Hoop Doop meets Francesca Grilli and Giorgio Andreotta Calò
Interview by: Agnese Roda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“HOUSE WITH A VIEW  ON ART LIFE”

How did you start thinking about being an artist? Is there a specific moment you realized that was the beginning of your career? It can be anything … a meeting, a revelation, an inspiration …

Francesca: I think it has always been a requirement for my well-being. Since childhood, I remember myself drawing, the effort I put in the first ones, into realizing them. I do not remember ever having thought you could have done anything else in life. Then, in order to make Art, I became a full time artist and it ‘took a little’ time to achieve it. I like to think life itself is the art form that accompanies me, and the final work is the result, the fruit of it.

What do you like about your job?

Giorgio: A vision becomes reality. I like being a spectator of any work and I can get excitement, energy, from it. I love challenges. Heavy, hard work is an experience that allows you to do any work, always different, always new. I have no risk of getting bored.

Francesca: The feeling and the strength. Appearance, occult, talisman, coded messages, language, and what is indecipherable. People who know me think I can find all these things in my work. It is my intimate daily practice of finding myself. It ‘s my sport, the oxygen in my bones. As well as torture and punishment.

Do you work every day? Could you describe a typical day at work?

Giorgio: I always work. My work is the result of a continuous time invested and never limited. It shapes from meditation and solitude, as well as sharing with others. I cannot separate my life from work. They are only one thing.

Francesca: Since Agata, our baby, is born work rhythms are different. Before I was used to working disciplined, dedicated to it.  Now I start my day with kindergarten and rhythms are dictated by life. In Amsterdam, I have a study in the Smart Project Space, but the real work is done elsewhere, outside, in different locations and ideas come at unexpected times.

Your partner is an artist? How do you live a life of art?

Giorgio: I really appreciate Francesca. To some, the condition of artistic life is very heavy. Painful, unbearable. Francesca and I chose for a life where the art is very present. I hope this will become a privileged status for my daughter, an intense and happy presence, and an experience where there is no heaviness and pain.

Francesca: Art life can be reality, even though not always surrounded by an atmosphere of romance and absinthe. In fact, it is hard and pragmatic. There are clashes with yours and the other person’s ego and that is your mirror. You grow together, always trying to be true, to support and sustain each other. It requires patience and love. But it is also super fun, especially when Agata will be older, she will be swept away by our surreal projects, life, and work. I could not think of my life in a different way.

What are your artistic influences?

Giorgio: I am mainly influenced from artists who have operated in Between the 60’s and 70’s.

Francesca: Maya Deren, Demetrio Stratos, Walerian Borowsky, and Laurie Anderson.

What inspires you on a daily basis?

Giorgio: You cannot be inspired daily, because inspiration is a state of exceptional depth, which comes from an impulse. One of the thousand you face every day.

Francesca: Giorgio gives me the possibility to think deeply on the job and I thank him for this kind of not easy, but essential exchange. Agata is the purest and greatest thing I have ever made. In this moment of my life, family feeds my inspiration.

What music do you listen to?

Giorgio: My musical knowledge is very limited. I also read very little. Probably because I invest too much time in listening, observing, feeling.

Francesca: There were several musical phases in my life. I have listened to so many different things. Lately I have been researching lullabies, and I also try to use them in my work. I use sound in a wide and extensive way.

Favorite movie?

Giorgio: Tarkovsky created 7 masterpieces.

Francesca: Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir, 1975

If you weren’t an artist, what would your job be?

Giorgio: I have never thought about it. I did a lot of jobs in the past. Maybe I would have been a doctor, like my father. It would have been a good way to understand him better and try to live in a completely different way.

Francesca: The life is art; I would do everything I could get from it.

Why making art today is important?

Giorgio: Today valuable and important things are measured in economic terms, in market terms. If you do not exist in the market, you do not exist as an artist. Of course, this has nothing to do with the value of the work itself, because making art does not strictly mean generating financial gain. It does not necessarily refer to the product of a cultural industry. The question might then be, why is it today that producing profit (making money) is important? Why does Economy decide about aesthetic value (defined as the convergence and synthesis of higher values, “the Beautiful” as a whole)? To be able to answer these questions I should go far in writing. Reality remains then as a response to this situation, the artist today can become a form of resistance and commitment, even in defense of a social role and values, which are completely missing nowadays.

Francesca: Our most intimate side is usually disconnected from real community life. It is our duty to try to reconnect our souls with the rest of the world. Art, in its widest sense, allows you to create this bridge to link yourself and society, even though it is a deep and painful experience. The artist in contemporary society covers the role the Wizard had in the past. Every community should have Art, to illuminate the path and identify new ways to follow it.