1. — 6. Never on Tuesday, 2022
Textile print, LED lights, aluminum frames
150 x 100 x 8 cm, sound
7. — 9. Untitled, 2022
Live set/performance by DJ Cool Fire & The Burning Ventilator
~ 60’’ [listen to an excerpt here]
Solo event/exhibition Backing Tracks e Cenas Assim curated by Orsola Vannocci Bonsi and Mattia Tosti at Cosmos CAC, Lisbon, PT 28.06.2022 — 05.07.2022
Photos: © Samuel Duarte
“After we challenged primeira desordem to conceive a project specifically for Cosmos, they
immediately embarked on a self-proclaimed nocturnal residency there. Throughout a
period of almost two months, the artists visited the place assiduously, engaging in a broad
research and careful observation of the entanglement of people, music and stories that
constitutes it.
A night-time residency in a place that is so densely charged with histories — and yet still so lived nowadays, is undoubtedly fascinating, but it goes without saying that it also presents some obvious risks: as the lines between field-work and fun-work can get easily blurred, disappear, or even melt. In spite of this apparent clash of interests, the artists managed to balance out their apollonian and dionysiac drives, by adopting a sharp methodology that allowed them to effortlessly switch between work and leisure and create something that has a close relationship not only to the space, but also with its crowd and conversations.
Throughout their work the artists have persistently explored the intimate connections between art, poetry and crime. primeira desordem deals with these complex forms of human self-expression that are somehow united by a certain degree of empathy and meticulous planning, by employing different aesthetic strategies of approximation and appropriation, often maintaining a lack of reciprocity between them and the participants in their works. For Backing Tracks e Cenas Assim, the artists during their time spent at Cosmos casually engaged in conversations of different nature and topics (from generational precarity, housing prices and existentialism, to music, politics, or plain drunk talk), always with their phone on the table recording what was being said. In a second moment at their studio, they have transcribed each audio file and selected the portions of the conversations that would be transformed into something else.
In the exhibition space, primeira desordem have crystallized their process into a single artwork whose inspiration and content came from an unedited fragment of a chat recorded at Cosmos. As in most of their works, Never on Tuesday is the result of the unaware contributions of the participants of their projects, who often think that they are simply performing themselves, while in reality they are part of a setting carefully crafted by the artists. Never on Tuesday also uses this almost filmic/illicit approach to planning and stealing a scene, by combining it with another act of appropriation, this time of the visual language of action film posters, creating a work that wishes to elevate a late-night conversation to its full surreal cinematic potential.
Finally in the DJ-set/performance by DJ Cool Fire and The Burning Ventilator, that will take place in the day of the opening, the artists will deliver a set where they will unholy combine instrumental music with samples from their library of recorded conversations. This eclectic selection of voiceless songs, will then serve as the backing tracks for this playful karaoke performed by the unaware participants “singing” their unquoted quotations. Overall, the different chunks of speeches that in this project were captured, sliced up and re-enacted under a completely different guise, seem to speak in unison about the potential of the domains of art to illuminate, crystalize and elevate the scenes of reality into something poetic and vividly cinematographic.”
A night-time residency in a place that is so densely charged with histories — and yet still so lived nowadays, is undoubtedly fascinating, but it goes without saying that it also presents some obvious risks: as the lines between field-work and fun-work can get easily blurred, disappear, or even melt. In spite of this apparent clash of interests, the artists managed to balance out their apollonian and dionysiac drives, by adopting a sharp methodology that allowed them to effortlessly switch between work and leisure and create something that has a close relationship not only to the space, but also with its crowd and conversations.
Throughout their work the artists have persistently explored the intimate connections between art, poetry and crime. primeira desordem deals with these complex forms of human self-expression that are somehow united by a certain degree of empathy and meticulous planning, by employing different aesthetic strategies of approximation and appropriation, often maintaining a lack of reciprocity between them and the participants in their works. For Backing Tracks e Cenas Assim, the artists during their time spent at Cosmos casually engaged in conversations of different nature and topics (from generational precarity, housing prices and existentialism, to music, politics, or plain drunk talk), always with their phone on the table recording what was being said. In a second moment at their studio, they have transcribed each audio file and selected the portions of the conversations that would be transformed into something else.
In the exhibition space, primeira desordem have crystallized their process into a single artwork whose inspiration and content came from an unedited fragment of a chat recorded at Cosmos. As in most of their works, Never on Tuesday is the result of the unaware contributions of the participants of their projects, who often think that they are simply performing themselves, while in reality they are part of a setting carefully crafted by the artists. Never on Tuesday also uses this almost filmic/illicit approach to planning and stealing a scene, by combining it with another act of appropriation, this time of the visual language of action film posters, creating a work that wishes to elevate a late-night conversation to its full surreal cinematic potential.
Finally in the DJ-set/performance by DJ Cool Fire and The Burning Ventilator, that will take place in the day of the opening, the artists will deliver a set where they will unholy combine instrumental music with samples from their library of recorded conversations. This eclectic selection of voiceless songs, will then serve as the backing tracks for this playful karaoke performed by the unaware participants “singing” their unquoted quotations. Overall, the different chunks of speeches that in this project were captured, sliced up and re-enacted under a completely different guise, seem to speak in unison about the potential of the domains of art to illuminate, crystalize and elevate the scenes of reality into something poetic and vividly cinematographic.”
— Orsola Vannocci Bonsi and Mattia Tosti
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