Clemente Ciarrocca
Until This I Mean This
o b e l u s 1
49 Forster Str.
10999 Berlin
timeline:
opening Saturday 11th May 2024, 1—6pm
day and night
the work waits
reading Sunday 23rd June 2024, 3pm—
We shed, as in,
(of a tree or other plant) allowed (leaves or fruit) to fall to the ground,
(of a reptile, insect, etc.) allowed (skin or shell) to come off, to be replaced by another one that has grown underneath,
(of a mammal) lost (hair) as a result of moulting, disease, or age,
took off (clothes),
we had the property of repelling (water or a similar substance),
we discarded (something undesirable, superfluous, or outdated
we casted or gave off (light),
accidentally allowed (something) to fall off or spill,
we eliminated part of an (electrical) power load by disconnecting circuits. We looked you in the eyes, we shed further, you looked us in the eyes, we shed further. Cammisa & Steven read to us from The Sluts. Felix from his Sex Shop Dispatch. Jakob from his notes on longing, yearning, craving. Eliana, Lotta & Johanna read to us from Kathy Acker’s Demonology. I read from Mea's words. We whispered secrets to each other, loved underneath, so that we may not miss each other.
Clemente Ciarrocca, Until This I Mean This, Installation View
Until This I Mean This is a collection of works for exhibition. All produced in the 78 days preceding the opening of the exhibition space to the public, the pieces function as edges, doodles, pastimes, traces and debris of a journey of flight, or perhaps, of landing.
The works are exhibited as decor in a lover’s bedroom (un’alcòva) where the intimacy of pillow feathers has exploded to take over the entire floor — or maybe, the feathers were just shed in a beat by a pair of huge wings. Above the bedpost, light comes into the space through a window overlaid with frames of a mouth pronouncing the word "loss. Mysterious clusters of nouns obstruct the electrical outlets on the walls.
‡
Mea, Precious Angel: Provocations toward a Modularity of the Abyss, presented as the companion text to the show, is the journey Until This I Mean This refers to.
Mea is an experiment in falling disguised as an attempt to fly. Drawing on the notion of the erotic articulated by Audre Lorde in her seminal 1978 speech Uses of the Erotic, the text dives into the ‘limic’ as a further, undefining feeling and emergence of deep erotism. Limic logic is a kind of attention to the lush, rampant space — the limit — flourishing between two whose individuation and identification are suspended, letting feeling take the full lead.
In the narrative, identification and identity are understood in connection to their Latin root, idem, meaning 'sameness', standing in contrast to the unbridled diversity of experience. The text weaves together a tapestry of references from academic writings to poetry and literature, eventually linking the 'logic of the limit' to the concept of the alcove — a notion that traces back objectification to the intimate, (I)ndividual realm of daily life. Mea's conclusion is unforgiving: that dimension whereby the unknown is casted into nothingness—the abyss, is modular, meaning, essentially a-semantic: it originates within a subjectual intimacy antecedent to and more profound than discoursive categories such as gender, race, religion or economic class.
Clemente Ciarrocca, Mea, Precious Angel: Provocations toward a Modularity of the Abyss, companion text to the show, back cover
Clemente Ciarrocca, Until This I Mean This, Installation View, the alcove
Clemente Ciarrocca, Until This I Mean This, Installation View, the alcove
Clemente Ciarrocca, Loss (detail)
2024
64 laser prints on vinyl, window
118 x 217 cm
Clemente Ciarrocca, Until This I Mean This, Installation View, the alcove
Clemente Ciarrocca, The Alcove (Learn Sowing on Scorched Earth)
2024
laser prints on vinyl, silk
40 x 50 cm
Clemente Ciarrocca, Until This I Mean This, Installation View, the mind
Clemente Ciarrocca, Until This I Mean This, readings in the alcove, Sunday 23rd June 2024
Clemente Ciarrocca, Until This I Mean This, readings in the alcove, Sunday 23rd June 2024
Clemente Ciarrocca, Until This I Mean This, readings in the alcove, Sunday 23rd June 2024
to request the full documentation please email obelus.obelus.obelus[at]gmail[dot]com