I believe that my work is not well known in Italy, so I'd like to go rapidly through a number of interventions that I think are significant, in this way presenting a general idea of its trajectory_an "acupuncture" on some of the more representative points. I will make a distinction based upon the space I used: on the one hand the "protected" space of the art system (galleries, museums, etc.); on the other hand the "public" space, undefined, in such that it could be a road or television... in any case the more difficult and direct spaces. In this way I will alternate the projects realized in protected environments, inside the gallery's walls, with others that took place in open urban spaces. This presentation will have to be quick, so it will be somewhat reduced with regard to the projects' descriptions.

Hoy: Proyecto a travès de Latinoamèrica

I'd like to begin with Hoy: Proyecto a travès de Latinoamèrica, realized between the end of 1975 and the beginning of 1976. Through this project I tried to establish an intense relationship with the cultures and cities in which I did the "actions." The cities were: Buenos Aires, San Paolo, Caracas, and Mexico D.F. The action consisted in one part of my physical presence with a projection on my chest and a microphone that amplified my breathing_elements based on the idea of existence; in the other part there was a series for the newspapers in the cities in which I was staying that represented the ghost in the local press. The audience was in the middle. I am beginning with Proyecto a travès de Latinoamèrica because there are two elements within it upon which a large part of my work is based: personal information, in this case represented by my physical presence; and public information constituted by the media (newspapers, television, and communication systems), in this case the press.

Media Eyes
Media Eyes is an intervention from 1981 that I realized in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in collaboration with the photographer Ann Bray. We used a billboard situated on a busy road. On it we put the question: "What are we looking at?" In the daytime you saw a close-up of a person with glasses; at night we projected images inside the glasses (two simultaneous carousels of 80 slides each that stayed for 20 seconds each). The images were details of advertising photos that underlined a fragmentary system.

haute CULTURE
haute CULTURE is a project that I realized for the first time in Montpellier in 1983, at the Fabre Museum (which specializes in 18th and 19th century painting and sculpture) and at the shopping center Polygon (an intrinsically generic space, both in its commercial aspect as well as its architectural one). In the poster for this project_which was pasted up around the city_I placed images of the two places side by side, thus creating a relationship between two spaces that generally are not associated with each other. In the museum the installation consisted of a swing with a monitor on each side: in one there were very rapid, almost violent images of an escalator at the shopping center, while in the other fifteen frames of paintings in the museum's collection flowed one after another very slowly. In the shopping center the installation was the same but the position of the monitors was opposite: if in the museum the monitor with the images of the shopping center was up high, in the shopping center it was below, upsetting the conventional relationship between the two institutions. I wanted to create a contrast between the metal of the escalator with the gold or the silver of the picture frames, between speed and deceleration, noise and silence. I wanted, in short, to put two spaces together that people usually don't associate with each other, but at the same time, with these swings, I also wanted to start a discussion about concepts of popular culture and high culture and of their mutable values. I believe that museums and shopping centers form two symbolic environments in all cities and that they are very representative places of the space in which we live, even if they are also very marked by the time in which they were built. I made a different version of this work in a shopping center in Los Angeles and the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) in Boston. In this case the swing, instead of being static, was provided with a mechanism that gave it movement: it completed one cycle every thirty minutes. It was a way of comparing the different situations of Europe and United States in relation to speed. Obviously there was a certain irony in the fact that in the United States nobody gets around by foot, and since the museum was in Boston, anybody from LA who wanted to see it would have to arrive there by airplane.

Exposicion
I want to return now to a "protected" space. Exposicion is a project from `85 that I realized at the Fernando Vijande gallery in Madrid; it is made up of nine tableaux. The first was made with the light emitted by a 16 mm projector. The second was a series of 8 incisions in white, presented in systematic and conventional manner. Then there was a series of 15 sketches, also white. An abstract white triptych. A billboard without an ad. A series of 12 photos whose frames and mattes framed portions of the gallery's wall in order to underline the exchange value of the place. A slide projection (whose noise combined with that of the film projector to make the soundtrack for the show), and finally a painting from the 14th century. Each of these tableaux had a specific form of illumination. It was the zero degree of representation and information. What interested me was the simple presentation of the image, what an exhibition means, and the meaning of an expositive space. In retrospect this project was the beginning of a series of works that explored the uses and the values of spaces in relationship to architecture and media. After Exposicion I realized I had to change because it would otherwise become a naked and thin work. For this I wanted time.

