The nights of Tino of Baghdad in Milan
ConiglioViola: The Nights of Tino from Baghdad
Studio Museo Francesco Messina, Milan
and other ten sites in Milan
8 March – 1 April 2017
OPENING: Wednesday, 8 March 2017, from 6:00 p.m.
Curation by Kaninchen-Haus
Inspired by Else Lasker-Schüler’s orientalising tales, this augmented reality film project transforms the city in a diffused cinema.
The Nights of Tino from Baghdad, ConiglioViola’s new transmedia project, combines public art, experimental cinematography post-production, breakthrough technology such as augmented reality, and traditional art forms and techniques, including copper engraving and shadow theatre.
Eight years after their exhibition at the PAC, the artist duo formed by Brice Coniglio and Andrea Raviola will be back to Milan, in the Studio Museo Francesco Messina and further ten city sites, from 8 March to 1 April 2017. With their new project, ConiglioViola are going to transform the urban space in a ‘diffused cinema’ engaging the audience in a kind of treasure hunt designed to enable us to rearrange the episodes of narrative.
The starting point is a literary work, Else Lasker-Schüler’s Die Nächte der Tino von Bagdad (1907). That collection of Expressionist, orientalising tales by the German woman poet virtually is a kaleidoscope of contrasting features – a fascination with exoticism and enthrallment to urban life, the author’s strong connection to her Jewish roots and her interest in the avant-gardes, pictorial research and literary mannerism, childhood games and eroticism. The protagonist of the tales is Tino, princess-poetess from Arabia, who has to give her life to make poetry immortal.
Exploiting the open structural model of Lasker-Schüler’s literary work, ConiglioViola has given breath of life to twenty-six episodes, each of which has been represented by conjoining a copper engraving and film shoot through augmented reality technology as a means for interpretation and fruition.
ConiglioViola’s visions are set in small light boxes, framed Arabic-style windows made of concrete. After having installed the Tino free application, the viewer pointing their smartphone at these ‘scene sets’ will be able to see on display ConiglioViola’s animated figures and motions. These were realised by filming dance and puppet theatre performances, and editing video clips with digital animation techniques.
ConiglioViola’s light boxes will be displayed at the ground floor of the main exhibition venue, which was a baroque church before being turned into a museum, whose spaces are being transformed by the duo’s creativity. Also to be exhibited there is Tino und Apollides, ConiglioViola’s great diptych after a famous scene from Il fiore delle mille e una notte by Pier Paolo Pasolini. A short motion picture by the artist duo will be projected on the museum’s glass wall.
The works and artefacts made by ConiglioViola within the framework of this complex art project will be shown in the crypt. More particularly, it will be possible to see preparatory drawings, copper engravings, photographs, masks (worn by the performers being filmed). Finally, there will be a projection of the documentary presenting The Nights of Tino from Baghdad.
ConiglioViola’s show will not be confined in the Studio Museo Francesco Messina, but will also take place in further ten sites in Milan, each of which will feature a different episode of Tino’s story. To rearrange the sequence of its episodes, the audience will have to move through the exhibition path, from the Studio Museo Francesco Messina to the other sites in Milan, all shown in the map available at www.tino.coniglioviola.com.
Such a journey can start at any of these locations, where the wandering spectators are invited to engage in the creative process as they are, once back home, they can rearrange the episodes of Tino’s story and share their views. The audience thus becomes a co-author applying the theories of Combinatory Literature into urban spaces and multiplying narrative.
This project has been produced by Kaninchen-Haus with support from Fondazione Cariplo, and in collaboration with c/o careof and Montoro12 (Rome).
The Nights of Tino from Baghdad presented by ConiglioViola:
#TinoBagdad