Riccardo Banfi, Anne de Vries, Luca Pucci

AFTER CLUB – And in the meantime the world has changed is a project born and developed over an extended period of time. It emerged around 2017 from an initial discussion in connection with the Bulc project, and the exhibition only found its final realization in 2021. With a radical shift that our generation had never experienced before, the very conditions of conceiving the exhibition had completely changed since 2017. In this sense, After Club is a project that aims to freeze the impression of sudden silence and suspension that enveloped the nightlife since the beginning of 2020. A feeling of collective rush that swept through the clubbing world – in the exponentially rapid sequence of sudden event cancellations, collective disorientation, the explosion of online streaming, the proliferation of festivals, and solitary digital sets. Between the initial discussions with the exhibiting artists and its realization, the world had changed. Therefore, imagining the exhibition straddling 2019 and 2021 carries the extraordinary impact of 2020 into our interpretation of one of the central elements of the club and rave world: the gathering. AFTER CLUB aims to crystallize and extend this moment of temporary suspension and sudden reduction of the crowd into "singularity," a phase of lightning-fast abrupt stop, starting from the language of the club world itself. As if this temporary situation had become the norm. In the clubbing horizon, the "after" is the unofficial moment following the expansion of the party, an extension and exaltation of a secret communion of unstoppable nightlife enthusiasts. Here, "after" becomes a reflection on the status of clubbing, the very idea of a "club," or the gathering following the 2020 apocalypse. The echo of this temporary freeze runs through the works on display and shapes their interpretation. In the sequence of works by Riccardo Banfi, Anne de Vries, and Luca Pucci, this line of "Club After" is expressed metaphorically and poetically in Banfi's photographs, more cerebral in the symbolism of rave culture in de Vries' works, and performative and relational in Pucci's project, where the gathering is linked to group dances as a tool for transgenerational unity.

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RICCARDO BANFI
Let’s Dance 2016 / Hand (Riot) 2017

A sophisticated observer of nightlife, Banfi made it the focus of his photographic investigation from 2010 until around 2017. If the 2015 project TENAX represents the culmination of this research, the interest in clubbing gradually waned in the multiple trajectories of a visual universe that experimented with hybrid aesthetic dimensions through the photographic medium, with a focus on digital experimentation (see the Surplus series - 2015-2017). Banfi's last collection, Sunshine Noir, stems from a period spent in Los Angeles.

In the two works on display, Let's Dance from 2016 and Hand (Riot) from 2017, elements in line with the research on clubbing are present in a literal sense - Hand is part of the Riot project on Mykki Blanco - as well as the poetic accents of his subsequent research. Banfi's production is driven by the exploratory nature of the artist's gaze, capturing anonymous moments and unexpected epiphanies potentially concealed in every place. These visual metaphors, documenting the artist's action contexts, define a unique, varied, figurative and abstract, biographical and documentary representation of the contemporary world. If Riot symbolizes the "build-up" of a "drop" destined to be lost and not happen, Let's Dance contains a resolution in essence. In the wheel of a pigeon's wings and in the hand, the fluidity of two movements echoes the sudden halt and a renewed momentum.

Banfi's presentation is complemented by the video 2012: A Reminiscence, created for AFTER CLUB on his digital platform. 2012: A Reminiscence "indulges," as Banfi states, in a recollection of past events, starting from archive footage of a night of celebration, and reflects on the club theme during a "state of exception." The video offers perspectives on leisure time, ritual, and belonging to a culture while questioning the roles of individuals within the nightlife community and their interaction. In a year when it was impossible to experience it, Banfi continued to investigate the theme of the night, not only experientially but conceptually, offering a more conceptual entry point to the works on display.

