Fernweh - /ˈfɛɾnˌveː/

Friedrich Andreoni and Roberto Casti.

Exhibition
Nov 18 2023 - Nov 30 2023

Curated by Caterina Angelucci and Andrea Elia Zanini.

Ten times a year, the privileged one will be transported wherever he wish, at a hundred leagues per hour; during the transport, he will sleep.

Stendhal, The Privileges, 1840

In a social context that recalls the Dublin described by James Joyce in 1914 in Dubliners, the characters of the fifteen stories become relevant again. Each story presents two narrative constants: collective paralysis, induced by the politics and religion of the time, and the idea of escape because of renewed awareness. In Eveline, the epiphany is induced by the sound of a barrel organ: the protagonist chooses to escape from Dublin to start her life anew in Buenos Aires, but, having made the decision, fear and remorse hold her back in Ireland, leaving behind the hope of a desired happiness, drifting away with the personification of Frank on a ship heading to South America.

Friedrich Andreoni and Roberto Casti have been invited to reflect on the themes addressed by the novel in relation to the context in which they live, respectively Berlin and Milan. Comparing the stories to the contemporary situation reveals specular elements: the sense of emptiness, collective paralysis, and the desire to escape.

Through sound installations, performances, and works on paper, the artists explore the need to reach a material or immaterial place that allows one to abstract from the void and emptiness of life, a refuge from the stress and pressures imposed by the social context of the metropolis.

Not necessarily a physical destination, but also a suggestion, a person, an ideal place, a reading, or a sound that allows what Stendhal would call the "privileged" to close their eyes and be transported wherever they desire. Hence the choice of the title: fernweh, from the German fern: "far" and weh: "nostalgia." Not directly translatable into other languages, it takes on the meaning of the "emptiness felt in being trapped in the everyday" and consequently the "nostalgia for an ideal or real distant place," known or yet to be discovered.

fig. 1

Friedrich Andreoni presents Ending Times, a multichannel sound installation, composed of the succession of audio samples from the final seconds of various film soundtracks. Two speakers loop a 30-minute composition, creating an endless atmosphere characterized by distant and melancholic echoes. Evoking the idea of a journey, each track's succession outlines an uninterrupted cycle of departures, arrivals, and departures: every boundary is blurred in a continuous sequence of endings. Ending Times symbolizes the perpetual and metamorphic, inviting visitors to lose themselves in a non-place they have never experienced. The sound installation is accompanied by a series of sketches on paper of various sizes: like in a contemporary wunderkammer, the drawings serve as a prelude to the study of Ending Times, Andreoni's undulating and almost obsessively repeated stroke in his research dematerializes and becomes sound.

If I shouldn't return, / know that I never / left. / My traveling / was all a staying / here, where I never was - Se non dovessi tornare, / sappiate che non sono mai / partito. / Il mio viaggiare / è stato
tutto un restare / qua, dove non fui mai.

Giorgio Caproni

fig. 2

Roberto Casti presents a new series of works titled Aleph, paying homage to the eponymous story in which Jorge Luis Borges narrates a point from which it is possible to observe, at the same instant, any part of the universe from any angle. For the realization of these works, the artist collected recordings of himself or friends who traveled to distant countries (New York, Sardinia, Tokyo, Thailand). The tracks were slowed down to create a subdued background noise, where every spatial and temporal data is screened. Starting from the assumption that today we can passively witness events such as genocides, wars near and far, unstoppable fires, and the melting of glaciers, the artist decided to take a step back, inviting a slower and more meditative—perhaps unsuccessful— appreciation of these impossible and dreamlike sounds, suggesting the presence of places without ever giving the idea of being able to truly grasp them.

New York, Sardinia, Tokyo, and Thailand, despite being different in nature and materials, connect to each other and install themselves in the spaces of KA32 as if they were an integral part of them. The displays are defined by the artist as non-objects, devices that inhabit the margins of any domestic or commercial environment: junction boxes, drainage pipes, or ventilation ducts. Functional but concealed instruments that usually serve to hide "passages," be they of energy, air, or information. Using these devices as anomalous resonators, Casti highlights what dwells at the edges of anthropic space, reinterpreting the connections that link the living space to the outside, the micro to the macro, the individual to the planet in which they live.

