The work elaborated in collaboration with Binaural Nodar focuses on the linguistic and analytical constructs regarding rural areas and natural spaces, both interpreted as fundamental givens not to be taken as a simple transcription of the form, rather than a multilayered trama made of theoretical and practical understandings. Part of Niccolò Masini’s long-term research trajectory Islands of Time, the multilingual video-essay composition reflects upon the complex mosaic of natural and political subjects related to migratory processes from the rural area of the Viseu Dão Lafões region. From the end of the 19th century, millions of Portuguese emigrated, looking for alternatives to poverty, a subsistence economy, and/or a lack of job opportunities. In that sense, emigration still resonates as part of the memory and is present within Portuguese rural regions. In this rural context, various groups refer to different waves of emigration, those more distant in time, to Brazil, Venezuela, the United States of America, etc., or those more recent, to European countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. These rural areas are today the protagonist of a re-populating phenomenon in receiving people from various continents, in a process opposite of so many Portuguese who precedently emigrated.
POR BEM A NOSSA CASA VEM is a multilingual narrative composition that elaborates upon the practice of highlighting disappearances, a cultural affair mediated with nature intertwining meanings of departure and return. The expression Por bem a nossa casa vem means “you are welcome in our house if you come with good intentions.” Por bem literally means for good, but in Portuguese, it communicates the sense of something done with good intentions, not something is “done” well. In these terms, rural areas, ruins, and liminal spaces can suggest opportunities for spatial investigations and analytical languages of discourse within their territory of reference. A fixed image we conserve of a territory transforms itself into a simulacrum, a symbol of behavior and the culture depicting it. Reestablishing the discourse of using a multinarrative language that is attentive to and aware of the symbolism implied in its formation leads towards retracing the path produced and rediscovering the point, the place of straying. In as much as memory, language plays a crucial role in forming the multilayered trama compelling territorial identity; beyond time, space, and inheritances.
Audio recording of the poem: https://vimeo.com/766942684/95976eaed5
POR BEM A NOSSA CASA VEM - Single-channel multilingual video essay installation, 10’[looped] (2022)
Part of the project research trajectory Islands of Time - location 06 / Vouzela, Viseu Dão Lafões, Portugal. In collaboration with Curator Luis Gomes Da Costa / Binaural Nodar and Vouzela Municipality.
The project is part of the subtheme Global unity and shared futures.
Author
Niccolò Masini
Niccolò Masini is an artist, filmmaker and researcher whose work stands at the intersection of narrative and craft, but also poetry and anthropology. His work seeks to provide a vehicle for observing tangible and intangible processes, mappings, and traces in relationship to borders, identity and postcolonial / post-materialistic discourses. Entwining moving-image, creative methodology, experimental ethnography and teaching, his research engages with the limits of the possible and the impossible by recognizing a starting point in the re-discovery of the indeterminate, the unknown, the unquantifiable. Scrutinizing the inheritances carried within the politics of time, space and memory, recent projects revolved around questions of displacement, diaspora, territorialization/deterritorialization processes, and the histories and legacies of colonialism.
His works and research have been exhibited in several international venues, including, The Museum of Contemporary Art / Moca Skopje (2021/2023); The Watermill Center, New York (2022); The Bali Purnati Center for the Arts, Bali (2022); Amaneï, Aeolian Islands (2021/2022); Palazzo Ducale, Genoa (2018/2020), MUST / Museo Storico Città di Lecce, Lecce (2021), Ring gallery / Meštrović Pavilion, Zagreb (2019); Momo Gallery, Cape Town (2019) and the National Museum of Life and Ethnography of Macedonia and Thrace, Thessaloniki (2019). Among others, residency programs included The Boghossian foundation / Villa Empain, Bruxelles (2024), The Losari Foundation / Yayasan Bali Purnati, Bali (2023), The Watermill Center, New York (2022), Amaneï, Aeolian Islands (2021/2022), La Ira De Dios, Buenos Aires (2021) and Residenze per l’arte / Premio Italia Argentina, Buenos Aires (2019). He received the Miller-Zillmer Foundation Vision into the Future fellowship (2019/2021), the Project Anywhere program (2019 and 2022), VAA - Video Art Award 2019, and, in 2018, he was awarded Best Young Artist Of The Year (Painting & Sculpture) by the GAMMA competition and GM conference of Tokyo. To date, he lives and works between Genoa and the Aeolian Islands.
