Arcana

Multi-purpose event, painting exhibition and guided tour

Building the Red Spire – video installation

Textile sculpture 6 m high, light and sound installation; materials: fabric, iron, wood, paper, lamps, stereo system, small lights, Red Ribbon
Structure built by Paolo Santarsiere; installation by Paolo Santarsiere and Rocco Caldarola
Nova Siri, August 2000

Photo: Nino Oriolo

“Living Art, entering the Work of Art”

Arcana, the Red Spire: learning by absorption through the skin

Photo: Giulio Orioli

Arcana, the Purple Pyramid

…regaining a conscious instinctiveness…

Voices from the depths: testimonies from August in Nova Siri

“Beyond the heartbeat, I entered my heart…” (N.D.)

“Following the path of the Red Ribbon… the slow search in the darkness of the mind… led me to a living organism, pulsing with energy. Contact with the water cleared my gloomy thoughts… with great tension I decided to go in. I was inside the organism! Life? Death? Certainly birth. Then the organism gave birth to me again, and I am ready once more for a new search… a beautiful sensation, emotion, tension” (Angela P.)

“Immense emotion, intense sweating and a strong arrhythmia. In that moment I was alone with myself: too beautiful! Then the feeling that I couldn’t take any more… I came out… Thank you to whoever still makes us feel such emotions…” (Anna)

“Bewilderment, a sense of emptiness… Entering a mammoth work and then finding myself in a small space somehow… overwhelmed me. It was like… dissolving.” (F.F.)

“Following the thread… curiosity, going in… fear, agitation: after a few seconds inside the red structure – the beating rhythm, the soft coloured light – I began to feel a great calm.” (Felicia D.)

“Very intense sensations… the sound inside the work heightens them, bringing me a sense of well-being, of protection…” (Mariella)

“I would like there to be many structures like this around our cities, to relax and feel better” (Grazia)

“Going into the work I felt a sense of protection, as if I were still in my mother’s womb… sensations, memories(?), ancestral memory” (Micaela)

“I had the feeling of going into… an egg.” (Mariella)

“I felt very relaxed: in a small red shell I entered my heart.” (Nunzia O.T.)

“I felt protected, carried, speechless, happy…” (Ida)

“Finding myself inside the Pyramid as if I were being rocked… a journey on a sailing boat…” (Maria)

“I strongly felt the sense of Mystery” (Carmine)

“Once inside, I danced… I would have stayed for hours…” (G.I.)

“I am walking along an imaginary road, where the heart beats and the mind is free… Where does this road lead? Into the deep self, where every sensation is absorbed and the I expands to infinity” (I.L.)

“A thousand colours around my soul, still amid all this, even though the only dominant colour is red… a swaying movement and a vital beat.” (Maurizio D.)

“I felt the blood pulsing hard in my veins… it was as if I were inside my own body…” (D.M.)

“At first I was afraid, then it seemed I was inside my mother’s tummy, alone, inside a world that beats…” (Roberta, a little girl)

“Frightened by the colour. Horror… An oppressive feeling of being enveloped. The fear began outside, with the shadows.” (?)

“I felt I was in hell” (Bart)

“I was dead, I was in my coffin” (M.G., who went into the Pyramid and came straight out)

“I was in the bowels of a volcano” (Antonio)

“Moments of lightness… My mind flew into the void” (Gigi)

“Curiosity drives you in… the sculpture envelops you and makes you feel serene. The sound envelops the soul.” (T.)

“I was in a spaceship, flying into infinity. Coming out, my head was spinning; the fast heartbeat lasted a long time…” (Roberto)