On Saturday, November 22, MAXXI - Rome’s National Museum of the 21st Century Arts - hosted an afternoon of performances, screenings, and artist talks at “Come Together.” Curated by MAXXI artistic director Hou Hanru, the event offered a forum for artists-in-residence at various foreign Academies in Rome to share their work with the larger community. In addition to the American Academy in Rome, participating institutions included the Academia Belgica, Académie de France – Villa Medici, the Real Academia de Espana, and the Circolo Scandinavo.
“Come Together” was conceived as part of a current exhibition “Open Museum Open City,” which opened at the MAXXI on October 23. Focused on the relationship of the museum with the city and with society, “Open Museum Open City” transformed the museum’s space into a performative stage for dialogue amongst different voices and claims for new social projects. To this end, the fluid areas of the Zaha Hadid-designed structure were emptied of its permanent collection and filled with work created by a group of international and Italian artists, including Bill Fontana, Cevdet Erek, Lara Favaretto and Philippe Rahm. The effort to convert MAXXI into a platform for artistic creation and socially-conscious public debate recognizes the long-standing contributions made by international Academies to the cultural life of Rome. Through this initiative, MAXXI provided a major showcase for their artists, but also a means to develop further collaborations and exchanges between them.
During the installation of his work Sonic Mappings, Bill Fontana was a guest of the American Academy in Rome, which allowed ample opportunity for interaction with Fellows and Residents. Fontana’s musical landscape created for the MAXXI pays tribute to Rome’s Acqua Vergine, the ancient waterway at the heart and soul of Roman civilization. Current Rome Prize Fellow in musical composition Paula Matthusen, whose project also draws on the sounds of Rome’s underground water channels (including the Aqua Traiana, which runs directly under the McKim, Mead & White building), found conversations with Fontana, and his soundscape, particularly inspiring for her own work. A group from the Academy joined the artist at MAXXI as the work was being installed in the main stair hall of the museum.
“Come Together” featured several collaborative works by Fellows at the American Academy in Rome, including the screening of Cynthia Madansky’s 16mm, hand-painted film If Not, (2014), a meditation on love inspired by Sappho’s poem If Not, Winter, translated by Anne Carson. The evocative images shot by Madansky at Ephesus, Turkey, and in Brooklyn, New York, were accompanied by a live musical performance created by the composer Andy Akiho. Later in the program, current Italian Affiliated Fellow Francesca Grilli’s work was interpreted by Benno Steinegger in a discussion of Grilli’s sound installations and performances. After a round-table discussion concluded the first part of the event in Gallery 2A, the crowd moved to Gallery 3 in the heart of MAXXI’s main concourse for a live improvisational performance by Paula Matthusen and Abinadi Meza. Their work, Surface/Re-surface, harvested acoustic material from the social and sonic life of the museum. Engaging the site as a timbral and spatial ecology, the performers sampled and re-populated the aural environment in order to encounter, interact with, and articulate new perceptual possibilities. This performance was enjoyed by an international audience, composed of regular museum visitors, as well as groups from the different foreign Academies. Even the seating was part of the cultural experience—the wooden risers were constructed as part of Cevdet Erek’s work, A Room of Rhythms – Curva (2014).