Sit down to have an idea: soul at the center between performances and reflections. Interview with Andrea Bianconi

Tell us what you do and your beginnings.

I have many beginnings connected that represent a single great beginning, and I like to tell them as if they were a list. I like lists. At 12 I ran away from the woods, at 16 I wanted to become an airline pilot, at 20 I studied law, at 24 I left law school, at 25 I built my first cage, a monument to the disappeared, at 30 I kept, imprisoned and spied on my memories.

At 31 I was spying on my neighbor and building machines to spy on, I took a plant dissected it, and put binoculars on it; at 31 I did my first performance, being Saint Francis arriving from space with a spaceship and landing in a supermarket parking lot to give a message of peace.

At 32 I was between inside and outside, I enlisted my “Pony Express” messengers and had the first exhibition in Houston TX at Barbara Davis Gallery, at 33 I moved to New York and watched people enter and exit the subway, at 34 I built maps of arrow-birds, freedom, and constraint, at 35 I ‘knew’ Harry Houdini, he knew the escape routes very well and I studied the American army survival manual, I discovered ropes and knots, so I started accumulating objects and tying ropes: “A Charmed Life”.

At 36 I fell in love with James Joyce and the stream of consciousness, I knotted ropes and I drew flows, at 37 I understood that a cage is a love letter, and from that moment on all my studies have a cage hanging open without a bottom, it serves to contain the thoughts that come out of my head, the cage as a prison and protection, at 38 years I investigated the relationship between people and tradition, I demonstrated with young Chinese (“The Chinese Umbrella Hat Project” (Part I), Wujiang Rd West Nanjing Rd, Shanghai, China 2010 and (Part II), Piazza San Marco, Venice 2011).

At 38 years old I punched a leaf to investigate the relationship between man and nature, I made a work for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy at the Italian Embassy in Washington and I thought about the meaning of union, 38 years old I ran with a bike with a 3-meter grate attached along the streets of Peekskill (NY), I was investigating the relationship between man and landscape.

At 38 I was wondering if the NYC skylight was a cage or not, at 39 I was wearing masks one on top of the other in front of a mirror, I investigated the relationship between me myself, at 39 years old I had my back against the wall targeted by 5000 images and words, I read Calvino and ‘his mental cinema’.

At 39 years old I drew arrows for the cover of Connection 2013 (a guide given to American prisoners for their reintegration into society), at 39 I played the colors of the traffic lights in Moscow, in Red Square, and front of the Kremlin at the 5th Moscow Biennial, at 40 I threw paper airplanes from a black box, at 40 I accumulated furniture and chairs from the inhabitants of Ghent in Belgium (MSK, Ghent) and created a huge 6-handed wall drawing with Mark Licari and Ricardo Lanzarini.

At 41 I set alarm clocks, at 41 I rang at the same time the 7 songs of my life, at 41 years old 16 refugees played the songs of their lives at the same time, at 42 years old I built two white wings, I used them to fly while remaining still in the same place, at 43 years old I remained immobile paralyzed in the midst of 200 awake in front of the bosses I was in Davos.

At 44 years old I entered the San Vittore prison and with some inmates, I was imprisoned in the cage and sang of freedom, at 45 years old, lacking ideas, I built myself the chair of ideas in the hope of continuing to have new ideas.

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