Research- Rossella Biscotti

Research- Rossella Biscotti 

KREFELD
September 2014 – Programming and data visualisation for artist Rossella Biscotti's installation at Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld, Germany. Installation view Museum Haus Esters 2014, © Kunstmuseen Krefeld, photos: Volker Döhne



https://frieze.com/article/rossella-biscotti 

'In his seminal book A Grammar of the Multitude (2001), Italian philosopher Paolo Virno argues that, within the society of spectacle, communication itself has become an industry. For Virno, the culture industry is the matrix of post-Fordism, a sector ‘in which there is “production of communication by means of communication”’. Biscotti’s practice can be read as an ongoing exploration of this idea.'

This artist along with her work was recommended to me by a tutor. The reason for this is evident. There is an overtly political nature to the narratives used by this artist.  Her works are used to internalise the past and also to make commentary on the way in which process, material and medium have been used for and against political means over time and by different groups. 

https://www.textiellab.nl/en/news/data-and-jacquard-weaving

This artist has a multitude of works and mediums however I am specifically interested in her fabric work, KREFELD. This piece's composition speaks to me as it trials onto the floor from a suspended pole. This is reminiscent of a medieval flag or banner, what furthers these connotations is the ruffles of the sides of the work. 

Artist Rossella Biscotti developed tapestries on the digital jacquard loom in the TextielLab. Biscotti is an Italian artist who lives and works in Brussels. Through her art she explores historical and spatial issues and gives them shape in sculptures and three-dimensional works, that make social and political issues visible. 

Rossella Biscotti has won the Mies van der Rohe stipend. With this stipend promising young artists can realize an art project in the by Mies van der Rohe designed villas Lange and Esters. Josef Esters and Hermann Lange were two silk manufacturers from Krefeld. The villas belong to the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. For Haus Esters Biscotti made a site-specific installation with woven tapestries. 

The Krefeld textile industry had its peak in the 19th century, after the introduction of the jacquard loom. This loom was invented Joseph-Marie Jacquard in Lyon in 1805. Jacquard devised a system with a succession of narrow cards with holes in order to store the information about the patterns for weaving. This is the first time information was stored in a binary manner, with an on / off, 0/1. The jacquard cards are the precursors of punch cards that were used to store information before computers had an internal magnetic memory. At the end of the 19th century Herman Hollerith was the first to use punch cards to store information. Hollerith invented this system when he worked at IBM for storing data for the 1890 census in the United States 

Biscotti used demographic data from Brussels for this project. The historical data Biscotti uses, show the changed family ties. Biscotti put the data into an abstract pattern. This resulted in four tapestries with the titles Acquired Nationality, Children, Dead Minorities and Single Mothers. The interpretation of data makes the individual subordinate to the system, a topical theme in this age of big data. Weaving, the origin of the digital world in which we live, shows how data are in fact unreadable.

The work, or aspects of the work being unreadable is of further interest to me as I work with text. Although hers is a digital 'text' it still investigates the interface between actual 'reading' of a work and the implied reading of a work/emotive understanding.