The set-up designed by Daniela Comani for Supporto memoria / Memory Device features three previously unseen works from as many periods of the artist’s career: Supporto memoria / Memory Device (2023), East Berlin 1990-2020, and Polaroid con doppia esposizione (Polaroid with double exposure, 1992). Both the static and the moving images first and foremost highlight a reflection on the relationship between the individual and time, which has become essential in the artist’s research. Time is explored, measured with one’s body, disclosed with devices, atmospheres and objects. It is a respected, yet at the same time directly addressed dimension, where logic is questioned despite the abundance of information offered by Comani.
In Supporto memoria / Memory Device (2023) – a series that also lends its title to the exhibition – Comani presents a sort of archive composed of 44 still-lifes of as many technological devices used over the years by the artist herself. Cameras, recorders, mobile phones, films, audio tapes, floppy disks, CDs, memory and sim cards make up a visual sampler of media history. On an aesthetic level, the devices immortalised on neutral backgrounds show resonances with works by conceptual artists such as Christopher Williams (1956) and Steven Pippin (1960). However, Comani does not criticise photography as a visual system or a mechanical process of capitalist society, but creates objective, nostalgic images to declare the impossibility of a technological archaeology, as well as to narrate a personal aspect of her own experience.
Indeed, from a methodological standpoint, the objects are photographed concisely and organised in a grid, showing information about the models and their structure, years of production and technical details. This cataloguing process reveals the coordinates of the construction of Comani’s personal archive, and thus of her personal memory and identity. It also questions viewers and suggests what the artist saw, decided to record or create with them, and – perhaps – what we would (or have) done with the same devices if we had owned any. On the one hand, by showing the subjects as icons, Comani makes a self-portrait of her relationship with history, echoing Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the ability of devices to record what unconsciously escapes the eye. On the other, she questions the potential for organising archives in the contemporary world – the second major theme addressed by the exhibition – reshaping time according to one’s interests, tastes and values. Here, additions have the same relevance as absences and are included in a scheme for collecting, storing and interpreting the past that does not reconstruct a complete picture, but rather opens up an opportunity for continuous questioning, a new narration of history and our relationship to it, and a possible reorganisation of the ways of imagining the future.
As in most of her works over the past thirty years, Comani shows an interest in the ‘technologies of time’ indicated by curator Dieter Roelstraete and, even better, for the media archaeology recounted by theorist Jussi Parikka, as also found in East Berlin 1990-2020, a split-screen video work that synchronously shows the course of the same urban space in the German capital thirty years apart. Both videos are shot from inside the passenger compartment of a car, recalling a great classic of conceptual photographic art such as Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) by American artist Ed Ruscha. The first view was made by the artist on her birthday through a VHS video camera, as was the second, which, however, was made with an iPhone camera. Once again, the idea of personal experience supports a reflection on the progression of time and society, as well as the evolution of technology. Indeed, in this comparative juxtaposition, it is not only possible to detect a kind of grammar of semblance and contrast linked to the subject and technique, but also to observe the actions that the artist has performed with her body, leading to significant variations in the film. Images are first and foremost the place of the unveiling and exploration we make in the world, of our shedding light on the indistinct void, organising it and giving answers – albeit partial – to the knowledge of what surrounds us.
The 1990 footage is one of the first personal explorations of the Soviet sector after the fall of the Berlin Wall, crossing the eastern districts of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. The camera movements are incessant, the zoom focuses several times on details, and the architecture is often pointed at. In this sense, Comani lets the excitement of the discovery of what had until a few months earlier been considered the forefront of the socialist world in Europe shine through. However, not only is the grain of the shot in 2020 different for obvious reasons, but urban transformations emerge, as does the cultural, social and economic stratification related to the influence of the entertainment industry and capitalism. Furthermore, in the latter, the surroundings are filmed by hand, but with greater stability, leaving objects reflected on the glass to emerge – notebooks with writings that declare Comani’s connection to text and writing and emphasise the theme of the double. It is a meta-area in which the encounter and exchange between individual reality and social fiction is staged.
The theme of the double – as well as that of time – also emerges in the previously unexhibited photographic work Polaroid con doppia esposizione (1992), which the artist produced during her years at the Berlin University of the Arts. The picture was taken with one of the cameras immortalised in Supporto memoria / Memory Device; there, the artist portrays herself in front of one of her works of the time, which included a photographic reproduction of a detail of the model of the large domed building designed by Adolf Hitler and his architect Albert Speer, ‘Große Halle/Volkshalle’ (‘Great Hall of the People’) for the project ‘Welthauptstadt Germania’, i.e. the Universal Capital of the Third Reich. Using the double exposure technique, Comani stages a paradoxical situation that creates a short circuit in the experiential function of the photographic document and – at the same time – refers as much to our relationship with historical memory as to the theme of identity – both topics that will permeate her research in the years to come, as can be seen in works such as Sono stata io. Diario 1900-1999.
