WINTER 2013 ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE ALICE KAPLAN INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

MARCO NEREO ROTELLI

Kaplan Institute for the HumanitiesNorthwestern University

S. Hollis Clayson Director, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Professor of Art History and History; Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities

Tom BurkeProgram Manager

Megan Skord CampbellProgram Assistant

Beverly Zeldin-PalmerDepartment Assistant

LANGUAGES OF THE WORLDExhibit curated by S. Hollis Clayson

WORDSInstallation curated by Thomas Haskell SimpsonPoetry curated by Arica HiltonMusical performances curated by Alessandra Visconti

General CoordinatorsThomas Haskell SimpsonElena Lombardi – Art Project

Catalogue Curated by Claire DillonDesigned by Stephanie ZuckerTranslated by Thomas Haskell SimpsonPhotography by Sunny Kang

ServiceAV Chicago

Thank You Massimo Fusillo Licheng Richard Gu Phyllis Horn Liparini Michael K. Meyers Patricia Ellen Nichols Marie-Therese Pent Daniela Pozzi Pavan Francesca Tataranni Judith Wilks Noriko Taira Yasohama

Italian Cultural Institute The poets The students The musicians

Marco Nereo Rotelli’s residence is co-sponsored by the Global Languages Initiative, Residential Colleges, and the Northwestern Library.

This event is sponsored by

Just as the palette of the winter itself in the Great Lakes UHJLRQ�LV�RIWHQ�UHVWULFWHG�WR�WKH�EOXH�JUD\V�RI�WKH�VN\�LQÀHFWHG�by Lake Michigan’s hues and tones, set off against the whites of an often snow-covered world, Marco has worked during his residency on a suite of 30 canvases that respond to the VSHFL¿FLW\�RI�WKH�VN\�RYHU�(YDQVWRQ��LWV�8QLYHUVLW\�FDPSXV�DQG�its Lake Michigan. But, as with all of his work, there is a good deal more than straightforward depiction going on – both in his artwork and in his thinking. He is always also interested in the archaic (diverse cultures and their linguistic/pictographic systems and scripts), the multi-media (from paint to light and beyond), the intermedial (the performative blended with the pictorial, for example), the still as well as the moving, and the poetic (especially the poetic) at the same time. For Rotelli, poetry is the language, in his words, “of the innermost depths RI�WKH�KXPDQ�KHDUW�´��8QVXUSULVLQJO\�PDQ\�RI�KLV�ZRUNV�around the globe in recent years have engaged the words of poetry both as literary expressions and as signs and visual forms. He is also interested in the speaking of poets as well as WKH�YLVXDO�DSSHDUDQFH�RI�WKHLU�ZRUGV���$QG�KH�LV�±�SHUKDSV�¿UVW�and foremost – an artist of light.

– Hollis Clayson, Director, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities, and Professor of Art History, March 5, 2013

MARCO NEREO ROTELLI IS AN INTERNATIONALLY-KNOWN ITALIAN VISUAL ARTIST WHO HAS BEEN ARTIST IN RESIDENCE IN THE ALICE KAPLAN INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY DURING THE WINTER QUARTER OF 2013.

LANGUAGES OF THE WORLDCurated by Hollis Clayson

Alice Kaplan Institute for the HumanitiesWinter 2013 Artist in Residence Marco Rotelli

Marco Nereo Rotelli will present the artwork he has completed during his term as Artist-in-Residence at the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern 8QLYHUVLW\��:RUNV�ZLOO�LQFOXGH�WKH�³9LGHRODQJXDJH´�VHULHV��in which the chromatic-spatial dimension interacts with the poetic word in compositions that recall videogame screens, and “Diary,” a pictorial diary dedicated to the light off Lake Michigan, which the artist photographed daily and transferred to small, 20 x 20 cm canvases that appear to be windows RSHQLQJ�RQWR�LQ¿QLW\��$W�ODVW��WKH�DUWZRUNV�³(QLJPD´�ZLOO�be exhibited: a series of papers drawn to design the light installation planned at the Field Museum in Chicago. During the opening there will be a performance by Michael K. Meyers and Marco Nereo Rotelli.

