LE MUMMIE VINCENTI

(The winning mummies)

 

 

 

Performance: Milan City Center, 1999

series of paintings with performance, mixed media collages and acrylics

series of photographs from screen of performance shootings

video: Italy, colours, 8’55”  ed. 1+ 1ap, 1999

videoinstallation

 

 

This is the first performance where LIUBA worked in real-life contexts, and the first project where the video becomes no longer  a documentation, but the necessary completion of the work, synthesizing people’s reactions to the performance, places and chance.

 

The winning mummy is a person who thinks to be socially successful and winning, but his life is completely suffocated by prisons of duties, conventions, hypocrisies and stress. The result is a person that in his depth is dead like a “mummy” but mostly doesn’t realize it.

The aim of the performance, in which LIUBA walks through the daily-life streets blocked in two big boxes is to show in a visibile way our invisibile daily life compressions and prisons, arising in people reflections and counsciousness about it.

 

The deep roots of this projects begin from the consciousness of the emptiness that grows in our cities, always more homologated in a way of life devoted to appearance, business and superficiality. In the middle of the crowd it’s easy to perceive many people really sealed and tied in life-style boxes, always busy for unuseful conquests.

  • The winning mummies. Tunnel, 1999-2001 cibachrome on aluminium from shootings of performance on screen, cm 70x100 ed 6+1

  • The winning mummies. Still Life, 1999-2001 cibachrome on aluminium from shootings of performance on screen, cm 70x100 ed 6+1

Some of LIUBA poems which are part of the project:

 

 

Le mummie vincenti (The Winning Mummies)

 

Ascolto il brusìo del traffico e spio

le mille vite danzanti

che annaspano sugli oggetti

respiro l’ansia

il vuoto e la morte

dal volto incartapecorito

di chi crede

di essere arrivato

perchè ha.

Guardo gli occhi inespressivi

corpi come impalcature

che si assimilano ai palazzi

gli orgogli falsi di chi arriva

e il trionfo di chi c’è già.

Nudi scafandri

gusci di granchio

dove succhiata è ogni polpa

ragnatele sul niente che corrono

soddisfatte di sè.

Annuso gli angoli dei loro

passatempi

annuso i ritmi dei loro

divertimenti

e una pista di morte

arriva gelata

la vita è sparita

nel pieno della festa.

 

 

Povere anime

 

Dove andate povere anime

Dove andate povere anime

Rinchiuse negli ospedali

Dei vostri scaffali ordinati

Costruiti in fila

Da dove non potete

Uscire se non dai sensi

Unici in precedenza

Programmati?

Dove andate tra un vicolo e l’altro

Della ragnatela di plastica appiccicata al vostro cervello?

Sperate che venga un terremoto

Povere anime poco pulsanti

Che distrugga le vostre sicurezze di carta

Per poi

Forse

Rinascere

 

 

Sudari di umanità

 

Sudari di umanità

Intasano le strade

Caotiche formiche

In eterno movimento

E in caduca sfioritura.

Sudari di umanità

Intasano le città

Spolpati come granchi

Sui gusci della vita.

 

 

PAINTINGS

 

 

The series of paintings, all on canvas, size 50 x 50cm, is made with collages of acetates taken from the artist’s performance pieces, collages of various materials, fragments of the artist’s poems, letters painted by hand with acrylic colours.

  • Spolpata è ogni polpa palpabile, 1999 mixed media collage, acrylics, performance acetate, oil pastels, on canvas, cm 50 x 50

  • Vagano le mummie vincenti, 1999 mixed media collage, acrylics, performance acetate, oil pastels, on canvas, cm 50 x 50

  • Nudi scafandri, gusci di granchio, 1999 mixed media collage, acrylics, performance acetate, oil pastels, on canvas, cm 50 x 50

“The project “The Winning mummies” has a multimedia character within which different media – a live performance realized in the middle of a city center, a videoinstallation,  paintings, poems – come together involving the audience and establishing a relationship of active complicity. 

The “winning mummies” evoked by the artist in several ways are those whose alleged victory is based on the closure in themselves ignoring others, tragic comedians of a story that reduces man to a mannequin..

 

(Roberto Vitali)

VIDEO

 

Le mummie vincenti (The winning Mummies)1999, Italy, colours, 8’55”  ed. 1+ 1ap, Master: VHS, PAL (riversamento digitale da VHS014b)

 

 

The video taken from this performance art piece is my ‘first’ video work.

The piece was my first urban interactive performance and led me to collect the footage to capture the reactions of the audience and of the context. .

 

My previous performances of the 90s were intended for an audience, and the footage I have of those works is pure documentation, while it is since The Winning Mummies project that I have developed performative projects in ‘real’ life contexts for which the video they originated it is the elaboration and the continuation of the work, and it is an artwork itself.

 

I edited this first video in collaboration with Francesco Leprino (who also did the shooting), and the master was on VHS, of which I keep the ONLY existing COPY in my archive.

I recently reversed the VHS cassette into digital file and now I am proud to show you an excerpts of this first and now historic (at least for me!) video.

 

 

  • The Winning Mummies, videoinstallation, carboard, white painting, screen, video, variable dimensions, 2000

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