brucia baby, burn! / MATILDE CASSARINI 2021
On the occasion of the festival Out Of Order organized by several independent spaces in Bologna, Parsec presents burn baby, burn! by Matilde Cassarini, the last site-specific installation of the project Close ( ), which will be accessible exclusively through the letterbox in the shutter of Parsec. The fire is the zero point from which the creative force is born. Once the trigger takes part in the creation of combustion, there is no turning back. The fire was given to men by Prometheus, defying the authority of the gods; the heart of the Buddhist monk who self-immolated to protest against the Vietnamese government was found intact in its ashes. Only those who have no chance of being heard can speak the truth, only those who speak from a house that the flames are implacably consuming, says Giorgio Agamben. Cassarini’s reflection opens up to the meanings preserved in burning and gathers around this same nucleus the interventions of FV, Alberto Restucci and Giulia Sofi, that are linked to the visual elements of which the installation is composed. The image of fire is decomposed inside the space, deconstructed into different elements, suggesting the multiple nature of this element, its destructive and creative force at the same time, its power to remove and unite. In this way, a shared place is born, strengthening the bonds and preserving remains of ashes, traces of what is no longer and will be transformed into something new.
Matilde Cassarini (Florence, 1992) lives and works between Bologna and Florence. In 2015 she obtained her BA in scenography, and in 2018 she graduated with an MA in Photography, both at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. Interested in the systems of representation of utopian and dystopian imaginaries, her research revolves around the concepts of temporality, science fiction, space and futuristic visions. She uses various contemporary languages, such as photography, video, artist’s book and installation.