<nettime> EMOTIONAL SYSTEMS, contemporary art between emotion and reason

[Alessandro Ludovico <a.ludovico@neural.it>]

Palazzo Strozzi (Florence, Italy) announces the exhibition
EMOTIONAL SYSTEMS
from 30 November 2007 to 3 February 2008
http://www.palazzostrozzi.org/Sezione.jsp?idSezione=274&idSezioneRif=165

The event marks the inauguration of the CCCS - Centre For Contemporary
Culture Centre La Strozzina at the Palazzo Strozzi, a space created
as a platform for the vast range of practices that characterize
contemporary art and culture.

The exhibition space is located in the recently restored rooms
under the magnificent inner courtyard in Palazzo Strozzi known as
La Strozzina. In the past, these spaces housed the cellars of the
Palazzo, a veritable jewel of the Italian Renaissance. From the end of
the Second World War until the great flood in 1966, these rooms hosted
the most important exhibitions held in Florence. The new centre has
a total of eleven rooms of different sizes, with a total floor area
of 850 square metres. The approach chosen by the CCCS is to present
a programme that features not only thematic exhibitions, but also
regular installations by independent curators and, film and video
cycles, workshops, performances and lectures.

"The CCCS is a place for contemporary culture," stresses Franziska
Nori, the new centre's Project Director, "where projects will
tackle aspects of urban planning, economics, social and political
development, the sciences, technology as well as aesthetics and
ethics, as contemporary art itself has already broken free of the
individual disciplinary approach. The programme thus developed will
enable visitors to experience and examine both the heterogeneity of
contemporary art and a range of different curatorial and interpretive
standpoints."

The inaugural installation - Emotional Systems, contemporary art
between emotion and reason, 30 November 2007 to 3 February - develops
in three clearly distinct yet complementary phases: an Exhibition, a
Publication and a programme of Lectures designed to investigate the
topic of emotions, proposing a reinterpretation of the correlation
between the contemporary artist, the work of art and the user, in the
light of the latest discoveries in the neurological sciences about the
human brain and its effects on the emotions.

Curated by Franziska Nori and Martin Steinhoff, the exhibition is
the focal point of Emotional Systems. The exhibition presents works
by contemporary artists who engage, in different ways, and some more
explicitly than others , with the corporal and sensorial, but also
rational and cognitive aspects of the experience of emotions, both in
creating the works and in perceiving them.

The artists in the exhibition include: Bill Viola (USA), William
Kentridge (South Africa), Yves Netzhammer (Switzerland), Katharina
Grosse (Germany), Christian Nold (Great Britain), Maurice Benayoun
(France), Teresa Margolles (Mexico) Andrea Ferrara alias Ongakuaw
(Italy) and the poets Elisa Biagini, Antonella Anedda and Valerio
Magrelli. The participating artists all work with different media.
They have been chosen for the different ways in which their works
emotionally affect the public, a process in which empathy often plays
a significant role. Visitors will find themselves being involved at
sensorial, cognitive and emotional levels.

Throughout the exhibition, visits will be accompanied by an art
education programme (especially created for the project by Barbara
Campaner) that will enable visitors to interact with the various
different works and explore the exhibition's themes.

In addition to essays by the two curators, the bilingual catalogue
published by Silvana Editoriale, comprises original writings and
excerpts by internationally renowned scholars, including the
neurologists and neurological scientists Antonio Damasio and Joseph
LeDoux, philosophers and anthropologists Ronald De Sousa, Peter
Goldie, Martha Nussbaum and William Reddy and the art historian,
David Freedberg. The theme they explore in their interdisciplinary
comparison is the rationality of emotions and, in Freedberg's words,
the "relations between the formal aspects of an image and the
emotional responses" of the user.

The lectures develop the exhibition's theme from a multidisciplinary
and scientific standpoint, achieved in direct encounters between
Italian academics and experts from a variety of disciplinary
backgrounds. Thursday evenings will be dedicated to psychologists,
philosophers and anthropologists, who will present their theories,
while Fridays are earmarked for poetry readings and musical
performances. The programme involves researchers such as Giovanni
Lucignani, Andrea Pinotti, Emilia Barile and Luigi Pagliarini, while
the poets include Elisa Biagini, Antonella Anedda and Valerio Magrelli

Florence, November 2007


EMOTIONAL SYSTEMS
CCCS, Palazzo Strozzi, Piazza Strozzi, 50123 Florence (Italy)
30 November 2007 - 3 February 2008
Opening hours: 11.00 a.m. - 8.30 p.m. Closed on Mondays.
Tickets: ? 5.00 single entry; ? 7.00 multiple 
entry (up to five times in one month, including 
lectures)
Catalogue: Silvana Editoriale

INFO
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi (Foundation)
Press and communications office: Lavina Rinaldi; 
l.rinaldi@fondazionepalazzostrozzi.it
Tel. +39.055.2776461/ 06
Fax. +39.055.2646560
http://www.strozzina.it

CLP Relazioni Pubbliche
Tel. +39.02.433403 - +39.02.36571438 - fax +39.02.4813841
press@clponline.it

This press release and accompanying images are 
also available on the website 
http://www.clponline.it
--


Alessandro Ludovico
Neural Magazine - English (http://neural.it/) 
Italian (http://www.neural.it/neural_it/)
Latest Printed Issue - http://www.neural.it/art/2007/01/neural_26.phtml
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