DOMUS SUB/MERGE

 

2006 - 2009

 

PIGMENT PRINTS ON ARCHIVAL PAPER

EIGHT SETS OF TWO

 

INDIVIDUAL DIMENSIONS (FRAMED) 28.8 X 42 CM

PAIRED DIMENSIONS (FRAMED) 28.8 X 84 CM

OVERALL DIMENSIONS VARIABLE

 

 

ED 3 + 1 AP


SCROLL DOWN FOR INDIVIDUAL IMAGES

Initiated during Hazewinkel’s 2006 Australia Council for the Arts Studio Residency in Rome, Domus Sub / Merge represents the artist’s first practical engagement with photographic archives and the introduction of history, specifically minor histories, as one the prominent themes in his practice.

Eight archive sourced images of the swollen Tiber river and the flooded monuments of Rome are paired with contemporary images of ephemeral architectures created by those that live along the river’s banks. Initially overwhelmed by the material intensity of the city, Hazewinkel began his Residency by turning his back on the buildings and monuments of the Rome. He began taking long walks along the sometimes paved, sometimes muddy, sometimes reeded riverbanks. It was these experiences that revealed to him a different pulse of the Eternal City – its minor histories.

In his essay Lucciole, contemporary art historian Anthony Gardner considers Domus Sub/Merge in relation to the work of P.P. Pasolini and G. Didi-Huberman, who suggest that minor histories often evade capture within the dominant understanding of the past and rigid architectures of knowledge. Identifying correlations between Domus Sub/Merge and Pasolini and Didi-Huberman’s expression of importance of minor histories in recording the past, Gardner suggests that the flickering irruptions of the past within the present (which Pasolini termed Lucciole - Fireflies) ‘... can be considered forces of resistance, opening up new perceptions of history, and tearing new holes in teleologies that drag from the Antique to the Renaissance and thence to the neoliberal present where everything, including time and historical knowledge itself, has chiefly become a commodity.’

read Gardner’s text Lucciole here

Comprising three sets of paired images the first iteration of Domus Sub/Merge was presented at the British School at Rome at the completion of the artist’s Studio Residency. It was further developed over the following years as the as part of his Acqua Alta Project.

Essays considering Domus Sub Merge and The Aqua Alta Project include  

Rebecca Coates, The Antique and the Everyday, read here

Stefania Mana, FCO-MEL Unspooling, read here, available in Italian here

Geraldine Barlow, How Might a Thread of Moments be the Space of a River, read here

Archival material courtesy British School at Rome Photographic Archive, Ashby, Bulwer and Mackey Collections