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ANNE DE VRIES
FreeZone 23 2020 / T.A.Z. 2018

The world of electronic music, Techno, Trance, and Hard Style, is a frequent reference in the work of the artist Anne de Vries, alongside a broader reflection on contemporary notions of "transcendence and the mind-body dualism," the relationship between technology and progress, metaphysical theories, and "mass experiences" in reference to legendary gatherings at festivals and rave trance events. Among the works by the artist in this direction that have gained particular resonance is the installation "Critical Mass: Pure Immanence," created for the 9th Berlin Biennale in 2016. De Vries' research is influenced by philosophical and sociological theories, spanning from the currents of new materialism to Object-Oriented Ontology, theoretical directions that converge in the synthetic aesthetics of the works.

Conceived for the solo exhibition in 2019 titled "Trance in Amsterdam – RETURNS" and first displayed in Italy, FreeZone 23 and T.A.Z. draw on the iconography of rave culture and allude to a mix of sources: the "Temporary Autonomous Zone," "ontological anarchy," Hakim Bey's "poetic terrorism," as well as Rudolf Steiner's "Philosophy of Freedom," trends that have permeated techno circles in the '80s and '90s. In the use of stripes, there's a parallel with the aesthetics of Daniel Buren's work, paying homage to the formal trope of an artist who made stripes the banner of an aesthetic creed and a political instrument of institutional critique.

FreeZone 23 and T.A.Z. originate from De Vries' multifaceted interest in the world of techno, where the artist simultaneously recognizes its countercultural and anarchic origins and the gradual anesthetization of this "hard" matrix, as articulated in the text "Transformation Through Depoliticization" published in Flash Art International in 2016. This process is subtly replicated in the "striped landscape" of FreeZone23, which balances between an homage to the counterculture era, evoked in the title and the logos of kierewiet - a well-known sound system brand typical of raves - and the depoliticization of the contemporary techno world, now governed by branding and systems, partially evident in the cold and laminated aesthetics of the pieces on display and in the object nature of T.A.Z.

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LUCA PUCCI
Dancing Days Agency

Between 2010 and 2015, Luca Pucci, in collaboration with Emanuele De Donno, created the "Dancing Days Agency" project, stemming from research on group dances. Of a performative nature and driven by the intent to gather and create a community through the artistic medium, which becomes a 'community catalyst,' this project could be described as aligned with a line of relational art research. Dancing Days Agency found its realization in the gallery, encapsulated in the clean aesthetics of a white record, a document of the journey that led the artist from Umbria to Poland, from Ravenna to Warsaw.

As described in the "travel notes" collected by the artist in various project development locations, Dancing Days Agency originates from the Dancity Festival, an electronic music festival held in Foligno, which led to the idea of introducing a group of "young seniors" to the world of clubbing. "That evening, the power to move and show those who were dancing that there was also a different way of dancing, with group dances, was very evident." The travel notes, available in the gallery for visitors, offer a detailed guide to the project's development stages.

Pucci's discreet research, which operates outside the typical systems, profiles, and contexts of art, unfolds on two levels: extensive projects involving large communities in even picaresque enterprises and a final outcome that is sober, dry, and precise, ultimately conceptual. White like the dance floors where the "Polish Dancing Dancers" performed dances with the artist, the record serves as a memory not only of sound but also of human interaction during the project's development. It features two sides, A and DD, each containing 18 one-minute tracks. A minute corresponds to 33 revolutions, rendering the protocol of performance creation on the record. Side A gathers recordings of 18 group dances held in Warsaw, while Side DD collects 18 tracks related to eighteen performances in different locations.

In the selected sequence for the exhibition (tracks 9 - 13 on Side DD), the varied audio and performative register of the project, the clapping of hands typical of group dances, the mazurka, Pucci's steps and repetition with the group, classic dance hall sounds, and a bizarre (because not easily reconcilable with the context) techno ending, are all present. The recording's echo and the resonance of the rooms, footsteps, and gestures give the audio an eerie sense of presence and absence. Pucci's operation, difficult to imagine today, resonates as both vernacular and distant, a memory of an idea of unity, on "dancing days" inevitably overshadowed by the past year.