Awakening the Spirit of Eternal Rest

Launched in conjunction with the exhibition “This place you see has no size at all…”, curated by Jennifer Teets at the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, the guided tour “Awakening the Spirit of Eternal Rest”, by artist Alex Cecchetti took place last Wednesday night, Feb. 4th 2010, at the Musée de Louvre. The event consisted of a reading around “The Spirit of Eternal Rest,” a sculpture which Cecchetti classifies as “an object of multiplicity.”

The assemblage consists of an antique funerary effigy merged together with the body of 3rd century AD sculpture, which was vandalized and mutilated in 1670 by the Duke of Mazarin. Today, traces of the Duke’s acts of madness remain visible on the sculpture’s body, although it has undergone significant restoration. Now known as the “Hermaphrodite Mazarin,” its story embraces the XVII and XIX centuries from the Cardinal Mazarin to Louis XIV, as well as Hortense Mancini to Rodin.

The exhibition, “This place you see has no size at all…” that ran from December 4, 2009 – February 7, 2010, originated in the possibility of virtual and parallel worlds as a viable platform for the production and consumption of art. Originally proposed as an out-of the box adaptation to an “alternate reality game”, on July 22, 2009, artists were convened from around the globe to partake in a “scenario” at the Parc de Saint Cloud in Paris, of which they had little knowledge of, yet were immediate to its origin of initiation. In collaboration with sci-fi writer Mark von Schlegell, an abstract time-travel guide was scripted, combining clues, facts, and prompts around the peculiarities of the garden together with the singular questions: What could you perceive as the present? What are the elements of the present? Who are the members of the present? The guide spawned a chain of events suggested by and created for each of the artists with the purpose of activating a work and a communication process.

The exhibition featured specially commissioned and existing works by David Adamo, Mark Aerial Waller, Mariana Castillo Deball, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Alex Cecchetti, Kate Costello, France Fiction, Darius Mikšys, Tania Pérez Córdova, Michael Portnoy, Pietro Roccasalva, Alex Waterman, Roger Worms

with writings by Mark von Schlegell, curated by Jennifer Teets.

(http://www.moussemagazine.it/blog/?p=2037#more-2037)