Christian Niccoli interviewed by Eleonora Charans
(Eleonora Charans is an art critic and Ph.D candidate in Theories and History
of Arts at the School of Advanced Studies in Venice), published in Whitehot
Magazine on Contemporary Art, July 2010
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I met Christian during a research session at Pistoletto's archive in Biella.
I was writing my thesis when he was chosen for a residence program there;
he joined least a dozen people from all over the world. It was summertime,
the perfect time to have fun even if Biella doesn't have the seaside. We all
went around, we ate a pizza and Christian and I had interesting conversations.
Recently, he sent me some information about his new video projection, so I
decided to make him talk about his work.
Eleonora Charans: I would love to conduct this interview
through two different aspects, different sides of the same coin: themes and
(their) practical realizations. With this in mind, here is my first question
for you: perception and video - why do you chose to use this media in particular?
Christian Niccoli: I started working on this media by
chance. At the beginning of my studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence
I was sure I wanted to be a painter. I spent the entire first year doing painting
exercises without expressing myself at all. Some of my colleagues were such
naturally talented painters and I noticed I wasn't. My feeling was that they
were ages ahead. I was invited to show a piece at one of those shows organized
by the academy and I presented a video installation. In this work I expressed
all the accumulated thoughts of an entire year. I was surprised how close
the medium was to my imagination and my way of thinking in images, so I kept
on working in this medium and developing my filmic language. The years I spent
in Florence were somehow essential for me, because the academy there was very
conservative at that time and I almost didn't have any strong influence from
other media or video artists, I just worked as it seemed meaningful to me.
Charans: So one could say that everything began with a limit
of expression which is, at the same time, a limit of italian formation so
often strongly linked to "tradition". It seems that video procedures
helped you to skip this restrictions. Could you describe, for those not familiar
with, your first work and the last one? Do you see any link or shift between
them?
Niccoli: The first video work I did was the previously
mentioned installation composed by a video showing the point of view of myself
walking always around the same block in Florence. The video doesn't show my
body but, through the motion of the image one understands that it's a person's
walk. This video is displayed in a small wooden cabin in which the visitor
can hear my voice repeating always the same self-reflecting sentence. In fact
this was a piece about my own condition of lostness. I described this condition
through a commonly known situation: walking without a goal while having a
non-stop and ever-repeating thought flow. In my latest work, the video installation
Roller-skating, I talk about the condition of responsibility and illness in
a context (Berlin) in which everybody is “friends” but it seems
that nobody wants to take responsibility for others. This condition is translated
in film through a group of four roller-skaters moving on a dark stage. Each
of them is confronted with keeping stable on his own legs and being better
and more virtuous than others. At the same time everyone has to carry his
own bigger or smaller weight. Thematically, I don't think my work has really
changed. In both my artistic and in my private life, my interest is investigating
human beings and their needs. My works became more precise and technically
sophisticated but at the end they are an ongoing analysis of myself and my
surroundings.
Charans: Your videos very often need a complex installation
system characterized by multi-projections. What about your difficulties with
confronting the space, especially when shifting from a private gallery to
a public one, or from a solo show to a group show?
Niccoli: Most of my video installations have two presentation
options. My editor and I edit a festival copy and an exhibition version that's
often multichannel. The multi-channel per se is not something I am particularly
interested in, there are ideas that work better when related with a space
and become (multi-channel) installations. Others need "only" a TV
and are effective that way too. My main purpose is to present the work in
the best way, which means that often, when there are either technical nor
spacial capacities, a simple but effective projection makes more sense than
installing a multichannel work conceived for a museum space. This is something
I decide when I see the exhibition space.
Charans: Right. It seems that the research you have chosen will always
remain, in a way, unfinished, that one will never ascribe or say the word
'end'. The Other, the Other and the community, the domain of relationship,
emotional needs, the loneliness typical of huge city of Berlin the city you
have elected as your own base. What would you add to this?
Niccoli: As I was previously saying I am very interested
in human needs and our will and necessity to relate to others. This is on
one hand a more-than-finished issue, because it has repeated itself since
humans have existed. On the other hand, each era and culture has dealt with
it in it's own way and this makes it unfinished. Regarding Berlin, sure, the
city suggested to me work on the lack of stability that almost all creatives
and academics experience here, but my practice has always reacted to the social
conditions of a place. If I moved to a small village, I guess I wouldn't keep
on working on unstable academics in Berlin, but maybe on the tightness of
familiar bonds as I did when I was at the academy and my work was all about
my home area Sudtirol.
©2007 christian niccoli. all rights reserved