NEW PALERMO FELICISSIMA

2018, video installation, produced by In Between Art Film, commissioned by Manifesta 12

JORDI COLOMER

Jordi Colomer, born in Barcelona in 1962, is a Spanish artist who works in the field of sculpture, video-art and installations. At the heart of his work is the investigation of space: physical and real space and the space of performance and representation overlap in the mise-en-scène of the work, producing an experience defined by the artist as “expanded theatre”. Colomer explores the Utopian nature of town planning in large cities, but at the same time presents the dystopic decadence and alienation connected to architecture: the existing space is also made up of disorder and entropy. His works have been exhibited in international museums including the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), the MUMOK (Vienna) and the MACBA (Barcelona).

For New Palermo Felicissima (2018), Jordi Colomer devised and created a lay procession on boats in the sea.

Described through specially-commissioned texts by Palermo-born writer Roberto Alajmo, the video shows the journey of a fishing boat transformed into a hybrid of a tourist ship, an observatory, and a discussion parlor sailing from Sant’Erasmo Marina along Palermo’s southern periphery. A constellation of boats accompanies the transformed boat, as a secular version of the annual procession of patron and protector of Palermo Santa Rosalia, with members of various Palermitan communities on board.

Placed at the back side of Palermo’s historical center, in an unseemingly proximity to it, Sant’Erasmo Marina comprises an amalgam of old buildings, partially abandoned historical remains, along with informal constructions, housing compounds, a small beach, infrastructures, a breakwater and a dock for small ships. It is a place where it is possible to look at Palermo’s southern periphery from, a part of the city’s coast that for many years has been ecologically neglected, unsung by public authorities and omitted in tourist guides. Sant’ Erasmo Marina is yet the center of a small community of fishermen who, for generations, have inhabited the place, and who currently face announced redevelopments of this part of the city that would jeopardize the future of their activities.