McBett

All Out

Le Dépeupleur & Murphy— work in progress

Rialtosantambrogio- Rome: Thursday 19-30 October 2006
Via S. Ambrogio, 4 00186 Roma

Installation by Elisabetta McBett Jacomini as part of the Beckett Centenary Celebration 1906/2006.

Tel: 06/68133640

email: info(at)rialtosantambrogio.org

web site: www.rialtosantambrogio.org

This exhibition consists of two projects inspired by Samuel Beckett scripts, in the anniversary of the centenary of his birth and in coincidence with the last ten years of the artist's activity. It is presented as the concluding stage of research that McBett developed in recent years, starting from this author, on historical,literary and contemporary analogous themes, from which she abstracted elements for her more complex solo exhibition entitled, “Way Out”, shown in October '05 in Kilmainham Gaol Museum, Dublin on which she is currently shooting a video-documentary.

My Exhibition opening will be introduced by The Deserted Village Void, Members of United Bible Studies, who will perform a section of Leap into the Void previously shown in Dublin. "The Music of Indifference", inspired by a Samuel Beckett poem will be performed with improvised music.

Thanks to Culture Ireland, The Council of Rome and the Irish Embassy in Rome for sponsoring this event.

Exhibition Themes- described by McBett

1— Le Depeupleur

A set of photo images created with no digital craft, representing a hypothesis of setting for the study of Beckett's script (le Depeupleur, The Lost Ones) where it started my analysis of Samuel Beckett in 1984. My thesis explored this hypothetical "internal" world contained into a 16 meter diameter by 16 meter high cylinder to host a human, maybe alien, population, of two-hundred bodies which functions and habits are ruled by established and precise— so as absurd —rules— and whose functions are described in detail and divided by different groups. A sort of tragic dance where slowly no movement is left and all the characters found themselves laying on the ground— surrendered. My reading is in a cinema-documentary key. These photos represent the methodical descriptions indicated by Samuel Beckett in this script.

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2— Murphy— Work in Progress

Body—Within a shop desk: found object, recycled element as reflection over the quick urban change of the city— by me explored as metal, reflecting and psychedelic, sarcophagus — it "falls" a wooden sculpture finely crafted on Spanish chestnut wood representing a styled feature of Murphy (often intended as an autobiographical image of Beckett himself) in the movement, indeed, of falling back, fastened, naked, to his rocking chair and, at the end, part of it, as seeping by his own coffin/room.

Mind— This sculpture is linked to a looped video—summary of emotions, images, actions, rising and falling from the Beckett's script and from my recent personal experiences in Dublin– to offer a fragmented and scattered video-soundtrack of free-falling thoughts– window on the external, distorted world – dedicated to the other main character of the book, the prostitute Celia, with references to the city of Dublin as I met it in recent years, in the wish to explore the feeling of frustration (composed fall) existing all over the novel as Beckett's, and also a recurring theme of mine.

Soul— Between these elements, lies a squared poster, already folded in sixteen parts (magic square?) where to read a quotation from the novel, i.e. Murphy's (Chinese or Indian?) horoscope as given to him by Suk…

My reading of the novel is ironic and at the same time— facing violent death and a difficulty of communication— tragic. It is evidently Samuel Beckett's wish to expose with irony an absurd and depressed reality as the one described here, from where it starts all his ensuing work, that will not disappoint the premises, but that, instead, will exasperate them. The whole event will be video-recorded and set in the wider video-documentary, “Way Out”, to collect the whole experience, starting from last year. It will conclude at Kilmainham Gaol Museum on the 14th of October with the dematerializations and recycling of the other works from that exhibition. This event will be called, “Leap Into The Void” or “Homage To The School of Sensitivity” – where my work, following on Beckett's tracks, rolling through the History of Ireland to fall into an absurd, visual context inspired to Yves Klein, aims for the physical and formal Dematerialization of Matter and Worlds.

Elisabetta McBett Jacomini

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