I Murazzi dalla cima is a work that was conceived as an environmental intervention by Milanese artist Stefano Arienti, one of the leading figures of the new Italian generation. The selected area is the Murazzi, a meeting place of vital importance in Turin, especially for the summer nightlife.
Stefano Arienti chos to divide his work into three stages: an initial planning stage, in which he developed a series of possible solutions and subsequently combined them into a list that is presented as the first work.
The second stage consists in actually carrying out the projects: objects, such as a rows of showers and cold water vaporizers, a plastic reptile container, and trash bins to collect waste (differentiated by color), are arranged in the area. Subsequently, a more visually striking project takes shape - a polystyrene column, on top of which can sit a stylite, i.e. whoever wants to use it as a place for meditation.
The third stage in Arienti's intervention is meant as an interaction with the regular visitors of the Murazzi. They are encouraged to take advantage of the various facilities installed, thinking of them as extra services provided by the City. In this view, 'respecting' an artwork does not equal 'steering clear' of it - on the contrary: it implies the possibility to use it directly.
Stefano Arienti (1961) has worked as an artist since the second half of the 1980s. In his formative years he was part of the Milanese group who, in 1985, produced a series of interventions at the former Brown-Boveri factory. In the following decade he continued to exhibit both in collective and solo exhibitions, among them in the Aperto section of the Venice Biennale (1990), in the exhibition Cocido y crudo (Madrid 1994-95). He also created an individual installation at Villa Celle, Pistoia, which was commissioned by collector Giuliano Gori (1996).
His working methods underwent several changes over the years, from the folding of comics into pleated sculptures to the tracing of illustrated books, to erasing captions in books about the nature kingdom, or slideshow projections in which each slide is scratched with a needle, or the transformation of trivial, reassuring posters into strange, disturbing images, by means of small interventions that slightly distort their appearance as a whole. Actually, calm and anxiety are the two poles between which Arienti's interventions constantly swing, and they express his interest in the absurd side of life.