WORDS

Art, Music, Poetry

Light installation by Marco Nereo RotelliCurated by Thomas Haskell Simpson

Poetic readings byAna Castillo, Reginald Gibbons, Arica Hilton, Parneshia Jones, Elise Paschen, Ed Roberson, Jennifer Scapettone, Rachel WebsterCurated by Arica Hilton

Musical and vocal performances byAnthony Bellino – trumpet, Sheridan Brown – oboe, Veronique Filloux – soprano, Michael Milazzo – trombone, -DPHV�7KRPDV�5HHVH�±�WHQRU�DQG�FRQGXFWRU��6R¿D�Troncoso – sopranoCurated by Alessandra Visconti

Latin ChorusFrancesca Tataranni, Pam Kathleen Keller, Blake Alexander Mandell, Linda Pei, Joshua Harry Perry, Holliday Langford Shuler, Brian James Earl, Maria V Kovalchuk, Michael Lowry Lamble, Arpan Patel, Emily Pauline Davidson, Sarah Rebecca Robinson, Katie Elizabeth Hartsock

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Tom Simpson: What is your medium?Marco Nereo Rotelli: The question makes me think of something the poet Edoardo Sanguineti said about himself: “My style is to have no style.” I use whichever medium will serve the project I am working on, ranging from new technologies - as in my laser works - to ancient ones, such as sculpture, painting, watercolor, but also installations and even happenings. Everything to its proper use, and no given place for anything.TS:�:LWK�WKLV�NLQG�RI�ÀXLGLW\�DQG�ZLWKRXW�D�¿[HG�PHGLXP��ZKHUH�ZRXOG�you say the artwork takes place?MNR: Probably in my head. I know of course that McLuhan said the medium is the message, but I don’t think in terms of media: I try to make the medium a vehicle of the meanings that interest me. But there is a common denominator to my work: that poetry is the language of the intimo umano - that is, of the innermost depths of the human heart.TS: Is this intimo umano a shared or a private space?MNR: It is always intimate and individual, but the heart’s depths can be a shared space, because poetry is composed of human breath. The intimo umano can include an entire people. Poetry is breath that becomes Word. What distinguishes humans as humans is the capacity for language. In fact, the use of words can itself be a work of art. For WKH�)HVWLYDO�RI�7ZR�:RUOGV�LQ�6SROHWR�WHQ�RU�¿IWHHQ�\HDUV�DJR��,�VLPSO\�laid down a white carpet and invited poets to stand on the carpet and speak poetry. The medium in this case was breath even more than it was the body. As an artist, it’s true that I do need material, whether that material be written, sculpted, inscribed by laser, or painted. It is always a question of rendering the word material. Alchemically, the raw PDWHULDO�RI�WKH�ZRUG�LV�UHVSLUDWLRQ��WKH�EUHDWK��7KH�¿UVW�SRHWU\�ZDV�RUDO��as in the Homeric tradition, the ancient Greeks who recited their epic

by Tom SimpsonFebruary 27, 2013 | Kaplan Artist-in-Residence Studio

MARCO NEREO

ROTELLI

tales aloud. Speaking takes what may have originated in the mind or hand of the poet and extends it into a new dimension; it brings it into the world and makes something new of it. Once spoken, the word occupies a temporal space. I do not wish to create art as a provocation, as some do, but as an evocation of the human. I want to VXPPRQ�SHRSOH�WR�UHÀHFWLRQ��,�ZDQW�WR�summon a particular kind of attitude toward life.TS: We traditionally tend to think of DUW�DV�¿[LQJ�VRPHWKLQJ�LQ�D�SHUPDQHQW�form, but it sounds as though you are trying to evoke something that is always evanescent.MNR: I cannot be anything but myself. These small canvases here in the studio: thirty works in thirty days. Each day Elena takes a photo of the color of the sky over the lake at a precise time of day. I transfer those colors to these canvases, and construct on them symbologies built of scripts of different languages. It’s not visual poetry: the word reaches me from somewhere else. My works on paper here that use numbers – they represent an endless journey of the mind traveling within itself. You might say my medium is leggerezza – lightness. I think of words as wings. Light is the same; it is weightlessness itself. In my laser installations, light settles onto buildings, bodies, trees: everything shifts toward lightness.TS: You incarnate evanescence.MNR: I’m aware of the total transience (caducità) of appearances. I have worked on catastrophes, on moments of sudden immense change. I did a work on the destruction of the )HQLFH�7KHDWUH�LQ�9HQLFH�E\�¿UH��D�ZRUN�RQ�WKH�HDUWKTXDNH�LQ�&KLQD��,�¿QG�that speaking about catastrophe leads to epiphany, and epiphanies contain hope.

