Book launch of Daily Dense Dance Desiderio

With

Riccardo Benassi, artist

Andrea Bellini, director of the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève

Alberto Salvadori, director of Fondazione ICA Milano

Fondazione ICA Milano presents, on Friday, March 1, 2024 at 6 pm, the first Italian launch of Daily Dense Dance Desire (DDDD), a new editorial project by Riccardo Benassi produced by Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève with the support of Italian Council XI Edition (2022), Fonds Cantonal d'Art Contemporain, Galleria ZERO... and published by DISTANZ Verlag.

This volume extends Riccardo Benassi's creative experience to a concrete material such as paper by focusing on the 365-day film and audio-visual work Daily Dense Dance Desiderio (DDDD), originally commissioned by the Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement (BIM) in 2021 curated by Andrea Bellini and DIS, co-produced with Fonds Cantonal d'Art Contemporain Genève as part of the MIRE project. The work, strongly connected with Daily Desiderio Domestico (DDD), the permanent installation in the spaces of Fondazione ICA Milano, is realized in the transmission of a daily message by the artist, which is shared to the public through a digital screen.

Playing on the labile boundaries between the organic and inorganic, man and machine, predictive computing and mental landscape, Daily Dense Dance Desiderio (DDDD) creates an uninterrupted, constant, and techno-poetic flow, which is rendered in the volume through the collection of the 365 messages spread by the artist, for the first time stopped on paper in the form of fleeting thoughts.

In the book, the artist's messages - written in English, French, German and Italian - and the photographic documentation of the work are also accompanied by a conversation between Riccardo Benassi and Andrea Bellini, "Co-presence of the living and the dead: writing, making art, finding a place in the world in the age of artificial intelligence," and a text by Noa Merlini and Beatrice Sartori dedicated to the genealogy of the Daily Desiderio body of work.

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Riccardo Benassi (Cremona, Italy 1982) lives and works in Berlin (DE), Bergamo (IT) and online. He uses text and sound to question the limits of technology from an existentialist perspective, implementing poetic language in time-based environmental installations, video-essays, performances, and spatial interventions made for public and private commissions. Recently, his work has been exhibited at Palazzo Grassi / Punta della Dogana, Venice (2023); Fondazione ICA, Milan (solo exhibition) (2023); MAXXI, L'Aquila (2022); GAM - Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin (2022); ar/ge kunst, Bolzano (2022); Macro, Rome (2022); Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement, Geneva (2021); MoCA Taipei, Taiwan (2021); Museion, Bozen (2020); ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe (solo exhibition) (2020); Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (solo exhibition) (2019); Fondazione ICA Milano, Milan (2019); Galleria ZERO..., Milan (2019); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (solo exhibition) (2016). Riccardo Benassi is Professor of Sound Design at Politecnico delle Arti in Bergamo since 2013, in IUAV Venice since 2022 and Visual Art guest lecturer at NABA - Milan since 2019. He has published: Letters from the passenger seat whit no one at the wheel (Mousse Publishing 2010), Briefly, Ballare (Danilo Montanari 2012), Attimi Fondamentali (Mousse Publishing 2012), Techno Casa (Errant Bodies 2015), Sicilia Bambaataa (NERO Publishing 2015) and Morestalgia (NERO Publishing 2020).

Andrea Bellini is the Director of the Centre dArt Contemporain Genève and Artistic Director of the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement in Geneva. He is the curator of the upcoming Swiss Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, presenting the work of Guerreiro Do Divino Amor. Previous positions include serving as co-director of Castello di Rivoli, director of the art fair Artissima, curatorial advisor to MoMA PS1, and editor-in-chief of Flash Art International. He holds a degree in philosophy (1996) and a postgraduate diploma in archaeology and art history from the University of Siena (2002). Bellini has curated numerous group shows and solo exhibitions, including those of Marina Abramović, Hannah Black, Lisetta Carmi, Roberto Cuoghi, Chiara Fumai, Ernie Gehr, Giorgio Griffa, Sonia Kacem, John McCracken, Nicole Miller, Philippe Parreno, Thomas Schütte and Hannah Weinberger. He has directed various publications to which he contributed with essays or interviews and regularly speaks at academic or art institutions across the world. He transformed the Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement into a platform for production, which has since 2014 allowed to commission new works by artists such as Sophia Al Maria, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Ed Atkins, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Will Benedict, Hannah Black & Juliana Huxtable, Meriem Bennani, DIS, Simon Fujiwara, Kahlil Joseph, Emilie Jouvet, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, James Richards, Wu Tsang and Emily Wardill among others. He just published a novel about the art world, “Storie dell’arte contemporanea”(Timeo editions, Rome).

Alberto Salvadori holds a degree in art history from the University of Pisa. He holds a postgraduate specialization in History of Modern and Contemporary Art of European Countries. He studied at Sussex University and Reading University. In 2001 he received a second-level master's degree in Curatorial Studies from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. From 2003 to 2009 he was curator of the general catalog of the Galleria d'Arte Moderna Palazzo Pitti in Florence. From 2009 to 2016 he was Director of the Marino Marini Museum in Florence, from 2016 to 2023 Curator of Decades at MIART Milan, and from 2007 to 2020 Director of the OAC of the CR Florence Foundation. Salvadori has been part of the boards of several institutions, including Istituzione Musei Civici Bologna, Polimoda Florence, Fondazione Ragghianti Lucca, Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci Prato, and Comitato del Consiglio Italiano Roma. Salvadori is founder and director of ICA Milano since 2019, director of the Archivio Mulas Milano, curator of a book series at the Fondazione Marconi Milano and board member of the Pomodoro Foundation Milan.