The Galleria Riccardo Crespi is hosting Summertype, a project that involves two artists, Francesca Grilli and Riccardo Benassi.

Riccardo Benassi presents Appunti per corridoi che si fingono ascensori (Notes for Hallways Pretending to be Elevators) and Francesca Grilli The Conversation. The former is a book, the latter a vinyl record: works that despite being conceived at different times and in different ways, find an intimate relationship in their desire to explore space, language and communication using experimental vehicles.

Notes for Hallways Pretending to be Elevators is the title of an installation commissioned from Riccardo Benassi by Xing for the 11th Italian Festival of Contemporary Performance (Festival Italiano sullo Spettacolo Contemporaneo, or F.I.S.Co.). For Summertype the artist proposes a pamphlet of the same name that carries the textual part of the original work, an experimental publication using the Risograph method of printing, a versatile technique with a zero environmental impact.

With this project Benassi is continuing his research into the use of architecture as a celebration of the sensory experience, allowing the idea to be disseminated in mutable formats. In this connection a set/installation will be presented for the occasion that will modify the space of the gallery and accommodate Silvia Fanti (Xing – Bologna) and Alberto Salvadori (Museo Marino Marini – Florence) in the role of interlocutors. The exhibition is completed by a triptych of photographs called Storyboard for Notes for Hallways Pretending to be Elevators that prompt a reflection on our everyday relationship with the spaces of the city.

Francesca Grilli’s The Conversation, released by Nero, is an artist’s vinyl record that explores the language of the deaf and their ‘different’ way of listening. On a 33 rpm disk, produced in a limited edition, is recorded a 25-minute sound track composed by the artist on the occasion of her performance of the same name at the Premio Nuove Arti of the MAMbo in Bologna.

At the base of the project is the attempt to connect electronic music with sign language, with the aim of bringing together physical and conceptual conditions that do not normally go with one another, such as music and deafness, sound and silence. The record is accompanied by a folding poster on which are printed critical essays by Cesare Pietroiusti (L’opacità delle cose) and Caterina Riva (Per Agata).

The publication will be introduced by Lorenzo Micheli Gigotti and Francesco de Figueiredo of Nero along with Alessandra Saviotti; afterwards, a string duet will play live the musical composition on the vinyl record.