Rossella Biscotti

Making Spatial Stories

16–28 August 2021

Rossella Biscotti, documentation of production

The Heads in Question, 2015, documentation of the production, Rome. Photo: Luis do Rosario

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Course format
Hybrid class

Participation
Either Fortress Hohensalzburg (on site) or online*

Teaching language
English (Italian also available)

What to bring
Computer/laptop with camera and microphone, camera (if available) or other sound-/image-recording device, pens, material from personal archives including books and articles.

Requirements
Willingness to work in groups

Maximum number of participants
12 on site, 6 online

Teaching assistant
Isabel Van Bos

Participation fee
€ 640.– (€ 480.–)

All media and approaches are welcome in this course. Students will focus on narration by collectively analysing and discussing the act of storytelling and its many potential implications. Each student develops 'stories', that will be edited together and translated into different forms and formats – such as sculpture, video, performance, sound work and other relevant approaches.

Individual stories, whether they are sourced from the surroundings in Salzburg or from the students' archives, are analysed in their different structures and in their methodology of collecting narratives: from the recording of oral stories to archival research or fieldwork. Students focus on the collective elements which connect the specific content of a single narrative with a larger community of people and history.

Additionally, the course introduces actual methods, such as how to edit, select, shape and express the different dimensions of individual narrative content. Several group exercises are based on translating each other's stories into various forms and other 'translation' purposes. Using current exhibitions in and around Salzburg as case studies, students engage in different spatial solutions of presenting a 'narrative'/work. Students will engage individually and collectively with the act of storytelling from the inception of a narrative nucleus in some source or stimulus to its finalisation as artwork.

*If necessary, the course may be held exclusively online.

Rossella Biscotti's work deals with the exploration of forgotten or untraced events that reveal changing value systems. She is interested in narrating and manifesting a subject's constitution through its alliances and resistances against violent institutionalised structures.

Using sculpture, performance, filmmaking, Biscotti sensibly weaves together traces of lives, concepts and materials into new narratives, using montage as a spatial gesture of layering their origins.

Her methods show care and attentiveness towards details of individual narratives by gathering information through the recording of oral stories, as from archival research and fieldwork. Places, which have been tapped historically by forms of mining, exploitation, and confinement, are often the backdrop of her artistic explorations. By questioning the relevance of the information used from a contemporary perspective, Biscotti creates links and networks to the present, empowering imagination and experience.

Solo Exhibitions
2022 Trees on land, mor Charpentier, Paris. 2021 Clara and other Specimens, Stadtgalerie Zwergelgartenpavillon, Salzburg (AT). 2019 New Work, Witte de With, Rotterdam (NL). Clara and Other Specimen, Fondazione Ratti, Como (IT). Three works and a script, Blitz, Valletta. The City, daadgalerie, Berlin. 2018 A shirt, blue pants, blue jeans, a towel, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Cologne (DE). The City, Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz (CH). The Standing Wave, Steirischer Herbst, Volksfronten, Graz (AT). 2017 PREMIO ACACIA A ROSSELLA BISCOTTI, Museo Del Novecento, Milan (IT). 2016 The Trial, GULAG History State Museum, Moscow. 2015 The future can only be for ghosts, Museion, Bolzano (IT). 2014 10 x 10, Haus Lange, Kunstmuseen Krefeld (DE). For the Mnemonist, S., Wiels, Brussels. The Undercover Man, Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York, NY (US). 2013 The Trial, e-flux, New York, NY. The Side Room, Secession, Vienna. 2012 This is a special blackout edition!, Kadist Arte Foundation, Paris. Title One: The Tasks of the Community, CAC, Vilnius. Isola, de Vleeshal Middelburg (NL).

Group Exhibitions
2021 15^th Bienal de Cuenca, Cuenca (EC). Dream City–Festival d’Art dans la Cité, L’ArtRue, Tunis. Is it possible to be a revolutionary and like flowers, Nest, Den Haag (NL). Beaufort 21, Triennale de Beaufort, Beaufort (BE). 2020 Eroded Landscape, Musée de Rochechouart, Rochechouart (FR). Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka. A Story for the Future, Fondazione MAXXI, Rome. Radical Hope, mor charpentier, Paris. 2019 Deep Sounding–History as multiple narratives, daad galerie, Berlin. The Remains of the day, mor charpentier, Paris. Je suis né étranger, Les Abattoirs–Frac Occitanie Toulouse Château d'Assier, Assier (FR). Borderlines, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (GB). Hybrid Sculpture, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. entre, hacia, hasta, para, por,segùn, sin, ESPAI d'art contemporani de Castelló, Castello (ES). 2018 The world as prison?, IVAM, Valencia (ES). Dropping Knowledge, Mecenes du Sud, Montpellier (FR). Turbulence, The Model, Sligo (IE). Conversation Piece PArt IV, Fondazione Memmo, Rome. I am Native Foreigner, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Manipulate the World, Moderna Museet, Stockolm. The Humans, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen (CH). 2017The Materiality of the Invisible, Bureau Europa, Maastricht (NL). Transition, Sonsbeek, Arnhem (NL). Rossella Biscotti & Kevin van Braak, Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana. Please come back. The world as prison?, MAXXI, Rome. Contour Biënnale #8, Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium, Mechelen (BE). 2016 Against the Romance of Community, Swiss Institute, New York, NY. Exodus, mor charpentier, Paris. Les Incessants, Villa du Parc, Annemas (FR). Riddle of the Burial Grounds, Extra-city, Antwerp (BE). Position III, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (NL). Dispatches, SECCA, Winston-Salem, NC (US). House of Commons, Portikus, Frankfurt (DE).

Publications
Letizia Ragaglia (ed.), Rossella Biscotti: Bozen, Museion, Walter Koenig Cologne, Bozen 2015.
Dirk Snauwaert (ed.), Rossella Biscotti: For the Mnemonist, S., Wiels, Brussels, Rome 2015.
Magdalena Holzhey (ed.), Rossella Biscotti, 10x10, Krefeld Museum Haus Esters, Revolver Pubishing, Krefeld 2015.
Rossella Biscotti: The Side Room, exh.-cat., Wiener Secession, Revolver Publishing, Wien 2013.
Rossella Biscotti: Ten Work, Maxxi Museum, Mousse Publishing, Milan 2012.
Rossella Biscotti: The Trial, in conjunction with DOCUMENTA (13), 2012.

www.mor-charpentier.com

Photo: Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen