Evoking the Olympic marathon from Rome 1960, in which the Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila conquered the African continent’s first gold medal, running barefoot and becoming a sporting legend and a symbol of the Africa that was freeing itself of colonialism, Fischer & el Sani have recontextualised amidst Rome’s controversial rationalist architecture, a new race involving refugees and immigrants staking a claim to their freedom of movement. Fischer & el Sani are examining the complexity of ideological, political and architectural implications of Bikila‘s 1960‘s Olympic gold medal run to this day.

In Dynamis, commissioned by the Center for Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Fischer & el Sani asked people whom they meet casually in the city of Thessaloniki to take part in a patience exercise, and in this way develop a collective cultural performance.

The setup is simple: One of the countless marble surfaces in open space and some people who join in to try to balance a raw egg, so that it stands upright by itself. Nevertheless the procedure is not so easy; sometimes it takes a few seconds and at other times it can last up to hours or even to total failure. A social balancing act, between standing up and collapsing. A constant rise and fall, figuratively speaking. It takes a permanent concentration, patience and passion to stay on a task until you succeed. It is also a matter of practice and perfection, like a ritual that requires constant commitment.

The un­in­hab­ited ae­o­lian is­land Lisca Bianca, was the key lo­ca­tion of Michelan­gelo An­to­nioni’s movie L‘Avven­tura in 1960. A story about a young woman who dis­ap­pears from this is­land with no ex­pla­na­tion. We pasted posters of this miss­ing char­ac­ter around the is­land and took panoramic pho­tos on lo­ca­tion. A search for a miss­ing, fic­tive char­ac­ter in a real place.

Il luogo di morte di Pier Paolo Pasolini is a series of photographs which would function as a flip book if the story behind the images were known, if the subtext of the subtitles were to make the transition fluid. Or if the number of photographs were much larger and thus the continuum of the photographic narrative were more present from the outset. In its current form – 11 colour photographs with no subtitles – it is initially the gaps that are present. At first glance, the first and last motifs have nothing in common; no thread connects them. Consequently the viewer is encouraged to fill in the gaps with his imagination to piece the individual images together. (Krystian Woznicki)