The new
Bêka & Lemoine film, “OSLAVIA. The cave of the future past ”is a journey into the past inside the Balla world, where the movements of the curators of the exhibition discovering the house through their flashlights are collected. Accompanied by sounds, flashes, and colors, the film conveys a sense of constant tension.
The exhibition will be available from June 17 to November 21, 2021, at the MAXXI museum in Rome. During the time of the exhibition, the futuristic house where Giacomo Balla lived and worked from 1929 until his death will remain open to the public.
“In full lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic, for the first time after almost half a century of inaccessibility, we had the chance to enter, with two curators from the MAXXI Museum, in the studio-house of the Futurist painter Giacomo Balla, located in Via Oslavia in Rome.”
Bêka & Lemoine
“OSLAVIA. The cave of the past future” by
Bêka & Lemoine is a voyage inside the house atelier where Giacomo Balla, prominent Futurist painter and pivotal 20th century artist, spent the last thirty years of his life, in Rome. The inestimable historical value of this apartment comes from the fact that beyond having been the intimate living quarters of the artist and the salon of the artistic debates of the time, the apartment is a real piece of total art where every inch from floor to ceiling has been painted, transformed and personalized by the artist and his two daughters, Elica and Luce, who were also both painters. After Balla’s death in 1958, the daughters lived there, taking care of the house, until the late ‘90s. Then, the door was closed and the world of Giacomo Balla kept untouched until today.
During spring 2020,
Bêka & Lemoine were invited by the curatorial team of the MAXXI in Rome to enter this sacred art space to capture its inner essence. At that time, the outside world was silent, the streets were empty, Italy was under full lockdown, when the artist duo joined the curators of the museum to unveil the rooms and the ambiance in which Balla lived and worked, decades after the last guest had left the house.
Resulting from this unique experience, the film is an archeological journey in the past future, sealed in the silent space of the apartment. Capturing the movements of the curators as they slowly move through space, their hesitant footsteps in the unknown rooms, the beams of their flashlights skimming all the objets left untouched, the camera awakens the trembling emotions that lie dormant in every corner of the house. Tables, chairs, painted tiles, the sofa tapestry, the bright red and yellow blobs that decorate his personal library: Balla turned this apartment into a world of his own, an independent hortus conclusus, where he thrived.
“OSLAVIA. The cave of the past future” is a unique journey around Balla’s world, in which the filmmakers reconstruct the space and its emerging memory through flashes, sounds and colors. Taking cues from films such as Roma by Federico Fellini for the scene of the discovery of the frescoes during the new subway construction, or Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog on the Chauvet cave in Ardèche,
Bêka & Lemoine convey the same sense of wonder and amazement of the first explorers of major archeological sites.
The film was commissioned by MAXXI as part of the upcoming exhibition
“Casa Balla” and is the only art piece produced within the walls of via Oslavia. Along with
Bêka & Lemoine, international artists and creatives Carlo Benvenuto, Alex Cecchetti, Emiliano Maggi, Leonardo Sonnoli, Space Popular, and Cassina with Patricia Urquiola were also invited to investigate Casa Balla, through different media and techniques. The results meet some important loans from Giacomo Balla inside the gallery space at MAXXI museum.
For the first time, during the time of the exhibition, the extraordinary Futurist house in Rome where Giacomo Balla lived and worked from 1929 until his death will be open to the public.
