November | 2016 | Thomas Kilpper

July 17 – September 4, 2016

Project description

A Lighthouse for Lampedusa!

Thomas Kilpper

Since 2008 Berlin based artist Thomas Kilpper is developing the project A Lighthouse for Lampedusa!.

The idea is to build a real lighthouse on Italy´s most southern island Lampedusa. It shall give orientation for African boat-people and refugees on the sea and be simultaneously a symbolic and widely visible “welcome” sign. The ground floor of the lighthouse-building shall be a cultural center for the people of Lampedusa. A place for exchange and mutual learning. A Lighthouse for Lampedusa! is an ongoing project and we see here just a model. It still is the aim to set it up in full-size in Lampedusa itself. So far it has been shown in exhibitions across Europe (including Naples, Florence, Reggio Emilia, Rotterdam, Poznan, Berlin, Venice, Lucerne, Zurich and Mechelen). The current refugee crisis in Europe is a humanitarian disaster. Nationalism is at the rise. Europe has an Iron Curtain back again – while hundreds drown in the Mediterranean. A Lighthouse for Lampedusa! calls for international solidarity and a fundamental change in European politics: to implement human rights and the freedom of movement for all, now!

This installation displays mainly images from Lampedusa by Thomas Kilpper

African friends and Turin-based artist Massimo Ricciardo took the black & white shots in a collective session. The African friends were seeking asylum in Lampedusa in 2014.

This project was made possible with help of Studio DAZ Architects, Naples, Giuseppe Nicotra & staff of SIENICO s.r.l., construction enterprise, Catania, Massimo Ricciardo, Turin, Anton Matzke, Anet Jünger and Ludwig Menzel, Berlin, Goethe Institute Bruxelles and Kunsthaus Dresden

Exhibition from 17th of July – 4th of September 2016

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Text: don’t think about the crisis – fight!

The German artist Thomas Kilpper was in Porto Alegre for 3 weeks doing an artist residency in Vila Flores, invited in collaboration by the Goethe-Institut. In the project, the artist created an unpublished work using and printing directly on the wooden floor of one of the spaces of the architectural complex, built in the 1920th.

The public intervention / procession / exhibition is a errorista experiment within the cohesion of the artistic research collective SYNSMASKINEN. The project results from a collaborative research on the global political context, specifically on the Brazilian context, and Porto Alegre as an example of a space for „specific fight“. The focus is established in the context from May 2016, after the start of the impeachment process. Composed of graphic pieces and literary and dramatic features, the project emerged from discussions on the World Social Forum as a utopian model of political representation and continuity / discontinuity of this model today. The initial Forum´s slogan – „Another world is possible“ – is here transformed into ambiguous title of the project, which clamps arguments on both sides of the current „state of emergency“ for which Brazil seems to be heading. ANOTHER ERROR UNABLE manifests as a procession through the center of Porto Alegre and as a display of a day at Villa Flores.

ERRORISM: practice or philosophy that has the error as the basis for their actions.
Erroristas: crowds, groups or individuals who practice Errorism. The Errorista International Movement was founded in 2005. http://www.erroristas.org
SYNSMASKINEN is an artistic-conglomerate and artistic research on contemporary political crises. SYNSMASKINEN is headquartered in Bergen, Norway. http://www.synsmaskinen.net