TECHNO, Museion

For the TECHNO exhibition at Museion, Diogo Passarinho Studio has been commissioned to develop a scenography for more than 20 artists and theorists, throughout a total of 3 venues spread across the city of Bolzano. The institution is the largest of the venues, with more than 2000 sqm. The viewer explores the space in a fluid cycle of rooms and spaces, transitioning from one topic to another. In this way, the space itself helps the visitor in understanding a coherent discourse on contemporary topics such  as industrialism, perception, technology and corporeality

As in a techno track, the scenography works as a syncopated story-telling. Its design has been inspired by three major themes  –Freedom, Compression and Exhaustion– whose aim is to grasp and synthesise some of the contemporary topics of our society. Brilliantly orchestrated by Bart van der Heide – curator of show and current director of the Museion–, the project has asked an international group of artists and creatives to explore how our reality may be related to the sub-culture of techno. Moreover, the show proposes to investigate this movement as interlaced to our persona today, and the many possible ways it has shaped our aesthetics. While the artworks functions as tracks by displaying these very topics, the design links them as a playlist. In this way, the visitors are guided through the experience and challenged to perceive the space fully, with either the senses or ritualistic movements. 

The studio has been collaborating with artists through all the many stages of design. In this way, the scenography has helped them create a scenery for the work. This synergy has resulted in both the simple introduction of specific materialities and textures, as well as in specific interactive furniture. These approaches allowed for the creation of specific settings for each individual artwork, that through the viewers’ ears, eyes and hands they can be spatially perceived in different ways or discovered in new formats.

Using sound as the main design driver, the visitors are presented with both scattered and rigid layouts, whose aim is to improve the experience of the artworks by creating a more free or labyrinthine displays. Through the surgical placement of architecture and content, we have recreated a new set of intimacies and spatial relationships which disrupts the quasi-linear repetitive experience of the building. This has allowed us to formulate a sequential but abrupt series of viewing points, where all rooms have different scales and levels of intimacy and where most of the exhibition gimmicks by limiting the usage of both light and sound barriers.

One focal point of the design is constituted by its attention towards sustainability and up-cycle of both structures and surfaces. For instance, 90% of the scenography utilize material found in house and re-usable structures. On top of it, most of the additional elements created –such as furniture–, was designed with the possibility to be re-assembled and included in future projects. Presented in a non-chronological order, this soundscape design can be experienced as a TECHNO mix, providing the visitor a smooth sequential experience of both artworks and scenography, as it would be in a series of “spatial“ soundtracks.

“When it comes to subculture, commitment is key. There was no such thing as a part-time Punk. Yet, in the case of techno subculture, one can enter and leave at any moment. Mediated by new technologies, techno music became the soundtrack of liberation and escape. The compressed sonic architecture of the techno club forged meaningful bonds with its community, through collective and interconnected experiences of joy, exhaustion and calculated release.” by Bart van der Heide.

2021
Bolzano, IT

Curator: Bart van der Heide

Exhibition Architecture by Diogo Passarinho Studio

Team: Diogo Passarinho and Dario Di Turi

Contributing artists: Riccardo Benassi, Paul Chan, Nicolò Degiorgis, Karin Ferrari, Massimo Grimaldi, CC Hennix, Tishan Hsu, Mire Lee, Ghislaine Leung, Isabel Lewis, Piero Martinello, Sandra Mujinga, Yuri Pattison, Daniel Pflumm, James Richards, Jacolby Satterwhite, Leander Schwazer, Sung Tieu, Jan Vorisek, Emeka Ogboh among many others.TECHNO, Exhibition views, Museion Bozen/Bolzano, 11.09.2021 – 16.03.2022

Photo: Lineematiche - L. Guadagnini / T. Sorvillo, © Museion