the classroom #5
Seb Patane
Seb Patane, the classroom backstage. Courtesy the artist
Seb Patane was born in Catania – Sicily in 1970, growing up in the small village of Riposto before moving to London in 1992, where he still lives and works. Through the poetic re-elaboration of found images and objects, Patane deploys connections between collective historical imagery and his inner world. The artist also works with the languages of sound, moving images and performance. The classroom organized the fifth edition of its course in the framework of Artissima Fair, 2017. PIPER.Learning at the disco discourse program revived the Oval during the Artissima installation days with a free course open to students led by Seb Patane, who led the students through a survey of sounds, images and performances.
CLASS
PIPER. LEARNING AT THE DISCOTEQUE
Oval Lingotto Fiere,Turin
The course took place in the Oval Lingotto Fiere of Turin, from 31 October to 2 November 2017, during the days of preparation of the fair. The themes and languages of the class were sound, video, performance and writing as a means of analysis. For his course, Seb Patane was inspired by an episode of Space: 1999, a series of Italian-British science fiction, produced in 1973, centered on a hypothetical apocalyptic event at the end of the millennium.
Starting from the series, the artist worked with students on post-futuristic – or retro-futuristic – scenarios and stressed some issues, that make it a show of great interest also nowadays: ideas of rituals and social customs, the encounter of alien civilization and mankind, space travel as everyman’s emotional journey, the human strain toward infinite and, eventually, the meaning of life. Suggesting ideas of contamination and appropriation, Seb questioned this narrative together with the class, trying to remove disciplinary barriers and embracing new transversal forms of creation, in order to weave together music and theatre into contemporary art.