Elisabetta Benassi
Ordine e disordine (Order and Disorder), 2015
Sound installation, Vittoria underground station, Brescia (IT)
Curated by Luca Lo Pinto
Produced by Fondazione Brescia Musei, Brescia Mobilità and Comune di Brescia
October 2015 – December 2016

Piazza della Vittoria embodies the brutal encounter between fascist modernism and the city’s historic fabric. The square, with its civic tower designed by Piacentini, was the symbol of the new Italian identity. At the top of the Torre della Rivoluzione (tower of the revolution), on two adjacent sides, is a double corner clock; its numbers written in the sans serif font typical of the fascist period. The tower has been one of the city’s landmarks for over eighty years.

Elisabetta Benassi’s intervention consists of a  speaking clock. At the stroke of the hour, for about a minute, a sequence of spoken and “sung” sentences, as if they were newly coined slogans, are aired through the underground’s sound system and they are audible in every part of Vittoria station: lobby, stairs, platforms etc. These statements are the titles of works by Italian artist Alighiero Boetti and a software mixes them up without ever repeating itself. Voices: Elisabetta Benassi and Antonia Paolini.

Courtesy the artist and Magazzino, Rome