Vincenzo Fiore Marrese

Artwork To make landfall I

Portfolio Entry

How does fuel transportation affect people and global relations? What questions arise for populations lacking fuel access? How can art address this topic?

A computer screen displaying OpenStreetMap data with a route marked by numbered waypoints. A smaller window shows a chemical structure and an email with the subject “It is a matter of gas.”

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“To make landfall I,” 2022; time-based art; the map I used as part of the artwork is an: © OpenStreetMap contributors. Data is available under the Open Database License. The molecola is generated by from Jmol, an Open Source molecular viewer licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. The E-mail client is Thunderbird, under Mozilla Public License; video formatted as an MP4 file; 1920×1080 pixels 00:13:17 hours; Galería of the Centro Boliviano Americano, CBA, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia; Latitudes Hybridas, Festival Internacional de Performance Art de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, curated by Hector Canonge, Performance Art Bolivia, PABA y ARTerial Performance Art APLAB; still by V.F. Marrese; ©VFMarrese. Click to download HD Image (for press use only). Please credit V.F. Marrese and OpenStreetMap contributors. Contact us for other use or licensing.

Artwork Details

  • Title:
    “To make landfall I,”
  • Year:
    2022;
  • Medium (Type of Art):
    time-based art;
  • Medium (Materials):
    video formatted as an MP4 file;
  • Dimensions (International):
    1920×1080 pixels
  • Dimensions (British and US):
    1920×1080 pixels
  • Duration:
    00:13:17 hours;
  • Venue:
    Galería of the Centro Boliviano Americano, CBA, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia;
  • Setting:
    Latitudes Hybridas, Festival Internacional de Performance Art de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, curated by Hector Canonge, Performance Art Bolivia, PABA y ARTerial Performance Art APLAB;

Establishing Context

"To make landfall" is a research about fuel transportation.

How the fuel transportation affects people? How it impacts global issues between nations? Which questions raise about the population that have no availability of fuel? How can art frame this topic to produce artworks?

To maintain a satisfactory temperature to face warm or cold weather to survive can be tricky. Let's think about the cold. Generally speaking, you need to have dresses or other stuff to cover yourself. Then it is relevant to have a shelter or a home. But you also need a heating system and fuel to warm up your place. You can search for fuel or pay for it. For the latter, you could face risks like fuel poverty. On another layer, you can have a home and economic resources to afford the fuel cost, but fuel cost is not constant. It can increase.

That's the relevant background behind this work, more focussed on another side of this faceted theme. It is the topic of natural gas transportation in the energy industry.

Natural gas transportation affects the population that has access or could have access to this kind of fuel. But at the same time, it implies the other side. It raises questions about the population that has no access to natural gas. Furthermore, it opens other global issues, since gas transportation can imply relationships between nations.

It is related to my biography, also. It affects the country where I was born, Italy, in the region where my father was born, with the so-called Trans Adriatic Pipeline, part of the Southern Energy Corridor, and the country where I'm living, Germany with the so-called Nord Stream. Furthermore, it impacts Europe, in general, and, of course, beyond places related to my biography, other nations and the geopolitical balance in a broad sense.

As is known, natural gas is one of the "most important energy resources"[note 1]. Where it is available, it is used domestically as "space heating, water heating, and cooking", "to produce energy" in some power plants, and as heating sources "for manufacturing process"[note 2]. It is "mostly made of methane", and pipelines transport it, or, in some cases, tanks as "liquid natural gas"[note 3].

In Italy and Germany, there are the landfalls of two noteworthy gas pipelines, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline[note 4], part of the Southern Energy Corridor, and the Nord Stream[note 5].

In some cases, gas pipelines come from other nations, often pass in the middle of in-between nations.

Due to the role of the Internet, a collateral topic is related to emotions. Internet technologies, based on rationality, spreads often emotions. I mix in this kind of events some emotions, trying to collapse with the computational background of the Internet technologies. In this case, I will cast a part of a spell that needs gas energy. It is related to magical thinking that we used to think like the opposite of rationality. I'm working to find similarities between this side and the artistic act.

Another collateral topic is the multiplication of the identity overlapping the here and now. I'm interested in exploring this state as a performer. For that reason, the performance is not live-streamed because the time gap between the action and the performer's life create another kind of identity multiplication by the absence.

Notes
  1. Facts about Natural Gas, Energy Resource Fact Sheet, Wisconsin K-12 Education Program (KEEP), College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, 2020, p.1back to the text
  2. Ivi, pp.1-2back to the text
  3. Ibid.back to the text
  4. https://www.tap-ag.com/, accessed 11th of January 2022back to the text
  5. https://www.nord-stream.com/, accessed 11th of January 2022back to the text