Brian Eno’s imagination in an artistic project in Parma

Four years after his last Italian creation and after the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement awarded to him by the Venice Biennale in 2023, Brian Eno returns to Italy with a artistic project widespread in Parma scheduled from April 30th to August 2nd.

Reinventing the spaces of two of the most representative cultural complexes of the city, the artist presents “SEED” at the Monumental Complex of San Paolo and “My Light Years” at the Old Hospital. The first is a artistic project that is divided and developed in two phasesfirst through the presentation to the public, for a period of approximately three months, of the site-specific audio installation “Installation for Giardini di San Paolo“, created by Brian Eno and the Turkish journalist and writer Ece Temelkuran. In the second phase, the work will find new life and definitive placement at the House of Sound. The listening experience lived by the public in the Gardens of San Paolo will in fact be the subject of field recording and pressed on vinylprinted in a single copy and edited by Eno himself, integrated into the permanent collection of the Casa del Suono.

The impressive spaces of Old Hospital Cruise will instead be the venue for “My Light Years”, the most complete collection ever created of Brian Eno’s installations and audiovisual worksexhibited together in a single place, a vast and monumental architectural complex finally returned to responding to its public and collective vocation.

In the video message above, shared during the press conference presenting the two projects, Brain Eno underlined:

“I’m excited to be exhibiting at the Ospedale Vecchio in Parma. As it’s a huge building, it’s quite a challenge to figure out how to place the works in such a large space, but I’m really looking forward to it. The works I’ll be showing will be partly contemporary, but mostly older, (1:04) and will also include some of the very first light works I made in the 1970s, as well as many works produced between then and now. It will therefore be quite a varied exhibition and will also involve a lot of walking.”

He added:

“At the Monumental Complex of São Paulo I will create a new work, designed specifically for those gardens, and centered on some music and some texts by the Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran. The work will occupy the entire space, which is really very beautiful, a sort of secret place, I would say, given that it has not been opened for many years. This new piece of music will therefore be both a celebration of its reopening, and – I hope – a nice place to visit in Palma in the future too.”