Milk Revolution

BY FRANCESCA GRILLI

The Gold Revolution is a site specific performance for the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Library at the American Academy in Rome. In the past, the idea of a possible spiritual development of man was associated with an element of absolute symbolic value, gold. Like alchemists believed in the recurrence of four historical eras, the Age of Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron, so the artist expressed the conviction of an organic and cyclical nature of an imminent transition from the contemporary Iron Age to a new Golden Age. Now, three hawks fly freely around the library, turning it into a disturbing and uncertain environment, imbued with a tangible sense of decadence and catastrophe. On the reading tables, a few history books on the subject of revolution and liberation, chosen by Stefania Tutino (AAR 2014, Professor and Associate Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts, UCLA) and some poems by Roman authors chosen by Laura Cingolani (a Roman poet).

Francesca Grilli is an Italian multidisciplinary artist based in Brussels. She uses a language focused mainly on performance practices, installations and video, with a special attention to sound in all its forms and registers. Grilli has developed several projects around the concept of the resistant body. In her earlier performative projects the body was engaged as a reflection of the resistance to life, to time, to decline, in spite of everything and for everything.