For this year’s calendar, Lavazza collaborated with video artist Marco Brambilla, who’s known for his work for Hugo Boss, Ferrari, Muse Magazine and Kanye West to create „Opera Viva – the 2013 Social Calendar by Lavazza.“
This time he followed the footsteps of former collaborators such as David LaChapelle, Helmut Newton and Ellen von Unwerth to create twelve video-collages, which, joined together, represent his feelings and impressions of both one year and one day, leaving space open for the spectator’s own interpretation and thus probing our definitions of how a calendar should be structured.
The artist associated the beginning of the day (the time between midnight and 2AM) and the beginning of the year (January) with images of billboards and vibrant neon lights, creating a kaleidoscopic, colourful extravaganza. February is titled ‘Dream’; in it we see a golden brocade curtain being drawn up, with the starry sky of a cold winter night in the background. All of a sudden a bubble is forming shape out of nothingness, while reflections of glossy glass panels and thick cardinal red smoke appear on the sides.
Brambilla´s personal experiences and own memories play an especially important role in this creation. Just by reading the titles of each month one can see how he imagines spending a day. Simultaneously, certain moments define an entire month. For instance, August stands for a hot day at the piazza; September is the arrival of a train. November is about the season to be merry. Pictures of turkeys and asparagus spears are floating around in front of a bronze, copper background.
The last two hours of the last month are dedicated to the flurry of New Year’s Eve. Neon lights, magenta, fluorescent green and electric blue colours, a disco ball, a dancing crowd blurs together. One of the artist’s aims was to show how differently one could sense the time passing by. Looking back at one’s own life, months turn into moments. He is reminding us the trickiness of memory, and that one can only remember certain details. Or as Brambilla stated, “trying to reconfigure the very idea of time and represent it as if it were based more on the flow of consciousness than on lunar or solar cycles, was an ambitious and fascinating challenge.“
Brambilla creates an array of strong impressions. After looking at this collage of a diversity of personal memories, one wonders whether it can be handled only as a magnificent piece of art, or will it replace the printed, old-fashioned calendar in our everyday life.
Brambilla explains how to use the calendar: