TIRANA, Sept. 17 – Italy’s Fabrizio Bellomo is the third artist-in-residence at the Tirana Art Lab for 2015. Bellomo’s research and work in the past years has focused on the relationship between human and machines, be it old mechanical machines or smart phones of the new generation, for the artist they are quite the same thing. His main interest lies in the way how this relationship shapes, changes and modifies the identity of both elements, organizers say.
“The machine has the ability to transform the human into a machine” writes Oscar Wilde. “We could say that the working environment, that is still parcelized, and the professional identity of the individual are strongly connected with the tool (personal computer or hammer drill) being used, and resulting from the relationship with the machine,” says the Tirana Art Lab center for contemporary art.
In Albania, Bellomo has been hypnotized by the sceneries he has witnessed in some crossroads and roundabouts in major cities, where groups of workers (each of them equipped with his machine) sit and wait ready to provide themselves to the best offer.
Another symbiotic relationship with the machine that has caught the interest of Bellomo, is that of a group of Roma and Egyptians (an absolute majority in the recycling of urban waste) that manually modify, personalize and serialize their motorcycles according to their needs. While for the majority of citizens in Tirana, their identity is being characterized, shaped and modified in relation with this device.
Bellomo has been analyzing the same process of identification in the employees of the industry of spectacle and entertainment, with whom he has collaborated for the realization of a film. In the field of television and film, he has observed an analogue identification of employees with the machines.
The exhibition will open on September 30.
