Measurement:

Variable Dimensions

Danilo Correale

The Istanbul Symphony

2009

 

 

 

 

The Istanbul Symphony is a suite divided into three parts. In its scheme it employs a compositional grid that draws inspiration from the Pentagramma Triangularis, an officinal plant whose structure is in fact triangular. Three drummers perform three pieces by playing the rare cymbals “Istanbul” whose glorious past sends back to the times of the Ottoman Empire when cymbals were handcrafted by the Armenian minority on behalf of the Turkish military bands.
Correale gives the performative event a fundamental evocative role able to recall memories, sensations and perceptions that are both ancient and modern. Owing to the interpretation of the Neapolitan musicians the performance triggers a short circuit that aims at connecting the vibrations of the two towns: Naples and Istanbul.
The various pieces played by the musicians (The Ottoman Empire, The Asian Side, The Urban Transformation) respond to the different documents they used to compose them, while the Turkish geographic maps become the iconographic basis for the whole project.
Also the compositional grammar that will be used while editing the video (that is a cooled performance media proof on show during the second step of the exhibition in Istanbul) can be assessed through a triangular graph. However the geometric figure of the triangle, whose symbology is complex, may represent as well the transcription of the cymbal over the pentagram.
The “mission” of the Istanbul Symphony is reviving the past of the first handcraft productions of Istanbul cymbals and, metaphorically, the past of the town, as the original land of those sounds.
It’s a “memory archive” whose residual token, the defenceless cymbals, is settled in the Museum Project Room recalling once again the triangular scheme, but without keeping any practical function, displayed uniquely for their installation/object value.
It accompanies and completes the installation The Shelf, a shelf with a minimal flavour that represents the rhetoric of the Istanbul Symphony production process. The artist arranges some object over it as if he was displaying something from the past. Shelves usually shows memories, they recall the past times and the displayed objects are charged of an extra semantic value. These are found objects and stuff that the artist draws from the day-to-day reality. The artist takes possession of them. He isolates them and he sets them one close to the other giving birth to a sort of sign alphabet.
In this way part of the preparatory documentation used to structure the difference pieces of the Istanbul Symphony is on show and it becomes a visual index of the installation.
Only apparently the objects look merely displayed, as a matter of fact they are put as if they where on show. Not accidentally may their layout be compared with a musical arrangement, with the Haiku or with a concrete poem. The choice of the object and their cluster reflect their typological affinities and the metonymic relationships with the decks of the installation.

Eventually The Shelf informs in advance of the production of limited edition case that will be presented together with the video of the live performance at Madre, for the second step of the exhibition in Istanbul. The exhibition opens on September 8th as a collateral event of the XI Istanbul International Biennial. In this way ideas, symbols and translations are condensed into the case, which becomes the climax of the whole creative process of the artist.