Due to great collective trauma, contemporary society appears incapable of thinking and imagining the future. Like many artists nowadays, Comani retrieves objects from the past, reactivating their history and function to outline a sort of self-portrait, which is also a hidden reflection of our times.
In Supporto memoria / Memory Device (2023) – a series that also lends its title to the exhibition – Comani presents a sort of archive composed of 44 still-lifes of as many technological devices used over the years by the artist herself. Cameras, recorders, mobile phones, films, audio tapes, floppy disks, CDs, memory and sim cards make up a visual sampler of media history. On an aesthetic level, the devices immortalised on neutral backgrounds show resonances with works by conceptual artists such as Christopher Williams (1956) and Steven Pippin (1960). However, Comani does not criticise photography as a visual system or a mechanical process of capitalist society, but creates objective, nostalgic images to declare the impossibility of a technological archaeology, as well as to narrate a personal aspect of her own experience.
Indeed, from a methodological standpoint, the objects are photographed concisely and organised in a grid, showing information about the models and their structure, years of production and technical details. This cataloguing process reveals the coordinates of the construction of Comani’s personal archive, and thus of her personal memory and identity. It also questions viewers and suggests what the artist saw, decided to record or create with them, and – perhaps – what we would (or have) done with the same devices if we had owned any. On the one hand, by showing the subjects as icons, Comani makes a self-portrait of her relationship with history, echoing Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the ability of devices to record what unconsciously escapes the eye. On the other, she questions the potential for organising archives in the contemporary world – the second major theme addressed by the exhibition – reshaping time according to one’s interests, tastes and values. Here, additions have the same relevance as absences and are included in a scheme for collecting, storing and interpreting the past that does not reconstruct a complete picture, but rather opens up an opportunity for continuous questioning, a new narration of history and our relationship to it, and a possible reorganisation of the ways of imagining the future.
As in most of her works over the past thirty years, Comani shows an interest in the ‘technologies of time’ indicated by curator Dieter Roelstraete and, even better, for the media archaeology recounted by theorist Jussi Parikka, as also found in East Berlin 1990-2020, a split-screen video work that synchronously shows the course of the same urban space in the German capital thirty years apart. Both videos are shot from inside the passenger compartment of a car, recalling a great classic of conceptual photographic art such as Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966) by American artist Ed Ruscha. The first view was made by the artist on her birthday through a VHS video camera, as was the second, which, however, was made with an iPhone camera. Once again, the idea of personal experience supports a reflection on the progression of time and society, as well as the evolution of technology. Indeed, in this comparative juxtaposition, it is not only possible to detect a kind of grammar of semblance and contrast linked to the subject and technique, but also to observe the actions that the artist has performed with her body, leading to significant variations in the film. Images are first and foremost the place of the unveiling and exploration we make in the world, of our shedding light on the indistinct void, organising it and giving answers – albeit partial – to the knowledge of what surrounds us.
The 1990 footage is one of the first personal explorations of the Soviet sector after the fall of the Berlin Wall, crossing the eastern districts of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg. The camera movements are incessant, the zoom focuses several times on details, and the architecture is often pointed at. In this sense, Comani lets the excitement of the discovery of what had until a few months earlier been considered the forefront of the socialist world in Europe shine through. However, not only is the grain of the shot in 2020 different for obvious reasons, but urban transformations emerge, as does the cultural, social and economic stratification related to the influence of the entertainment industry and capitalism. Furthermore, in the latter, the surroundings are filmed by hand, but with greater stability, leaving objects reflected on the glass to emerge – notebooks with writings that declare Comani’s connection to text and writing and emphasise the theme of the double. It is a meta-area in which the encounter and exchange between individual reality and social fiction is staged.
The theme of the double – as well as that of time – also emerges in the previously unexhibited photographic work Polaroid con doppia esposizione (1992), which the artist produced during her years at the Berlin University of the Arts. The picture was taken with one of the cameras immortalised in Supporto memoria / Memory Device; there, the artist portrays herself in front of one of her works of the time, which included a photographic reproduction of a detail of the model of the large domed building designed by Adolf Hitler and his architect Albert Speer, ‘Große Halle/Volkshalle’ (‘Great Hall of the People’) for the project ‘Welthauptstadt Germania’, i.e. the Universal Capital of the Third Reich. Using the double exposure technique, Comani stages a paradoxical situation that creates a short circuit in the experiential function of the photographic document and – at the same time – refers as much to our relationship with historical memory as to the theme of identity – both topics that will permeate her research in the years to come, as can be seen in works such as Sono stata io. Diario 1900-1999.
Due to great collective trauma, contemporary society appears incapable of thinking and imagining the future. Like many artists nowadays, Comani retrieves objects from the past, reactivating their history and function to outline a sort of self-portrait, which is also a hidden reflection of our times.
Supporto memoria / Memory Device
An exhibition by Daniela Comani
Text by Giangavino Pazzola
Galleria Studio G7, Bologna
January 12 - March 31, 2024
An exhibition by Daniela Comani
Text by Giangavino Pazzola
Galleria Studio G7, Bologna
January 12 - March 31, 2024