HOUDINI

December 2014

Istanbul, Turkey

​intervention on light billboard

materials: chain, lock, two lock’s keys

In collaboration with ELFO

There is a place where the West and the East crash. This place is Istanbul, in Turkey. Together with Elfo, friend and collegue, we have been invited to spend a period of residency at Pasaj. It was a period of social tensions between the turkish government and the people: Gezi park demonstrations are a bloody example. It was also a period in which the foreign corporations secured billionaire agreements with the Turkish Government.

Me and Elfo decided to realize a symbolic intervention using an advertisement light box, which we opened using a specific key, and then we removed the advertisements contained inside. Before to close the glass window that guards the advertisement poster, we have inserted two key inside the advertisement box. Those two keys are the only keys able to open the padlock we have used to tighten the chain around the advertisement box, blocking his opening.

The work, that we called "Houdini", is a clear gesture of rebellion against huge advertising campaingns that tend to homologate the city. ​

Esiste un luogo in cui Occidente e Oriente si schiantano, dove il mercato globalizzato investe millenni di forte tradizione. Questo luogo è Istanbul, in Turchia.

Invitati a trascorre un periodo di residenza artistica presso Pasaj, Io ed Elfo ci siamo trovati immersi in una città in pieno cambiamento sociale ed economico, una città che si stava trasformando rapidamente. ​