Auto Italia
This Saturday, 8 October, SLEEK’s very own Editor in Chief Dr. Jeni Fulton will collaborate in a discussion with art collective Auto Italia. In association with the 2016 Frieze London Reading Room, the conversation aims to explore questions of the collaborative art practice in contemporaneity and London’s viability as an artist city post-Brexit. For more information on the event please click here.
A new creative order. A redefined cultural economy. A city in the grip of emerging markets. You are heralding in this new era and it is dense and high-rise. Think of this as a hint of a much larger agenda, one that you cannot resist or escape. Maybe now it’s time to disguise your capital and take a moment to remember the importance of owning your position. As a consumer, you can flaunt your good taste without having to physically buy; becoming lifestyle rich might be just enough. Enough for what though? Amid aggressive redevelopment programs, the spaces for autonomous production are shifting and adapting. Now trending: trust, working, believing – full work, full time, full creativity, full self. On coping
No matter how much you want to panic, remember that your creative power is magic. Brands, like everything else, are perishable and now is the time to smuggle images. Place more trust in prophecies and take time to find your inner city, your own private estate. Beware of exterior energies and their agendas – take their resources and technology rather than their logos. Believe in your abilities. You only have a brief time in the sun. Use this to your advantage. Find your mobile moment.
Auto Italia
A Reading For Anybody
A May night in London, somewhere between 7 and 8pm. In a pub or better yet in your car, double taking as you pass the unpunctuated sign reading Danger Children and rapidly reducing speed to ascertain what it is, exactly, about these children that makes them so reckless, something falls – PLAP! – out of the glove compartment.
You retrieve the heavy, colourful carton from beneath the seat and slide it open. A booklet unfolds into your hand, soft, like a pocket handkerchief (the booklet, that is, not your hand). Being no longer a teenager, your hands are gravely calloused. On realising these are Tarot cards you read on, eagerly. The present holds very little value after seventeen.
The booklet contains a few reflections on the right approach, reproduced here:
1. Anticipate not only galas, it says, and long gazes from the promontory. Your future contains moments so unstimulating, a friend will snap their fingers in front of your eyes and when you wake, inform you that you were breathing through your mouth.
2. Secondly, be humble. Forgo anything marked in your filofax as exclusive and, if you are invited, attend the opening of a sash window instead. Sit, one haunch on the sill, and watch the drift. Come to understand that, historically (which is how you will come to look at everything eventually), this daily occurrence carries the same weight as any summons or ceremony, and is many times more pleasant to boot.
Auto Italia
X
This much at least, says your first card, The Wheel of Fortune, landing reversed in this, the position of current influences. As a card it is as present as can be and sails close to the wind. Fortune, like a kleptomaniac compulsively pocketing hair clips etcetera off the shelf, can take things literally. She’s saying: you’re here because you’re not thinking about now. But then, who is?
IX
Next the hermit. From his appearance you could well believe he deals in riddles. But riddles, as you know, are merely a way for superior people to keep unimportant secrets. Situated here, he warns of the perils of too much introspection. The longer you look into the lamp he holds before him, or into the dark it doesn’t illuminate, the more you are in thrall to sweet Fanny Adams. Strap yourself to the mast, stop your ears and direct yourself forwards, expecting a trip or two.
VIII
Justice, a difficult card. There’s no wind stirs that drapery. You’ll return to her by and by.
VII, VI
There’s a children’s toy that might help you to understand the next two cards, comprised of a disc with a length of twine attached at either hemisphere. On one side of the disc there’s a bird, on the other a cage. Here we have The Chariot with the figure at the top cut off from the actual vehicle, which rides empty, headless, hinting at issues of control. You think of a panicked ticket inspector finding the driver drinking a G&T in first class: but…if you’re here who’s driving the train?! As you turn the next card you peer from the window, now spotted with a little rain like a sneeze on a salad bar guard. The Lovers, honouring the harmonious relationships of your past. You conclude that it’s about persistence of vision. Turn the twine and the disc fast enough and the chariot has three riders. Come to a stop and it is empty, but then, why would a still chariot need a rider? You see what you’re saying, at least.
Auto Italia
XXI
There’s not much outside the compass of The World, and so much the better, as it is the first card in your series to look forward. A nearly naked woman, environed with garlands, eagles, a bull and a lion with a horrid, human face. In consulting the booklet, you are surprised to find this card is one of realism, and unity. Eagerly, you suggest travel. This much is certain, but not leisure.
XX, XIX , XVII
With the card of Judgement, landing reversed, you can return at last to Justice, who presided over the site of your specific goal with a certain, boring mystery. Judgement sits askew in the place of The Questioner, that is you, and suggests that judgement and the fear of it, is simply not your bag. You yearn, perhaps, to get beyond value, and value judgements. The Sun announces in his bald way that this is eminently possible, and the climate positive for your intent.
So much for the exterior. Your penultimate card sits in the place of inner feelings: you turn over The Moon, A Lunatic Fringe arrived to qualify the worldly sun, and just in time, you think – it was feeling a bit un-shuffled. Nearing nightfall, a loud smash wrenches you from your reverie. In the hurry to pull away your final card – V, JUPITER – the moral guide, synthesising all concerns of authority and where it lies, slides back to the hot, carpeted floor, chin in hand. As you turn to smile benevolently at the children who have gathered to throw rocks at your car, you understand that you are not in too much trouble.
Auto Italia
More information on the program for London’s Frieze Reading Room, please visit frieze.com
Taken from SLEEK 46
Auto Italia is Marleen Boschen, Kate Cooper and Marianne Forrest
Photography and CGI by Theo Cook
“A Reading for Anybody” by Celia Moodie