OFLUXO
BAITBALL (01):
a group show of curations
Palazzo San Giuseppe, in via Mulini 2 — Polignano a Mare, Italy
January 5 – March 15 – 2020
“I’ll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you”
Curated by:
Catbox Contemporary (New York) – Davide Da Pieve – Essenza Club (Nomadic) – Flip Project (Napoli) – Ginny Project (London) – Harlesden High Street (London) & Twee Whistler – Like A Little Disaster (Polignano a Mare) – Felice Moramarco – Nights (Nomadic) – PANE project (Milano) – PIA Studio (Lecce) – Progetto (Lecce) – Rhizome Parking Garage (Online) – Studioconcreto (Lecce) – The Sunroom (Richmond) – Ultrastudio (Pescara / Los Angeles).
Artists:
Jaana-Kristiina Alakoski, Ambra Abbaticola, ASAFO Black (Nuna Adisenu- Doe, Scrapa, Jeffrey Otoo, Samuel Kortey Baah, Denyse Gawu-Mensah, Larry Bonćhaka), ASMA, Monia Ben Hamouda, Ludovic Beillard, Vitaly Bezpalov, Andrew Birk, Enrico Boccioletti, Melanie Bonajo, Benni Bosetto, Cécilia Brueil, Ian Bruner, Marco Bruzzone, Paolo Bufalini, Pierluigi Calignano, Katharina Cameron, Costanza Candeloro, Finn Carstens, Filippo Cecconi, Guendalina Cerruti, Keren Cytter, Edoardo Ciaralli, Riccardo D’avola-Corte, Stine Deja – Zoë De Luca, Maria Adele Del Vecchio, Lila De Magalhaes, Davide Dicorato, Derek M. F. Di Fabio, Alessandro Di Pietro, Neckar Doll, Loki Dolor, Don Elektro, Clementine Edwards, Kayla Ephros, Adham Faramawy, Cleo Fariselli, Emilio Ferro, Olga Fedorova, Alessandro Fogo, Leo Fourdriner, Michele Gabriele, Paolo Gabriotti, Tommaso Gatti, Diana Gheorghiu, Naomi Gilon, Marco Giordano, Nicola Gobbetto, Serena Grassi, Julie Grosche, Jennyfer Haddad, Jan S. Hansen, Philip Hinge, Helena Hladilová, Joey Holder, Ellie Hunter, Eloise Hawser, Angelique Heidler, Lena Henke, Botond Keresztesi, Keiu Krikmann, Andrea Kvas, Virginia Lee Montgomery, Per-Oskar Leu, Lucia Leuci, Abby Lloyd, Ula Lucińska + Michał Knychaus, Lorenzo Lunghi, Tamara Macarthur, Dalia Maini, Rachele Maistrello, Viola Morini, Max Motmans, Marco Musarò, Christine Navin, Avery Noyes, Alessandro Nucci, Francesco Pacelli, Nuno Patrício, Emma Pryde, Anni Puolakka, Agostino Quaranta, John Roebas, Andrea Sala, Giulio Scalisi, Jens Settegren, Siggi Sekira, Guido Segni, Helin Shahmaran, Namsal Siedlecki, SGOMENTO (Matteo Pomati, Marco Pio Mucci), Anna Slama, Livia Spinga Mantovani, Ruben Spini, Martin Soto Climent, Mireille Tap, Filippo Tappi, Nik Timková, Philipp Timischl, Natalia Trejbalova, Marta Trektere, Urara Tsuchiya, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Eva Vallania, Daniel Van Straalen, Essi Vesala, Gaia Vincensini, Marco Vitale, Alessandro Vizzini, Gray Wielebinski, Zoë Williams, Yelena Zhelezov, Michaela Zuge-Bruton.
Photography:
L.A.L.D.
A bait ball occurs when small organisms (fish, birds, insects) move tightly packed in a spherical formation around a common center. It is a defensive measure adopted to escape the threat of predators, but it is also a cohesion exercise enhancing the hydro-aerodynamic functions.
A coordinated bait ball that moves and glitters in unison is a mesmerizing image; hundreds or thousands of individuals moving together under radio control or a pre-established choreography. They are even more surprising considering that there is no leader or hierarchy within them.
The “balls” are formed through that spontaneous emergency known as self-organization. It emerges from the bottom upwards, it is an a-centered and non-linear phenomenon, it is an irreversible process, which thanks to the cooperative action of subsystems lead to more complex structures in the global system.
A bait ball rotates, contracts, expands, separates and returns all one, without interruption – single individualities with a hive mind. Cohesion is achieved through the coordination of each individual with respect to the nearest neighbour. A massive coordinated “ball” is made up of thousands of individual actions that make up a single collective movement.
Heterogeneous, “aggregated” patterns in the spatial distributions of individuals are almost universal across living organisms, from bacteria to higher vertebrates. Whereas specific features of aggregations are often visually striking to human eyes, a heuristic analysis based on human vision is usually not sufficient to answer fundamental questions about how and why organisms aggregate and nor about how and why the same associative processes invest “inanimate” elements such as water vapour, sand dunes, galaxies, in which these patterns derive from simple abiotic interactions between the individual components.
The project BAITBALL follows the same natural, mutualistic and universal mechanism to create a hybrid subject/object, a collective dimension; what remains after eliminating the artificial notions of nature and culture. It emerges from the continuous articulation of humans and non-humans, artifacts, inscriptions, animals, plants, spirits, ancestors, gods, organisms and technological prostheses, local and universal, apocalyptic fears and technological hopes.
“us and our technologies in one vast system – to include human and nonhuman agency and understanding, knowing and unknowing, within the same agential soup”.
“I’ll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you”
Alta Art Space – Malmö, Sweden
January 5 – March 15 – 2020
Palazzo San Giuseppe, in via Mulini 2;
Polignano a Mare, Italy
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