ALESSANDRO BOSETTI TAKES A NAP

Photographs taken in the sculpture park of San Sebastian's Museo Chillida-Leku.

The images of you sleeping next to Chillida sculpture is exciting to see; your passive take sort of relaxes the sculptures for the viewer. It occupies a netherworld where one is both viewer/ apprehender of the work and participant in it, and the audience of park-goers is accidentally forced to reconcile your presence near the work as part of the work. doesn't it reflect something we always want to do? To interact with sculpture and with objects receptively?

not really, i always had a difficult relation with objects. i tried to investigate the life and feelings of objects in series of (probably quite unsuccessful) compositions in 2007. i failed then. but learned how to treat objects or sculptures as i treat everything else. they are just part of the band.

Did the objects call out for you?

some did some didn't. the flat sculpture was really unfriendly. the vertical one and the stone one (sorry i forgot the title, lousy titles by the way, like "looking for the light" or something like that) were more friendly and i could really sleep soundly there.

Chillida's work is described as dramatic, open-ended, endowed with tension. Was sleep your natural reaction to the sculpture's pull, or did you seek to address the tension by reacting passively, gently?

well, before being asked by the museum and local organizers to do a project in relation to [Chillida]. i didnt know anything about neither him or his work. i had a look to the website and saw the photo of the park and I thought i wanted to nap there. it became a sound project in the extent that xabier erkiza recorded the reactions of the visitors and i will compose something out of those recordings. i also was invited to san sebastian to deliver a lecture and this lecture was about lethargy. so, yes, sleep. i am in berlin right now and i should sleep. but i am not doing it. i liked chillida art the first day there, less and less the following days. its masterful though very safe. its opacity is not threatening, its rather polite. it shows admiration for japanese aesthetic but it lacks all the ephemeral fragility of it. its after all very comforting art. and i let it comfort me.

What does a Basque mini-golf course look like? Does it look the same in your mind? Do you mind?

well, you know, last night i had a long stick made of cheese in my hand. and a black man showed me a secret exit out of the airport. on top of the stick there was a hook. i held the stick as a weapon or a sign or a tool for divination. the exit of the airport was were they put the trash for disposal. i could go, no pass required. after going out the airport i could proceed in my explorations. i entered that part of the funky villa i had no access for many years. its a sweet sequence of secret rooms, steep wooden stairs and darkness. somewhere there was an unknown music instrument. my stick was probably it but i missed to realize it. right at the end the stick was slightly bent. minigolf looks same. in my mind too. i dont mind.

images c. Alessandro Bosetti