Vicenza, Andrea Bianconi's performance: he will take the chair of ideas to the top of the Torrione

"Sit Down To Have an Idea": this is the motto that for months has accompanied one of Andrea Bianconi ’s (Arzignano, 1974) most popular works, Sit Down To Have an Idea, around museums and cultural institutions in Italy. Today, Saturday, July 17, the work arrives in Bianconi’s native lands, in Vicenza, for the performance The Millennium Chair created by the Coppola Foundation in collaboration with Casa Testori. The chair of ideas will reach the Torrione di Porta Castello, a medieval fortification and monument-symbol, for centuries inaccessible to the public, now returned to life thanks to the Coppola Foundation, which has made it a space for contemporary art. A very intense performance, curated by Giuseppe Frangi, conceived by Bianconi to restart after yet another stop due to the pandemic.

The chair, which for the occasion has been renamed The Millennium Chair, will travel a route on a track that conveys so much intensity, since it unravels along two iconic places in the Venetian city: the square of the Palladian Basilica (starting point) and, indeed, the Torrione. Andrea Bianconi, at 8 p.m., alone with his armchair in Piazza dei Signori will wait, in a kind of silent recollection, then at 8:30 p.m., after loading his armchair on his shoulder, he will leave from Piazza dei Signori for the Torrione with the audience. At 9 p.m. the real performance will begin: with the help of a harness, the artist will climb to the top of the lantern. It will be a slow and strenuous climb up 146 steep steps to a height of 41 meters, as if to symbolize the effort required of everyone to reopen to hope. Having positioned the chair, which will remain as a permanent installation on the Tower’s lantern, Bianconi will operate a beam of light on the city, a message of confidence and hope after the long dark period.

The feat will be accompanied by the notes of trumpeter Diego Ruvidotti, a soloist and composer who has collaborated with a number of artists and directors for whom he has written film scores, such as Gabriele Muccino’s Ricordati di me, as well as releasing numerous successful records. From 9 p.m. anyone will then be able to go up to the Tower, sit in the chair and, most importantly, activate the lighthouse. Thus resuming the ancient function for which the tower was built in the 12th century, lookout and beacon harbinger of messages.

“This time we will not only be spreading ideas, but also light, the light that will occupy it after this long period of darkness,” Andrea Bianconi explains. “And that is why I also want others after me to go up to the Tower, sit in the chair and throw more beams of light: it is a call, an invitation to become aware that every man with his presence and through his action can bring light.” Andrea Bianconi’s intent is to provoke new ideas, to restart and be reborn, to build a better sharing, in the hope that we have finally emerged from the worldwide nightmare of the pandemic. “Having an idea is everything and perhaps never as in this moment will they be needed,” the artist says.

For curator Giuseppe Frangi, The Millennium Chair in Vicenza becomes almost a ritual to empower the city, because cities are rekindled by the “light” of ideas. In this case, a passage is necessary: the climb up the Tower, an act of effort, which is a premise to a “liberation.” After him, the audience present will be able to do so, climb the lantern individually and in turn light the beacon on the Tower, in the sky of the city."

Andrea Bianconi, born in Vicenza, Italy in 1974, lives and works between Vicenza and New York. The project Sit Down To Have An Idea the armchair of ideas, is a journey that began in January 2020 in Bologna at Artefiera and again in Bologna at Teatro Duse, continued afterwards in the Dolomites, at Cima Carega, and then in Tropea, in Colletta di Castelbianco, in Chiampo and now in Vicenza.

Vicenza, Andrea Bianconi's performance: he will take the chair of ideas to the top of the Torrione

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