Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/960495
maltatoday SUNDAY 1 APRIL 2018 31 This Week How did this project first come about, and how would you describe its current 'evolution' for the purposes for the Valletta International Visual Arts Festival? In 2017, as part of Spazju Kre- attiv's Artists in Residence pro- gramme, Italian artist Giuseppe Fanizza led a team of artists to create 'Azure Watch' at Dwejra Tower, Gozo. This comprised an iconographic collection of media that presented a revised visual memory of the Azure Window. This year, we re-examined that project and together with VIVA and the Gabriel Caruana Founda- tion we exhibited Azure Watch: Office for Public Memory at The Mill, Birkirkara. We wanted to recontextualise these objects and The Mill itself to present a dif- ferent range of associations and narratives. We were eager to ex- plore the effects of nostalgia and national mourning in light of the one year anniversary of the col- lapse of the Azure Window. Is the project primarily borne out of a desire to criticise and deflect the tourism-based legacy of the Azure window in favour of something more worthwhile and 'lasting'? The tourist legacy is just one as- pect that we've been investigating. A large proportion of the imagery of the Azure Window that is avail- able on the internet is created and transmitted by the tourists who visited Gozo, so it must be evalu- ated. However, we don't believe that this perspective lessens or cheapens the value of individual experiences of the Window. The Azure Window is a power- ful visual icon that embodies mul- tiple layers of meaning through personal and collective narra- tives, which our exhibition tries to reflect. The artists who have contributed works to us have used the ubiquitous iconography of the Window in a variety of ways to mediate their own personal re- sponses to the Window before and after its collapse. The absence of the Azure Win- dow requires us to create new nar- ratives and evaluate existing ones. Tourists and locals alike continue to visit Dwejra and take selfies in front of a site that no longer exists, and by doing so they reimagine and reconstruct the landscape. Could you talk a little bit about the interactive aspect of the exhibition and its legacy? Why do you think it's important to involve as many people as possible? Azure Watch engages closely with the public as we are inter- ested in collecting and interpret- ing individual narratives, whether they are in the form of artworks by local artisans, images and messages from social media us- ers, or responses from visitors to the exhibition. We've established this exhibition as a bureaucratic institution in order to highlight the public service element, of en- gaging with the public and "regis- tering" visitors' memories of the Azure Window on-site. Gath- ering individual and collective memories as presented in all these forms playfully shifts between the bureaucratic institution and the intimate experience of personal memory. On what basis were the artists involved selected, and how do you hope they will guide a varied series of viewpoints on the Azure Window for the purposes of the exhibition? The creative team behind Az- ure Watch comprises Giuseppe Fanizza (visual artist), Mary At- tard (photographer), Johannes Buch (print maker), Letta Shtohryn (visual artist) and An- drew Pace (co-ordinator/archi- vist). Giuseppe's interests lie in photography, visual research and activating communities in the nar- ratives of landscape; Mary works predominantly with nature and environmental photography; Jo- hannes is a graphic designer who is also active in urban art projects; Letta's work explores balance, im- balance and in-between states; and Andrew is engaged in archiv- ing collective memories. Together, our approaches evaluate concepts of built and monumental heritage, nostalgia and collective memory. What kind of contribution do you believe VIVA makes to the local visual arts scene? VIVA is supporting a number of art projects this year by Mal- tese and international artists that reevaluate our relationship to the environment, a theme which is central to the Azure Watch pro- ject. This is a significant contem- porary topic in Malta and we be- lieve that supporting these kinds of discussions in an artistic con- text is vital to develop critical dis- course that better evaluates our impact on our surrounding envi- ronment. VIVA also encourages artists and gallery spaces to col- laborate closely to produce exhi- bitions, something that we found invaluable while working with the Gabriel Caruana Foundation. Azure Watch: Office For Public Memory will remain on display at The Mill, Birkirkara until April 11. Participating artists in- clude Giuseppe Fanizza, Mary Attard, Johannes Buch and Letta Shtohryn. Opening hours are from 17:00 to 19:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and 10:00-12:00; 16:00-19:00 on Sat- urdays and Sundays Project facilitator Andrew Pace and participating artist Letta Shtohryn speak to TEODOR RELJIC about Azure Watch: Office for Public Memory – an interdisciplinary exhibition forming part of the Valletta International Visual Arts Festival (VIVA) which seeks to investigate how and why we remember the Azure Window Why the Azure Window lives on Letta Shtohryn (left) and Andrew Pace setting up the 'Office for Public Memory' at The Mill, Birkirkara