What happens in a dystopian future where dances are banned? The exhibition at Pecci

A dystopian future where discotheques are banned and an unidentified authority prohibits dancing and the free flow of emotions, exerting its power over people, turning them into roses. This is the scenario imagined by artist Jacopo Miliani (Florence, 1979) for his solo exhibition La discoteca, scheduled from Sept. 10 to Oct. 31, 2021 at the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato. The exhibition, curated by Elisa Del Prete and Silvia Litardi | NOS Visual Arts Production focuses on a large audio-video environmental installation composed of the projection of the film of the same name and the neon light sculpture Babilonia, the sign of the imaginary disco in which the film is set.

In the film, humans and their homes are watched over by a digital application that selects a few people for a special night at the disco, a place where a ritual aimed at controlled reproduction of the species will be consumed. In the disco there is no trace of fun, unexpectedness, discovery of the other. It is here that the protagonist Sylvester (played Eva Robin’s), queen/tiranny of Babylon, accompanied by other inhabitants of this ghostly place (Anna Amadori, Charlie Bianchetti, Kenjii Benjii and Alex Paniz), welcomes Didi (Eugenia Delbue) and Ermes (Pietro Turano), two young anti-heroes who will bring about a surprising transformation.

With La discoteca, Jacopo Miliani chooses to relate to film language through screenwriting and directing, offering an evolution and synthesis of his research on themes such as body language, dance, community places and the performativity of the self. Set at the Kontiki in Vigarano Mainarda,a historic venue in the Ferrara region that was the cradle of dance halls and the great discos of the 1980s and 1990s to which the film pays homage, the work, with a marked and surreal aesthetic, offers the viewer an open narrative on the construction of identity, the sphere of sexuality, queerness, gender fluidity, and the relationship between personal choices and society. The film combines different languages between film, art, performance, video, and dance, placing the viewer’s body at the center of a visual and physical experience, while also opening up a reflection on the new regulations to which our bodies are constrained, the transformations taking place in interpersonal relationships, and the dynamics of societal control.

The neon light sculpture Babylon, part of the project and made especially for the film, is a key part of the film set, as it is the sign of the place where the story is set. With its allusive and metaphorical name, The Babylon Disco is a space composed of different places that echo the path of transformation that unfolds in the film: as a set of voices, ideas, languages and fluid identities Babylon invites the viewer himself to a change.

In addition, The Discois also a publication published by Viaindustriae publishing with graphic design by Alessandra Mancini. The volume hosts a selection of flyers, ephemera and posters that testify to the Italian LGBTQIA+ disco scene from the 1970s to the 2000s, a collection of fragments that make up the personal research conducted by the artist in parallel with the construction of the film. The volume includes contributions by Jacopo Miliani, Elisa Del Prete, Silvia Litardi, Mariuccia Casadio, Luca Locati Luciani and an unpublished conversation with Eva Robin’s.

Coordinated and produced by the cultural association Nosadella.due with the curatorship of Elisa Del Prete and Silvia Litardi of NOS Visual Arts Production, the project La discoteca was created in collaboration with APS Arcigay Il Cassero / Gender Bender Festival; Bottega Bologna; If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your Revolution; Run by a group / Openspace. La discoteca, a project that includes the making of the artist’s first feature film, sculpture and a monographic publication that brings together all the research related to the project, won the eighth edition of Italian Council, a program for the promotion of Italian contemporary art in the world of the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture (MiC), and will become part of the museum collection of the Pecci Center.

With La discoteca, the Pecci Center continues its research on nightclubs and discotheques as epicenters of contemporary culture where music meets avant-garde manifestations of design, graphics, fashion, art and architecture and where new lifestyles and new spaces of freedom are experimented with, questioning the established codes of fun and togetherness. Begun in 2018 with the artist film exhibition Second Summer of Love, which featured works by Wu Tsang, Josh Blaaberg, and Jeremy Deller dedicated to club culture, this program line continued in 2019 with the major exhibition Night Fever-Designing Club Culture 1960-today, on the architecture and design of nightclubs.

Jacopo Miliani, from Florence, trained at DAMS in Bologna and Central Saint Martins College in London. His works have been presented in galleries and museum spaces in Italy and abroad. He has worked with performers such as Jacopo Jenna, Annamaria Ajmone, Sara Leghissa, Antonio Torres, divaD, Benjamin Milan, Mathieu LaDurée, Eve Stainton, and has collaborated with director Dario Argento, writer Walter Siti, fashion designers Boboutic, music producer Jean-Louis Hutha and semiotician Sara Giannini. He has exhibited in several exhibition spaces including: GUCCI Garden Cinema da Camera, Florence (2019), GAMeC, Bergamo (2019), Centro Pecci per l’arte Contemporanea, Prato (2019), Galeria Rosa Santos, Valencia (2018), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2017), David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2017), Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2016), ICA studio, London (2015), MADRE, Naples (2011), Studio Dabbeni, Lugano (2014 and 2010). Her artistic practice, with an interdisciplinary methodology, touches on themes such as the search for identity, performativity, the queer universe, and the relationship between verbal language and body expressiveness.

What happens in a dystopian future where dances are banned? The exhibition at Pecci

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