Closer, an exhibition to reflect on communication

It plays with the frequency spectrum of the audible: 16 autonomous electronic voices implement the concept of chorality whereby each part contributes to a spatialisation of sound. Each loudspeaker modulates the content and, depending on its timbre, returns a different sound nuance.

During the opening performance What's the story behind it? the whole room vibrated, creating an evocative atmosphere and touching some intimate chords of the people listening.

Instead, Enej Gala (Ljubljana, 1990) has created sculptures that embody the archetypal dimension of communication, the poles of the sender and the receiver. Ear to mouth, mouth to ear is a silent work, although it speaks of sound, of the world of speech. Two figures are literally screwed together in a test of strength, of forced and therefore 'lacerating' communication: the first has its ears 'pierced', the second is prevented from uttering a word. This impediment is painful, but the most critical condition is that of the impossibility of finding an understanding, a verbal and intentional correspondence in an increasingly fragmented and babelic geopolitical reality, drowned by a toxic patriotism.

Radio Solaire is a video-documentary on Giorgio Lolli (1943-2023), a Bolognese, ex-worker and trade unionist who trained at the time of free radio. His adventurous life led him to move to central Africa, first in 1978 to Eritrea, then Ghana, Mauritania, and on to remote villages in Mali, Togo, Senegal and Burkina Faso. She supports the independence fronts of countries claiming autonomy from colonial policies. In forty years, Lolli installed more than 500 radio stations across the continent. The Radio Antenna becomes a metaphor for freedom and political power, giving back a voice to those who were deprived of it. The Radioline broadcast a podcast recounting the adventures of Lolli, who passed away last year. The colourful sheets represent a mapping, they are the same ones Lolli used to take from local markets: he used them to soundproof the temporary radio stations.

Radio Bamakan - Bamako 1991. Foto di Giorgio Lolli

Three artists - Federico Bacci, Massimo Carozzi and Francesco Eppesteigher - went to Senegal to continue realising Giorgio Lolli's egalitarian dreams and set up an antenna in a remote place.

Antonello Ghezzi - Paolo and Nadia - collaborated with INAF Astrophysics. Shooting Stars is a device for making wishes, an Aladdin's lamp that picks up, thanks to radio waves, the signals of shooting stars passing over the Mediterranean skies

Antonello Ghezzi, Shooting stars, 2023. IIC Madrid. Foto Giorgia Tronconi

Gianlorenzo Nardi reasoned by subtraction about the moment of absence of communication. What are the people filmed in the video trying to tell us and what has happened? It is an invitation to pause, to allow oneself a moment of nourishing listening where one can sharpen one's sensitivity and perceive even the slightest signs of reality. Intimacy and contemplation with what surrounds us can lead to an emptying of the self in favour of an enriching silent communication.

Villa Davia, Borgo di Colle Ameno - Sasso Marconi (Bologna) | 5 April - 24 May 2025.