Random Lines in Tereglio (2014)
An afternoon poetry and improvised music performance with Sandra Binion, as part of the exhibition "The Art of Description" at the Illinois State Museum, Chicago Gallery in the Thompson Center. The bilingual poem, "Random Lines in Tereglio", was read in English and Italian by the artist and Andrea Raos; accompanied by sound artists Lou Mallozzi and Hal Rammel.
The poem "Random Lines in Tereglio" appeared as wall text in the installation. “I like the idea of the wall as illuminated manuscript”, says Sandra Binion. “It is also a piece of music; there is a rhythm among the images, words, and spaces of silence.”
“When I was making the work in Italy, surrounded by friends who speak a language I only partly understand, I’d pick out every fifth word, and my sense of the conversation was assembled from those fragments, those details. The work is like that. I assemble meaning from impressions. I think with the senses, not in a linear way but with gesture, rhythm and movement. Putting the fragments together is a desire to communicate, and the images and writing come from this sense of being inside and outside at the same time.”
The text, paintings, video and photographs of the installation were first shown in a solo show, "Rough Beauty", in the village of Tereglio Italy in 2012. The work is a response to Tereglio’s mountainous beauty and isolated serenity, which evolved into a personal and complex exploration of beauty in its most unlikely forms – discarded objects, weather-worn walls, lifeless plants.