisation capable of restoring the specific characteristic of existence itself, namely "possibility." It is Heidegger who taught us that existence coincides with transcendence when, in Being and Time, he reminded us that existence (from the late Latin ex-sistere, stare/to be stable) is linked to transcendence (from the Latin trans -ascendere, to go beyond), in the sense that existence is always linked to a dimension of going beyond that opens to possibility and therefore to freedom. In this perspective, Cordero's work becomes an iconic metaphor of the human condition, which is situated in a present immersed in a cultural heritage from which it is able to rise in the direction of the future and the possible, through a gesture of freedom that brings the human into the dimension of possibility. All of this is possible through the creation of a representation of that metaphysical space that represents the matrix of the singular and the plural, the concrete and the ideal, the physical and the spiritual, through which the becoming and the permanent find accord: the Chōra. We thus witness an experimentation with materials that becomes spiritual research and philosophical reflection, thematizing the written word and its medium in relation to the history of culture and the dimension of human practice that becomes invigorating in the use of the voice, in order to restore the complexity of the human and its forms.

View of Marco Cordero's solo show "Chora"