Objects – Molecular Press

Books, of course, are objects, and the three collaborations (Petrushka and the two ‘Transitional Toys’ catalogues) are kin to the art objects explained on this page, springing as they did not from a solitary human but from a conjuncture, an event.

Recent ploys

8 June 2024: a one-hour live reading of The Syllabary at iota arts space, 25 Hyndland Street, Glasgow. A second iteration of The Syllabary: A Poem in 2,272 Parts, was printed for the occasion in a run of 25 copies. This was only the second public performance of the poem since its completion in 2023 (the first was at Villa Bernasconi, Geneva, in July 2023).

Precedents

The Syllabary CD ROM

Punastic Press, precursor of Molecular Press, produced an early edition of The Syllabary, on CD ROM.

The earliest Molecular collaboration was Cleikit www.cleikit.com, where sixty individuals were asked to record sixty of the 3,600 syllables of the phonetic matrix of The Syllabary. The site stands in need of repair, having been disabled by an operating system upgrade.

Confessionals and vending machines

Next was Confessionals and Vending Machines, Lisbon to Nagasaki, where Peter McCarey devised and Duncan Scott built a pedal-powered confessional with surrogate sinner, the centrepiece of an exhibition of photographs of European confessionals and Japanese vending machines. The show ran in Glasgow and in Geneva.

In Geneva, in November 2016, that installation was accompanied by a 12 minute and 34 second performance of James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner with unreliable French interpretation (this in the home town of Jean-Jacques Rousseau). https://makaronic.ch/evenements/sons/pem_7/MAKAR16-01-justified.mp3

Transitional Toys Exhibition Glasgow 2020 / Geneva 2021 / Milan 2022

The culmination of that progression was a series of art exhibitions (Glasgow 2020, Geneva 2021 and Milan 2022) on the subject of Transitional Toys or Security Objects.

After a wildly successful launch at iota art space in Glasgow, the Transitional Toys exhibition opened in Geneva in August 2021, at the Espace témoin. The planned seminar at the Confucius Institute had to be cancelled, but the Swiss premiere of a piece composed for the show by Jacques Demierre went ahead.

Le jouet transitionnel est un objet qui accompagne l’enfant pendant sa croissance. L’objet même reste inchangé pendant que sa perception par l’enfant change petit à petit. Dans un sens, tout objet d’art peut acquérir une valeur semblable pour le spectateur, la lectrice ou le public.

Alexa Montani: création suisse de Purple Rabbits par Jacques Demierre.
Carmen Perrin: sculpture motorisée.
Caterina Borelli (avec dessins par Stephan Zimmerli): film documentaire.
Vincent Barras: speech
Yuri Vashchenko: gravure
Clara Brasca, Robert McNeil: peintures
HommAges (Craig Mulholland, Carmel O’Brien & Madeleine V. Brown): jeux de société.
Laura A. Hunter, T.D. Coats, Peter McCarey: installations.
Guy Limone, Chris McCabe, Luigi Belli, Beatrice Gaspari, Chiara Passigli: créations hétéroclites.

Iota Arts Space, Glasgow – Espace témoin, Genève – Galleria l’Affiche, Milano

Avec le soutien de Pro Helvetia et de la République et canton de Genève

The artists:

Alexa Montani, Carmen Perrin, Caterina Borelli & Stefan Zimmerli, Chris McCabe, Clara Brasca, Duncan Scott, HommAges (Craig Mulholland, Carmel O’Brien & Madeleine V. Brown), Jacques Demierre, Laura A. Hunter, Peter McCarey, Robert McNeil, Vincent Barras and Yuri Vashchenko, plus Chiara Passigli, Francesco Bocchini, Beatrice Gaspari, Guy Limone, Luigi Belli and Flavio Pellerito .

Oggetti transizionali Galleria l’Affiche, via NIrone 11, Milano, 1-27 maggio 2022.

Con il sostegno di Pro Helvetia, fondazione svizzera per la cultura.

Chi avrebbe mai immaginato che una mostra sugli oggetti transizionali – quei giocattoli che accompagnano i bambini attraverso gli immensi cambiamenti dei primi anni di vita – sarebbe diventata a sua volta un oggetto di transizione per chi lo ha conosciuto fin dall’ inizio, e che questo oggetto, la cui grande virtù è l’impassibilità, non avrebbe resistito alle pressioni di quest’epoca ma avrebbe invece cambiato aspetto, cambiato carattere, come gli individui esili che avrebbe dovuto rassicurare?

Altri curatori, altri galleristi avrebbero fatto “patetiche scuse per l’inadeguata informazione, lamenti per la carenza di tempo e denaro, per l’indifferenza o la aperta ostilità delle pubbliche autorità, le difficoltà interposte ai viaggi istruttivi da nevose catene di montagne, fiumi in piena, foreste stormenti, armenti in fuga, guerre locali, epidemie letali, languide quarantene, ingegnose vaccinazioni, limitazioni alla libertà di stampa, colpi di stato, sommosse contadine, scontri ferroviari, apostasie ideologiche” (Giorgio Manganelli, Nuovo Commento (1969)) – ma non questi…

The objects produced for those exhibitions morphed and mutated with the circumstances: gallery size, artists available, pandemic restrictions.

A monograph on the Glasgow and Geneva exhibitions is available: