Inconscio Idraulico | Valentina D’Accardi

Inconscio Idraulico is an artwork in progress. It is one of the sections of the Archivio Idraulico, an open photographic and video project built over years of research.

Inconscio Idraulico is a project created by stitching together video fragments that come from actual video inspections of pipes, ducts and flues made by a plumber operating in Bologna.

D’Accardi selects the unexpected moments in the shooting: the camera gets stuck in a recess in the tube or blocked in an obstruction, or the water tap opens despite the prohibition.

Inconscio Idraulico collects empty times of vision: they are images to which the plumber does not pay attention because apparently, they do not contain useful information. Indeed, they are images that highlight error, rejection and stumbling. Images that the plumber would never show and probably not even watch again.

It is a video made of scraps, its photograms are selected on the basis of their aesthetic power without any connection with their starting function, with their narration, their context.

The images are dilated, almost suspended and the sound is illegible.

D’Accardi’s work, appropriating a visual archive of others, creates a connection between her own and the plumber’s identity, in a result that is hypnotic, almost pictorial, abstract. In the artist’s hope, the plumber will try to recognize his own fragments; then he will get tired and begin to enjoy the trip.

Valentina D’Accardi, Inconscio Idraulico, 2018
single channel video (loop), 6’
©the artist
20/10/2020