Quarto do fundo
I realized Quarto do fundo (literally: store) during a period in which I was teaching at the University of San Paolo in Brazil. Entering the building of the Luisa Strina gallery there was a monitor on the staircase on which one saw images taken by a closed circuit television camera of the gallery's private spaces: the store and the manager's office. The gallery was empty. A light emphasized the private spaces, the store and the office. I wanted to present the space that normally is not accessible to the public, the place of decision-making, of "power" inside of a cultural space.

The Board Room
The Board Room continues the series of works exploring the use and function of architecture, and it is a metaphor for the idea of the conference room, a common space inside institutional and corporate scenes. Also a secret and mysterious space of decision-making: nothing is exactly known as to what happens in The Board Room, over that table and among the 13 chairs. A dark space, tenebrous, with a red carpet and 13 portraits of religious leaders who use the media. Each portrait, with a traditional frame, had a monitor instead of the mouth, and flowing in that video were images and recorded discourses. The relationships of these personalities represented the religious aspect in North America: it's as if the need to believe exists and this could become a business with the help of the media.

Stadium
Following in the analysis of mediatic elements I believe that the stadium is a very important element in urban culture. If the museum is the symbol of high culture then the stadium could be taken as a symbol of popular culture. Historically it has a function which in Italy is well known, given that this building typology was founded in Greek and Roman cultures. I have used a series of images of stadiums from antiquity to our day. Its transformation in time is evident, even if the form stays more or less the same. I have tried to underline the stadium as a place of spectacle and sport, but also a place in which religion and politics are important. This "container" offers a spectacle and is a tool of control: the public is at the same time both consumer and product. The installation comprised an elliptical colonnade upon a sand surface (which could not be approached but could be observed from the outside); there was a video projection that rotated, with images from the public archives. Slides were projected at the four external angles of the colonnade, organized according to four principles: activity, furnishing, symbols, architecture. A collage of stadium activity sounds throughout history was the soundtrack that later was recorded as an edition on compact disk. Stadium is a work that, according to place, maintains the structure intact but varies, according to context, some elements. I presented one re-elaboration of it in Berlin in 1993. It seemed to me an interesting city for my project. There I clearly emphasized the role that their stadium embodied throughout the 1930s, underlying its use by the Nazis during the Olympics. Like in haute CULTURE the poster was an integral element of the project, so in Stadium IX I made a Sunday supplement inside of the daily paper Der Tagesspiegel instead of a catalogue. I did the graphic design for it, elaborating again the design of the newspaper. The people found this insert that spoke about the stadium from the cultural, sociological, political, and critical points of view; it didn't interest me to produce information tightly tied up to the artistic aspect.

Words: The Press Conference Room
Following along the path of the "media architecture" installations initiated with Exposicion, another of the spaces defined by its use that I have analyzed are the rooms for press conferences. In Words: The Press Conference Room the podiums and microphones are emphasized to appear as the central points. The absence of the orator is underlined by a bright spot. The leader appears instead in a television from the other part of the room, in front of the podium. The two elements (podium and television) are connected from a carpet made of the first pages of newspapers. The soundtrack is made up of speeches by public figures that at the beginning are clearly heard but, little by little, become incomprehensible, destroyed by their circumstances. This transformation is similar to the deformation of sound and of its meanings that happens in the public arena of politics. I have done some variations of this installation and, according to the space and context, newspapers and speeches changed.

Limousine Project
Another work that continues to explore the idea of "media architecture" is Limousine Project. A project in public space is dealt with in a way I define as "city specific". I have used a limousine as an emblematic element of a metropolis such as New York where this automobile is a status symbol, and I have tried to change some of its meanings. This car went about the city with images projected on its windows. Images of industry, of consumption, underlined by critical words. I wanted to remember that normally the limousine has dark glass that doesn't allow a glimpse of the person inside, leaving the identity of the passenger a mystery. A private and secret space. The limousine went about the city for six weeks, travelling from the United Nations building (a political space), to Wall Street (an economic space), to nightclub zones (entertainment space).

Between The Frames: The Forum
With Between The Frames: The Forum, we return to a protected space. We're dealing with a construction divided into seven rooms, illuminated by seven different colors, each a chapter representing an element of the art system: the merchants, the galleries, the collectors, the museums, the critics, the media, and finally an epilogue in which various artists express their own opinions on this system. The central space overturns the concept of the "panopticum"; in fact, it is the public that is in a position of control. In each room there was a video with interviews of the various protagonists of each sector: gallerists, museum directors, collectors, etc... These interviews were interspersed with a metaphorical element of "open visuals," correlated to the represented role: for instance, images of the critic alternated with ocean waves, collectors alternated with the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the media with an elevator in the city of Colombus, Ohio, and the gallery with a conductorless, programmed train in Vancouver. This is a work on the roles and importance of the market that I made over ten years and that represents the specific situation of the Eighties.

