S01E06 Fornever Forget

Installation, 2020
Venerdì pomeriggio, Istituto Svizzero, Rom

It was a warm summer evening. The majestic estate overlooking the rooftops of Rome: the historic Villa Maraini, home of the Istituto Svizzero since 1949, and set in a beautifully designed park was mysteriously taken over by spherical sounds, contrasting colours, and two hybrid figures.
Immersed in orange light, a male figure with a bare torso wearing a motorcycle helmet walks towards one of the palm trees in the park: leaning against it, he embraces the tree with his feet and arms. What at first appears to be a gymnastic exercise soon looks like he tries to measure himself against this piece of nature that had grown tall over decades. The journey leads on inside the villa where one is met by a woman in a hall illuminated in a cool blue light. She too wears a motorcycle helmet and a sport outfit crouching in the middle of a circle of immaculate white sugar. Gradually, she moves in slow motion around the perimeter of her sugar island, drawing tracks in the sweet sand. It is a captivating sight to see how the contours of the circle increasingly dissolve under her gentle touches, which at the same time testifies to her highest muscle tension, while she herself is more and more powdered with sugar. Finally, we end up in a darkened room with a video projection. In a closeup, the camera has captured a man’s naked chest with letters imprinted upon its right side: Fornever Forget. The hue of the imprint on the skin is reminiscent of the orange glow in the park, and as his chest rises and falls in tune with his breathing, the letters gradually fade. The fading is accompanied, as is the entire performance, by tense, artificial sounds, occasionally interspersed with birdsong, intonating a thriller, a ritual, or a post-apocalyptic setting.
S01E06 Fornever Forget is the title Urs Steiner gave this performative scenography. which originates from an organically misshapen object and is also materialised in a photo series accompanied by a text from the artist. The original object was a flat, hand-sized, unusual form embossed with a titular lettering on one side, and the texture of tree bark on the other. So was it a buffer when the man in the video pressed his chest against a tree? Was it a way to mark this encounter? The object moulded from bark comes from that same palm tree the male performer challenged to a “physical dialogue”. The circle is closed and, at the core of this multilayered construct of works, unveils themes such as touch and memory, the relationship between man and nature, and the traces they mutually leave on each other.
The breeding ground for this body of works was a scenario none could ever predict: Rome, the entire world, in the grip of a contagious virus, all public life paralyzed, impacting everyone’s private life – touching became forbidden! As an artist in residence at the Istituto Svizzero, Steiner and a small group of artists held out in the Villa Maraini and its magnificent park, both of which owe their existence to the success of a sugar manufacturer from Ticino around 1900. Hence, the sweet white temptation trickled into Steiner’s work “Trapped” in this pompous villa and constantly surrounded by its historical heritage Steiner was thrown back on his own body, and the question of how our legacies - material and ideal - shape the world, and whether the skin can also be a memory bank for physical contacts.
What traces does humankind leave on the “skin” of our planet? Some indelible, we know. The virus made us aware of our own fragility, and that nature, despite the scars we have caused it, ultimately always has the upper hand. Faced with its power, no motorcycle helmet can protect us, despite its dark shining visor, a reflection of our desire to protect ourselves from any risk. In Steiner’s work, the motorcyclist also conveys the promise of eternal life. We encounter the figure in an earlier “episode” of his work around the theme of cryonics. And with life eternal, will memory also become timeless?
The works of S01E06 Fornever Forget balance on the edge of yesterday, today and tomorrow, on the decisive ridge between infinite remembering and eternal forgetting.

Text: Deborah Keller
Installation, Istituto Svizzero
Performer: Nexus & Chiara Lucisano
Photography: Tommaso Cassinis, Margherita Simionati
Video: Pauline Julier

Video
Camera: Tommaso Cassinis

Sound Design: Bit-Tuner

Conversation
Elise Lammer & Urs August Steiner
Watch the conversation here

Supported by
Department of Culture Canton St.Gallen, Department of Culture Canton Zürich, Foundation Anne-Marie Schindler, Cassinelli-Vogel-Foundation, Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Foundation, UBS Culture Foundation

Image 01
S01E06 Fornever Forget, performance I, villa Maraini, large salon, circle of sugar, 1:30h

Image 02
S01E06 Fornever Forget, performance I, garden, 1:30h

Image 03
S01E06 Fornever Forget, performance I, garden, 1:30h

Image 04
S01E06 Fornever Forget, performance I, villa Maraini, large salon, circle of sugar, 1:30h

Image 05
S01E06 Fornever Forget, performance I, villa Maraini, large salon, circle of sugar, 1:30h

Image 06
S01E06 Fornever Forget, video with sound, villa Maraini, dining salon, 59min