Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Elena Cologni

_PGB3073sfocaturaElena Cologni has a BA in Fine Art from Accademia di Belle Arti Brera in Milan; studied Philosophy at Universita’ Statale in Milan; Cologni has an MA in Sculpture from Leeds University and a PhD in Fine Art from University of the Arts, Central Saint Martins College, London, 2004 (CSM, Scholarship). Her academic positions as artist include a Post-Doctorate Fellowship at CSM (2004/06, Arts and Humanities Research Funding), a Research Fellowship at York Saint John’s University (2007/09), a research association to the Commonwealth Intercultural Arts Network (University of Cambridge) (2013/), and allowed to address: research as art practice, documentation of ephemeral art as the work, participatory dialogic approach allowing interdisciplinarity. She also contributes to the Circuit program for young people in Cambridge (ed by Tate and funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation  )

Process is central to her ‘research as art practice’ approach, and she often collaborates with academics and professionals from other disciplines with open formats as part of her process. Her work includes dialogic undertakings resulting in drawings, sculptures, video and text. In her work she aims at sharing experiences of the unstable nature of perception and memorisation of reality through time. Related projects are Mnemonic Present, Un-Folding series of video live installations 2005-2006,  Experiential , including the  residency at the Centre for Contemporary art Glasgow ( Re-Moved at Glasgow international 08, CCA Glasgow, 2008), and at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2009 (Arts Councils of England, Geomemos) .  

Cologni states: ‘ Using video pre-recorded and archival material in the ‘presentness’ of the event, underlines the everyday’s condition of constantly engaging with (and processing) re-presentation of immediate or remote past, to make sense of the present’. The present of the exchange with others (the dialogic) remains a core element in her practice

Her project ROCKFLUID (2011/13-2014/15) is the outcome of a residency at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Experimental Psychology, awarded with two Grant of the Arts, Arts Council of England, and Escalator Visual Art Retreat at Wysing Arts Centre, Escalator live art, Colchester Arts Centre). Adopting an interdisciplinary and dialogic approach, this includes  as series of site specific and participatory works such as  Spa(e)cious (Wysing Art Centre, Galleria Artra Milan, MK gallery Milton Keynes, Philosophy and performance group, performance Studies international and Kingston University Art Research Unit, Bergamo Scienza), Navigation Diagrams (MK Gallery), and U’ Verruzze’ and Balancing (in Radio Materiality, curators Vessel, Bari, Athens Biennale 2013, and at Doppelgaenger Gallery Bari, Italy, 2014).  Her current year long intervention at Impington College’s Gropius building is based on the social implications of the architecture in rural communities in the 30’s and now (in collaboration with local associations, art students, the Gropius Archives, Berlin, Germany, Open Systems Vienna, RIBA London, Cambridge Central Libraries Special Collections, East Film Archive). The dialogic is investigated through Italian pedagogist Danilo Dolci’s reciprocal maieutics which was central to the sculptural and perfomative intervention ‘Lo scarto’ (2015) in Castelvetrano Selinunte (european/Unesco funded through IArt). Learn more here.

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SPA(E)CIOUS, 2012 Wysing Arts Centre, UK, curator Ellie Morgan

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