CEE Project
Returning to the public space, I made a work about the idea of the European Community. This comprises a carpet with twelve stars (representing the twelve nations composing the EEC) inside of which is a coin from each country. The carpet has been presented in a public space (not necessarily places of art) in each country of the European Community. In this way it has assumed the value of an artifact as well as a use value: a use value because in the hierarchy of art the carpet has value only as an anthropological "applied art" (not that I agree with this hierarchy but this is the interpretation generally given to it), that here assumes an artistic value. At the same time the use of this work in a public space brings into question ideas of perception, use, behavior, design, and display, as well as the idea of how symbols are perceived. With the CEE Project the relationship between the concept of national identity and economic values is underlined.

The File Room
The File Room is a fairly recent project that has a parallel life on the internet and in some aspects continues the analysis of "media architecture." This work was presented for the first time at the Cultural Center of Chicago in 1994 (an antique public library) and is part of the desire to put the idea of cultural censorship into discussion. I built an apparently repressive, Kafkaesque space, one belonging to bureaucracy and control, with 800 metallic files. Eight Macintoshes connected with internet and a server provided access to an archive of cultural censorship cases. In this way I have tried to overturn the role of this space, providing the possibility of approaching alternative information. This "window" opened on the internet creates the space for dialogue and for the exchange of ideas. The file itself is still active and accessible on the internet. This project was inspired from a personal episode: a television program, commissioned by Spanish TV, that I completed but that has never been transmitted. I felt frustrated because I was subjected to a form of censorship, so I thought that it might be important to create a work that would both exorcise my frustration and give other people the opportunity to speak about other episodes of censorship. The File Room therefore consists of an internetsite that is accessible within the physical installation. The pages on the world wide web are organized by a series ofentrances, a search key, instructions, anintroduction, a definition of censorship and the file of cases (organized by geography, history, subject, media). One could intervene in the data bank and add other information. There is moreover a register of people who have visited the site (a guest book). I personally believe that censorship was first revealed in evident and explicit forms, but now it has taken a much less transparent form, since today the systems of organization and social repression are more complex. We started with 400 cases, from Socrates until to today. From its life at this point it transformed and changed itself. Another aspect that seems interesting was to bring into discussion the idea of authorship, precisely because with time this data bank becomes refined and engages other perspectives. I believe that this work is right to exist precisely in its collective form.

Sale de control
This is the first time that I'm speaking about this work which I made for an exhibition divided into five parts called Present i Futurs. Arquitectura a les Ciutats, part of an international congress of architecture at the CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona). The five sections were: Mutacions, Abitacions, Fluxus, Containers, Terren vague. In each section there was an architecture project and urbanism project for the city in transformation. My intervention was inside of the Mutacions section. I departed from an archetypal space, the control room of the CCCB, and I metaphorically replicated it for the exposition. Inside of this space there is a square ofnine monitors, three of which transmit images of three zones of the city taken by television cameras situated on the roof. The zones were: Montjuic, the Olympic city, and Raval (the latter being the district of the CCCB). These three areas represent zones of development, transformation and "gentrification" of the new Barcellona. The others three monitors transmitted internal and external images of the building itself, an emblematic construction recently reconstructed. The last three monitors transmit images of the show and one of the three transmitted images exclusively of the installation. A monitor with the comments of various residents of the three areas (Montjuic, the Olympic city, Raval) was at each of the nine monitors. These people expressed their opinion on the places in which they lived in first person. A screen with a retroprojection transmitted slow-motion images of the explosions and destruction of buildings, taken during the transformative work in the three districts. All this was brought into the control room: the audience became the "vigilante." In a certain sense this reversed the situation of control. In a city where the architecture has always been very important the architect represents a certain power: his role should include a constructive and critical aspect. I think that this last point has been lost in exchange for intrinsically economic values and interests. With Sala de control I wanted to give back control of the city to the citizen (the audience of the show). I did not want a police officer or a soldier to watch over it any more but that (inside an architecture show) the city itself could be self-vigilant. The Sala de control became public and its function upended.