This exercise of empathy is made evident also by the presence of a computer through which, throughout the duration of the exhibition, the public can contribute to a list of questions reflecting on their position in the world and in their historical time. The list, started in the weeks leading up to the exhibition, is considered the graphic apparatus of a performance titled Aleph (Milan-Berlin), which will be presented on the opening day with the presence and voice of Dalia Maini. The text/work, in continuous growth, is a device of spatiotemporal awareness, an attempt at impossible empathy that shifts attention from the individual to the collective, assuming a reversal of one's existential condition linked to their personal sphere.

Roberto Casti thanks Helena Bocca Ozino and Francesco Simbola for the recordings made in Tokyo and Thailand; Dalia Maini for her participation in the opening performance; all the friends who contributed with their questions to the Aleph (Milan-Berlin) project.

fig. 3

BIO

Friedrich Andreoni (Pesaro, 1995) is an Italo-German artist raised between Europe and the Middle East. In 2020, he graduated from the Weißensee Academy of Art in Berlin. From 2020 to 2022, he won the DAAD scholarship - German Academic Exchange Service, through which he conducted research at the Sound department of the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Since 2018, Andreoni has been a member of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation). Recently, his project SHIFT (2021-22) was presented in the official program of the fourth Chicago Architecture Biennial The Available City and received a special mention for the Pontifical Academy Vatican Virtuosi of the Pantheon Award, as the only visual artist among various architecture studios. In 2023, he won the Ducato Art Prize for the Academy section. Currently, Friedrich Andreoni is a Meisterschüler of the artist Susan Philipsz in Dresden (Germany). Friedrich Andreoni's works are present in public and private collections.

Roberto Casti (Iglesias, 1992) is an artist, musician, and writer. He lives and works between Milan and Iglesias, Sardinia. His artistic research includes various languages, including video, performance, installation, painting, and sound. With the transdisciplinary project The Boys and Kifer, born in 2014 as a fictional music band, he investigates new methods of community and coexistence through the participation of numerous artists, musicians, and theorists. He has collaborated and exhibited in various spaces and institutions such as MACRO (Rome), MAN (Nuoro), FRAC Corte (France), Marsèlleria (Milan), PAV - Parco Arte Vivente (Turin), OGR - Officine Grandi Riparazioni (Turin), and the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera (Milan). He has published articles for Nero On Theory, Kabul magazine, Exibart, and Antinomie. In 2023, he participated in the publication of Soft Crash, a collective book produced by MACRO in Rome.

Caterina Angelucci (Urbino, 1995) is a researcher and independent curator. She graduated in Archaeology and History of Art from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. Since 2018, she has been working on content and insights for the Art section of ArtsLife. Since 2021, she has curated and organized the artist residency Lido La Fortuna (Lido Contemporaneo Association, Fano, PU) and is part of the research group of Endless Residency, grantee of the Italian Council X edition. Among her collaborations as a contributor are Lampoon Magazine and L'Essenziale Studio. In 2023, she was selected by Artribune for the Curators Observatory section (No.27, May-June, year XIII) and published Endless Residency. An observatory on artistic mobility for postmedia books.

Andrea Elia Zanini (Rome, 1997) was born in Rome and currently lives and works in Milan, where he graduated in "Visual Cultures and Curatorial Practices" at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. Curator and archivist, since 2020, he has been working at the Gabriele Basilico Archive and collaborates with curator Filippo Maggia. Since 2023, he is an archivist at the studio of artist Alessandra Spranzi and curator of the Malerba Fund for Photography (Milan). He also collaborates with various sector magazines such as Antinomie and C41 magazine.

KA32 is an independent exhibition space located in the heart of Prenzlauerberg in Berlin. Founded in 2023 by Dario Puggioni, Enrico Basta, Stefano Bosis, and Friedrich Andreoni, it aims to be an alternative channel for the promotion of contemporary art. The completely self-managed space relies on the collaboration of professional and emerging artists and young curators.

KA32
@k_a_3_2
ka32artspace@gmail.com

Caterina Angelucci
@caterina.angelucci
caterina.angelucci@gmail.com

Andrea Elia Zanini
@_andrea.elia
andreae.zanini@gmail.com

Friedrich Andreoni
@lieberfriedrich
friedrichandreoni@gmail.com

Roberto Casti
@rrobertocasti
robertocasti.one@gmail.com

IMAGE CREDITS

Cover: Roberto Casti, Aleph (New York).

fig. 2: Roberto Casti, Aleph (Thailandia).

fig. 3: Friedrich Andreoni, Movement in Space, 2020.

Fernweh - /ˈfɛɾnˌveː/

Friedrich Andreoni and Roberto Casti.

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