From State To State

Mobile Archive
Collection of travel tickets, archival folders, transportation crates and a website
Dimensions of each crate: 110 x 82 x 52 cm
2006-2023 (On-going)
CSAC Parma Permanent Collection
Supported by Mondriaan Fonds Amsterdam
The project was awarded the “PAC2021 – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea”, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture

 

Since 2006, the artist has collected tickets from all his journeys, whether by plane, bus, tram, subway, taxi, train or ship, etc. While on the one hand these tickets are a reminder of all the nomadic movements and dynamic situations of thought in which new ideas were born and then shared with the artistic community, on the other hand they constitute an archive that provides a record of all his movements, including expense (€), ecological impact (CO2 emitted), distances travelled (km), time invested (h) in travelling and a testimony of how individual movement may influence the collective environment, both a physical / natural environment and one of thought.

 

From State To State is a mobile archive conceived as a political portrait. It exists both as a digital archive, in the form of the website www.fromstatetostate.com, conceived as a publication in the making, and a physical archive – adaptable and expandable to the exhibition space – characterised by transport crates, in which the collection of tickets is organised chronologically in suspended filing folders. Along with all the tickets, there are empty spaces in these pouches that acquire as much relevance as the tickets themselves, as records of a series of significant yet not officially catalogueable journeys and wanderings.

 

The mapping of the artist’s travels becomes a database that highlights geographical and political boundaries, the ‘legal’ nature of the tickets and the notion of limits they evoke. The work is both a visual testimony to the apparent freedom and possibility of movement across borders and a visualisation of the collective experience of constant surveillance exerted on individuals.