392 KM | CLARISSA BALDASSARRI

Clarissa Baldassarri (Civitanova Marche, 1994) is a versatile and multidisciplinary artist who, in her research, engages with sculpture, video, or installations, in a path of formalization that follows the conceptual sphere.
Over time, Baldassarri has defined her practice starting from the study of the concept of transparency, moving through the thin boundary between visible and invisible, and arriving at the study of the stratification of time in relation to space. What interests her is overcoming the concept of limits, whether physical or perceptual.

The video 392 km was created in 2020, during the pandemic, at a time of quarantine, when staying within domestic boundaries was mandatory and technological means were the only possibility to recreate or at least try to maintain relationships, but they in fact changed habits on a collective level. Examples of this include smart working, work calls instead of meetings, and people forcibly directing social practices towards a virtual environment to satisfy the need for human interaction. This condition, not chosen but imposed, allowed artists like Baldassarri to find new creative inspirations and alternative languages.

What Baldassarri wanted to stage in 392 km is a virtual journey, realized using the Google Maps application.
The setup of this work is simple: once the application was opened and the desired route was programmed, namely the one that would ‘take her home,’ Baldassarri activated the ‘street view’ mode and began to follow the routes suggested by the navigator, recording what happened on the screen. The urban landscape alternates with the natural one: small city streets, wide highways, shop windows, mountain ranges. Google Maps provides an image of daily life, a moment frozen in time and immobile, impossible to reach during the quarantine.
The result is a long color video, with a total duration of four hours and eight minutes. 392 km is nothing more than the recording of the route that allowed the artist to return (virtually) home, eliminating the invisible and limiting boundaries that separated her from it.

Thanks to the use of technology, we are allowed to do unprecedented things, such as simulating a virtual journey to a cherished place… thus entering a sphere that is not only functional but also personal and emotional. The potential is infinite, in a constant process of upgrade. The limit of what we don’t know should not be classified as an impediment, but rather as a stimulus to continue the research. Just as new technologies should be considered for what they are, nothing more than tools for human use and consumption.

Clarissa Baldassarri
392 km, 2020
Color video, 4h 8’ 12”, video still
Courtesy the artist and Gian Marco Casini Gallery, Livorno

Clarissa Baldassarri, 392 km, 2020, video still.
Courtesy the artist and Gian Marco Casini Gallery, Livorno.

22/05/24