In Trapped, you begin with the Derridean concept of hauntology, formed by merging the crisis of the verb “to haunt” with the noun “ontology.” Through hauntology, Derrida challenges the conventional notion of ontology, which defines being as a presence that remains unchanged, by introducing the figure of the specter. Do the nocturnal specters that populate your works symbolize a virtual world that challenges the reality and its nature?
The Derridian concept of hauntology serves as a valuable analytical framework for my practice. Central to this concept is the notion of the specter as a compromised presence, an entity that operates within the virtual world of what no longer exists yet continues to exert influence and that which is not yet but whose effects precede its actualization. These are the characteristics of a hauntological being, torn between the compulsion to repeat and the disintegration of memory. The specter embodies a deferred non-origin, an ontology that encompasses both its teleology and its eschatology.
The Trapped series focuses on nocturnal visions, natural elements and animals that activate infrared photo traps with movement. Based on what do you choose the places where you place the lenses and how do you organise the work in practice?
The images are the result of a selection made from an archive of a few hundred photos taken between 2017 and 2018 in some woods at the base of the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines. In my practice, I explore affective places, and memories observed at night, in a hypnagogic-like state. Furthermore, reflection on the medium is inevitable. What is captured are narrative fragments far from any human sight that only an automated medium, through an invisible flash, can catch. The next step is printing on reflective fabric, which allows each bright part of the image to obtain the iridescent and reflective quality of the fabric. In this way, the image can be reactivated, and the observer can stage the same dynamic of the image acquisition, shedding light on its surface.
What you present is something abandoned by man that, out of sight, freely returns to life. Where does the obsession with this nocturnal landscape aesthetic come from?
My work often features nocturnal scenes explored with a flashlight in hand, ambivalent, intimate, and disturbing landscapes, and desaturated visions – the reason why black and white is predominant is perceptive, penumbral vision is in greyscale. The works consist of immersions “below” or “inside”, internal abysses that I feel the need to probe, memories, events, and relationships on which I feel the need to shed new light. The dimension often evoked is that of the threshold, of a sensitive state such as half-asleep. Specifically in the Trapped series, or in past cycles such as Spettri and Con il rischio di perdersi, the literary topos of the forest also emerge as a fairy-tale place of loss, the backdrop to any childhood story.
Darkness is a fundamental part of your works, but light plays a predominant role. What is its symbolic significance in your works and how does it interact with the elements represented?
It is about shedding light on memories, private or collective, excavating and reconstructing, and observing how the past continues to shape the present in a form of performative interpretation, an interpretation that shapes the interpreted matter. The light in my works has an exploratory value, proportional to its ability to pierce the pervasive dark- ness, whether within an environmental installation or the focal point of photographic works. Light is the quintessential means of research within works that materialize clouded visions, ambiguous nocturnes, and the imprints left by a decaying memory.