TS: What would you like people to take from your work at Deering Library?MNR: What lasts is memory, memory working in the minds of many people. Anyone who participates in this event in any way will not forget it. An acceptable metaphor might be a NLVV��\RX�UHPHPEHU�\RXU�¿UVW�NLVV��RU�certain kisses, because there’s nothing else like it. These memories remain in you and become you. The event should be like that, including the work of everyone who contributes to GHYHORSLQJ�WKH�SURMHFW��,Q�WKLV�ÀRDWLQJ�era, the material results of the work can be made more or less permanent, in the form, for example, of sketches and YouTube clips, but that remains almost against my own will.TS: What would you like to remember of this work, and what would you like others to remember?MNR: For me, it is wonderful to see the students who come to meet me and talk to me. I’d like to remember the students and teachers I’ve met. For the piece itself, where I have asked poets to write about trees, I’d like to summon people to think of trees as spiritual elements. The poet Mario Luzi said that trees are bridges between the sky – heaven – and earth, and that they are equinoctial - a center of gravity, a balance point. The work VKRXOG�RSHQ�D�GLPHQVLRQ�IRU�UHÀHFWLRQ��introduce conditions that allow for self-interrogation. The fruit of poetry is a luminous question. I would like WKLV�HYHQW�PDNH�XV�UHÀHFW�RQ�WKH�nature of nature. As a bridge between earth and sky, trees evoke vertical possibility, which is what I hope words can become. Today words mostly crash around horizontally, scream-by-scream, and lose meaning. Words instead should be vertical bridges. This is the real goal of a poem.

Trees Die But the Dream Remains Ezra Pound

+LVWRULF�1RUWKZHVWHUQ�8QLYHUVLW\�/LEUDU\��GHVLJQHG�E\�-DPHV�Gamble Rogers) will be transformed by Marco Nereo Rotelli

into a page of luminous poetry, becoming the projection screen for poems about trees donated by the poets’ invited. During the installation, Rotelli will conduct a performance entitled,

“The poetry way”, in which students will inscribe poems on a long scroll that will wrap around the library, becoming a path

of poetry through the trees. Simultaneously, the poets will read their poems projected on the building’s façade, accompanied by

a musical score inspired by the sounds of nature.

THE MEDITATION OF TREES Parneshia Jones

An orchestra of trees bristles man’s inferno. Bygone of breath and bone bibled between iron wood branches, humbled with folktales of wanderers and warriors.

Shallow graves of war scripture man-made calligraphy in relic leaves and promiscuous winds.

Resurrected moon and dawnawakens the rustic deities, igniting lanterns of ash covered prayers.

Spring is the eternal reckoner.Drawing sap from the wooded wombsof rooted chandeliers. They remain the earthy immortals,nature’s witness to man’s calamity and search for paradise.

CITY ECLOGUE: WORDS FOR ITEd Roberson ������%HDXWLIXOO\�ÀRZHULQJ�WUHHV�\RX¶G�H[SHFW�VKRXOG�ULVH�IURP�VHHGV�ZKRVH�ÀXWWHULQJ�WR�WKH�JURXQG�is the bird’s delicate alight or the soft petal stepping its image into the soil but here come the city’s trucks bumping up over the curb dropping the tight balls of roots in a blueprint outon the actual site in the streetsomeone come behind with a shovel will bury. City of words we’re not supposed to useWhere everyone is lying when it’s said these wordsDUH�QRW�DFFXUDWH��WKDW�WKLV�VKLW�LV�QRW�WKH�ÀRZHULQJ�that shit off the truck and not the gut bless of bird and animal dropping isn’t somehow just as natural a distributionas the wild bloom The trees are delivered in ordered speech as is GLUW�PRXWK�FXUVH�DQG�JUDI¿WLto where the $backed perches want them. Bought with the experience that thought up city. The idea of the placetramples up its rich regenerate headof crazy mud into the mutant’s changling potion.Committee cleanliness and its neatdistricts for making nice nice and for making sinmay separate its pick of celebrant monsters; but which it is now isirrelevant as the numbered street sequence isto archival orders of drifting sand.:KDW�LW�ZLOO�EH������WKH�VWLQNLQJ�ÀRZHUWKH�GLI¿FXOW�IUXLW����ELWWHU����FRPSOH[������WKH�WUXQN������±�DOO on the clock on the tree rings’ clockhistory’s section cross cutportrait landscapeit already knows compostsinto ours the grounds for city.

can walk withouta frame, hewhose exions last and saw intolimbs livid stillthe sum, comic, dome-hosting wall shopcaptivating everything ina proleptic sale while sand-horse negotiateshis clop versusVRPH�ÀRRU�RQH erected in ardorprostrate again andhappy penultimate slough-opening as the newsthat distracts fromspectral sass, downing darkling you weren’t personal last Saturdayas ponies cyclical

laced the publicgrasses compulsorily beforeour bower got scanned despite a standup’s lawnly heathand harebells having become grammar’s shortageon the stage hussing up to a cardboard cloudpassed limb fromlimb without its ��������������������������������������������ÀDPH

. . . (IN EXION)Jennifer Scappettone

THE AFFECT OF ELMSReginald Gibbons

Across the narrow street from the old hotel that nowhouses human damage temporarily–deranged, debilitated, but up and around in their oddpostures, taking their meds, or maybe trading them–

is the little park, once a neighboring mansion’s side yard,where beautiful huge old elm trees, long in that place,stand in a close group over the mown green lawnwatered and well kept by the city, their shapes expressive:

the affect of elms is of struggle upward and survival,of strength--despite past grief (the bowed languorous arches)and torment (limbs in the last stopped attitude of writhing)–

while under them wander the deformed and tentativepersons, accompanied by voices, counting their footsteps,exhaling the very breath the trees breathe in.

RINGS IN RINGSRachel Webster

Waking into the tiers of the leaves, I wasshedding age and density.

I could seewhat looks like stillness

is the tree’s terrifying rapidity,cells spinning, splittinginto matter ringing

with echoes,while sap runs the muscle in blood’s gyres of gravity.

(Even skin a thickeningwhere the accruing heart encounters its bounds.)

Teach me, treeno striving but joy in being a growing

wild as timetendriling down and wide,tining out

into weather, sky.

TREE AGREEMENTElise Paschen

The neighbor calls the Siberian Elma “weed” tree, demands we hack

it down, says the leaves overwhelmhis property, the square backyard.

He’s collar-and-tie. A weed tree?Branches screen buildings, subway tracks,

his patch of yard. We disagree, claim back the sap, heartwood, wild bark.

He declares the tree “hazardous.”We shelter under leaf-hoard, crossway

for squirrels, branch house for sparrows, jays.The balcony soaks up the shade.

Chatter-song drowns out cars below.

Sun branches down. Leaves overwhelm.The tree will stay. We tell him “no.”Root deep through pavement, Elm.

A LITTLE PRAYER FOR THE TREESAna Castillo I wonder if in heavenSomeone seeshow each dayan acre is felledsomewhere in the world. We will all diea more or less natural death.But I pray that Someone BigWith Big words,Big VoiceAbove or on earth,Beyond or below,Will raise a Big handAnd stopThe killing of the trees.

I HEARD AN OAK TREE Arica Hilton And it was in a garden I heard that sound,A deep groan, like a bass note searching for the root.

I heard a collision, like hands pushing aside dirt, clearing a path for lightto pour into the center of the earth. I heard a chordechoing rumours of sunsets kissing a canopy of treesAnd strains of rain streaming life into your limbs. I heard the Knowing that we belong to SamenessTo earth, to sun, to stars,to mountains, oceans, trees….Elements forming you, forming me. With the window open (the way you like to sleep)I heard an oak tree lamenting in the breeze, “I was here before you, rooted, like you, reaching, like you.”