On Traslation
The last project I'm going to talk about is still in course and is called On Traslation. I believe that we live in a totally translated civilization, and I don't mean just verbally but in all systems of communication and representation (including new technologies and the media). On Translation intends to explore all these different territories. A first presentation was On Translation: The Pavilion, in Helsinki in 1994. With On Translation: The Games the space of the gallery has been transformed into a box of translation. This is also because the translator is always a "hidden" character: he is not seen, he is invisible. It seemed interesting to put this in the center, in a box magnified with its projection. It was a kind of homage to the translator, to the translator's loneliness: the translator looks as if he does not exist, when instead the translator is an important element and at times is engaged with huge responsibility.

Questions

Your work is based upon open discourse, also in spatial terms, but I have always considered the gallery or the museum as places that by definition ask for the work to be "concluded." A result, in short. This I believe is a limitation for whoever tries to leave some open doors _ also within the institution_like you have done with your work. Are you able to work as well with institutions or do you prefer to work outside of them?

I see the two things as complementary. I believe that I could lose myself working in public spaces at times and I sometimes feel the need to return to a "protected" space to explore a work more deeply. This is a paradox: the work is seen more in a public space but there is no feed-back, nobody tells you anything. You put a video on TV, you do an intervention in the street, the people see it, but they don't come back to you with either criticism or opinion, while in a "protected" space one is able to have a dialogue. At times a profound dialogue. That's why I believe that it is necessary to continue to have this double binary on which to move. Insofar as the open aspect of my work that you mentioned, I believe that effectively it is very important. Once in a work at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, I simply opened the windows of the museum. Normally to open the windows in a museum it is "difficult"; the first time the director was opposed. I wanted to incorporate the sound of the street, the feeling of cold that came from the outdoors, in the museum. This work seems definetly to affirm that the idea of opening interests me very much.

How many people visit The File Room and is it active?

I have made the work but I don't want to be the sociologist of the work. In the same way, I don't know how many people have seen the Limousine or how many people have seen my EEC carpet. Naturally one could find out how many have accessed The File Room, but it really doesn't interest me, also because, in a certain sense, it would be to practice a form of control over its use, analogous to of television share or political voting polls. I would say, however, that it is a fairly popular and frequented work. But I repeat, I have not ever wanted to know the exact figures.

The first work that showed various South American cities. Don't you believe that there is a contradiction between military regimes, that as soon as they have power, and the public space, that they render it no longer public? To me this contradiction seems to emerge even more when I think about the use of newspapers (which naturally belong to the regime) which you used in the installations.

I believe that that work must be taken for its metaphoric value: the audience was between my presence (the personal information) and the media (the public information). The newspaper was an accessible form and practice to represent the universe of the media; at that time the public space in Latin America had been "taken back" because it had controlled information. In Argentina and in Brazil the press had become illegal and these newspapers were representative of the whole ideological ghost. I was interested in trying to make visible the things that normally are invisible, hidden. The reverse of the image. Read the meanings between the lines.

A political or moral dimension always appears on the surface of your work. I should say ethical rather than moral. Beyond the correct spatial observations and aesthetics that you make, is there a political connotation in your work? (I'm thinking about the Spanish political situation at the moment in which you also began to work)?

I believe that there is a perceptive element, that with which we can look at the work, the first contact, then there is an element of information and of reflection that could be different for each. I believe that to make a relationship with the things and understand how they arrive through the senses is important. The content is received in different ways by each person because each person has a different system of information owing to a different background. The social and political preoccupations are evident.

In the introduction you said that one of the characteristicsof your work is fidelity to the project independent from the media used. Does this also happen with a media so powerful as the internet? Don't you believe that the media overcomes any projections or plans that you might have at first?

I believe that for internet use it is necessary that theparticipants have a certain conscience: in The File Room cultural censorship was discussed and for me it was important not to consider this a finished work but to leave the possibility of interaction open. I consider the participation of people for this work. I don't think that I could present a work on censorship and then leave it closed. I should speak in the plural of this project because many people have worked on it and you can see it from the thanks I give to them on many of the pages. I believe that acknowledgments at the end of a work are very important, because they explain much of the procedure behind it. For The File Room the list of credits is very long. When you do a project on the internet it is normal that the work might take on unpredicted dimensions. At this moment I am working on another internet project on translation. This is a work that has departed precisely from these considerations that came up during The File Room. However the investigation, preparation, and planning of a work take upmuch time: there are works that I completed ten years from the time I first had the idea. So obviously I plan many projects at the same time and work on them together. Work is often a hybrid situation, analogous to the work of a film director an architect with his studio, distant from the classical, solitary job of the artist; for complex projects I work with other people. Fundamentally what I vindicate is the concept at the base of the plan.