The Chillida Naps

Sound performance

2010 - unfinished

Catalogue number : 30

After beign asked to create a work in relation to the sculptured of Chillida and spending time watching photos of several of his large scale sculptures I felt a strong desire to have naps under each one of them.
Over a full week in the same summer I took a nap under severaly of the sculptures of Chillida in the park of the Chillida museum in San Sebastian each afternoon. I had someone asking people to come close to me and record a description of what they did see either me sleeping or the sculpture or both things and to record those descriptions. While doing it they had have to be careful not to wake me up.

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“I sleep. I try to sleep. I try to move from a lacanian state of interpassivity to a state of genuine passivity. I am the moon. I am the hanging man. I wait for judgment. I just entered a dark room with the window open. Outside it rains. Its pitch black. The rain is sucking every sound from the room. The dark is sucking out the room from the room. I sleep beside things and people. Try to dream of them.
I idolize corrado costa that once said : “i do nothing but i do it slowly”. I slept beside chillida sculptures in a scultpure park. I thought about the minigolf nearby. I thought about the smurfs. Smurfs as emblems of political minorities. I listen to smurfs and visitors of the sculpture park. I listen to people i never met just in order to be missing them. I pose in a pose of longing. I wear a dress of nostalgia.
I desire. I try to sing. Not much comes out. I repeat phrases. Over and over. Until i can fall asleep. I try to fall asleep on stage. I stage. I stand between my mouth and my voice. I say. I sleep.”

Chillida Leku Museum, San Sebastian / Donostia 2010.

Special thanks to Xabier Erkiza and Ertza Festival.

© Alessandro Bosetti / 2024