On Thursday 28 April 2011, a public of over one hundred saw the cortile of the McKim, Mead, and White Building at the American Academy in Rome transformed by a collaborative installation entitled X LOCUS. The installation, the creation of four current AAR Fellows, will also be on display from 8-10 PM on Friday 29 April.
X LOCUS features environmental media by Founders Rome Prize Fellows in Architecture Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller, sound by Elliott Carter Rome Prize Fellow in Musical Composition Paul Rudy, and lyrics by Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Modern Italian Studies Jennifer Scappettone.
X LOCUS: Cortile Poem (SoundCloud audio file)
X LOCUS, Thursday 28 April 2011. Photo: current Fellow Adrian Van Allen
X LOCUS explores senses of dislocation and repatriation in the communities of the Academy, Rome, and the respective backgrounds of those who pass through here via traversals of sound, text, and visual projections onto the introverted cortile space.
X LOCUS, Thursday 28 April 2011. Photo: Adrian Van Allen
X LOCUS, Thursday 28 April 2011. Photo: Adrian Van Allen
The installation raises issues of placelessness and loss which cannot be represented as visual images. The organizers write, “Through a subversive use of the two-dimensional image in these shared spaces, we mean to generate experiences of reorientation.”
Gathering at the sonic center of X LOCUS, Thursday 28 April 2011. Photo: Corey Brennan
X LOCUS collaborators clockwise, from upper left: Jennifer Scappettone; Ersela Kripa; Paul Rudy; Stephen Mueller. All photos: Star Black