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'Always Brian (TI AMO)' @ FAL (Ferrovie Appulo Lucane).
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Always Brian (TI AMO) (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Always Brian (TI AMO) (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Amalia Ulman, 'The Future Ahead' (2014). Image courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Amalia Ulman, 'The Future Ahead' (2014). Image courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Amalia Ulman, 'The Future Ahead' (2014). Image courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Amalia Ulman, 'The Future Ahead' (2014). Image courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Benjamin Asam Kellogg, ‘FLAWLESS FEAR FLAWLESS TERRORPAIGN’. Detail. Image courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Benjamin Asam Kellogg, ‘FLAWLESS FEAR FLAWLESS TERRORPAIGN’. Detail. Image courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Benjamin Asam Kellogg, ‘FLAWLESS FEAR FLAWLESS TERRORPAIGN’. Detail. Image courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Cecile B.Evans, 'How Happy a thing can be' (2014). HD video. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Cecile B.Evans, 'How Happy a thing can be' (2014). Video still. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Cecile B.Evans, 'How Happy a thing can be' (2014). Video still. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Fabio Santacroce, ‘Reverence and few words’ (2015) Mixed media installation. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Fabio Santacroce, ‘Reverence and few words’ (2015) Mixed media installation. Detail. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Jasper Spicero, 'Drop of medicine'. Detail. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Jasper Spicero, 'Drop of medicine'. Mixed Media. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Left - right: Matthew Landry, 'Whispers', Yuri Pattison, ‘Colocation Time Displacement’ (2014). HD video. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Lucia Leuci, ‘Onigiri’ (2014). Mixed media. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Lucia Leuci, ‘Onigiri’ (2014). Mixed media. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Matthew Landry, 'Whispers'. Detail. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Matthew Landry, 'Whispers'. Detail. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Matthew Landry, 'Whispers'. Install view. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Rosa Ciano, 'Together Alone #0'. Courtesy 63rd-77th STEPS.
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Rosa Ciano, 'Together Alone #0'. Courtesy 63rd-77th STEPS.
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Yuri Pattison, ‘Colocation Time Displacement’ (2014). Install view. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Yuri Pattison, ‘Colocation Time Displacement’ (2014). Video still. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
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Yuri Pattison, ‘Colocation Time Displacement’ (2014). Video still. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.

Always Brian (TI AMO) (2015) exhibition photos

, 23 February 2015

Always Brian (TI AMO) owes its title to street art. The only evidence of an underground language exposed in the light of day, the words could mean a range of things, their semantics depending on any number of factors that are too many to quantify. It doesn’t stop people and their programmes from trying though, with linguistic inquiry and word count text analysis software (LIWC) being one of them. It’s this purported window into the “emotional and cognitive worlds” of any given social media user that provides an interesting launching point for this group exhibition. Organised by 63rd-77th STEPS and running January 16 to 18, the show becomes an obtuse inquiry into the implications of the monitoring and manipulation of peoples’ very moods and the way we read them via the text they choose to share.

Always Brian (TI AMO) (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy 63rd - 77th STEPS.
Always Brian (TI AMO) (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy 63rd – 77th STEPS.

The three day exhibition marked a year since Fabio Santacroce founded the aforementioned “art staircase”, that often exhibits off-site, by taking up residence across the three rooms where the spray-paint tag of ‘Brian’ and his love were discovered at the train station of Bari, Italy. It acts as a nucleus in a synaptic network of information shared between nine artists that include Rosa Ciano, Benjamin Asam Kellogg, Lucia Leuci and Yuri Pattison; their self-contained clusters of personalised information presenting images and objects as codes and signifiers that can be read any number of ways.

Jasper Spicero‘s wall-hung iPad featuring a generic looking bedroom is tangled up inside a web of taut and tied-together shoelaces. Cecile B. Evans‘ dancing animated scissors are singing Sade’s ‘No Ordinary Love’ through the stilted tonal blocks of a Vocaloid application in a projection of ‘How happy a Thing can be‘ (2014). Matthew Landry‘s ‘Whisper’ collection of personalised image-board posts tacked to a couple planks of wood announce “MY BEST FRIEND MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE” and “Ummm”. Amalia Ulman‘s slide show presentation ‘The Future Ahead’ (2014) video – also shown at the artist’s The Destruction Of Experience solo exhibition in London last year – takes Justin Bieber as a starting point to exploring femininity in terms of masculinity and teen girl fandom: “he’s still monetizing on their prepubescent love-business”.

Before you read into the following riddle that is the Always Brian (TI AMO) presentation text – assembled from a harvest of status updates, mail and conversations – spare a thought for the fact that Santacroce himself describes it as “fragments from conversation mixed with personal considerations and turned into a “fractured”, hyper-textual poetry without any specific revealing intent”.

“Always Brian (TI AMO), Corso Italia and a burnt kebab.
I like how you fall in sleep on trains, you feel fastened to Earth.
Leaves are lying about their agony and we have all been gifted
with a YEAR IN REVIEW. It tastes iron.
Entertaining revolution, performed poverty, wealthy orgasm. Kamut year.
DID YOU UPGRADE YOUR REVERENCE?
Happiness is not a cinematographic effect and you have been
approving only “first class” tags.
LINGUISTIC INQUIRY AND WORD COUNT.”

Each sentence bares a semantic logic all it’s own like the exhibition of artworks it introduces. Its artists’ ability to communicate relies heavily on their association with last year’s 63rd – 77th STEPS programme, as well as their nebulous interrelation between one another, almost entirely by virtue of using text as material, and fragments as form. Understanding that might get you closer to the artists’ intentions, but it also might not. **

Exhibition photos, top right.

Always Brian (TI AMO) group exhibition was on at Bari’s 63rd – 77th STEPS, running January 16 to 18, 2015.

Header image: Rosa Ciano, ‘Together Alone #0’. Install view. Courtesy 63rd – 77th STEPS.