During the summer of 2016, a new project took shape in Borca, pne that creates the umpteenth new bridge between the former Eni Village of Borca di Cadore‘s exceptional history and the active present of Progettoborca, in which we’re working on the transformation and pushing forward of the huge potential available here.
PBLab is the acronym with which, in 2014, we’ve begun to mark several specific, experimental, and lab-oriented projects launched inside the Colonia (Eng.: summer camp building) together with artists and designers.
The “pilot” Lab was PBLab#0, a rebranding project focused on the blankets that the Lanerossi company custom-made, back then, for the Village itself. They were personalized by the artists Anna Poletti and Giorgio Tollot, who have morphed them into wearable items of clothing, and they have come back to life, proving once again how art and intelligent creativity may be tools able to kickstart efficient methods of enhancement.
Another important regenerative project, developed inside the Colonia by Sofia Bonato and Matteo Valerio with the Print Lab experiment, has allowed for action to be taken on the blankets once again, through printing, this time.
The Progettocoperta/BlanketProject comes after, and was almost born in jest.
In July 2016, we’ve entrusted to a few artists taking part in the residency project a (Lanerossi) blanket and a (Richard Ginori), asking them to personalize these original objects, botn with the Village. It’s not a commercial endeavour: there is no need to sell the blankets. And, in this case, to give a precise curatorial connotation to the initiative, either.
The artists have accepted to move in such loose manner, simply obtaining an image from a blanket or mug from back then, an image that, once more, generates a re-innovative communication opportunity linked to the concept of rebranding. Each of them has decorated, transformed, painted their blanket, which, therefore, became the support for an additional action, which ended up bringing to the table, in addition to formal elements, several cultural or critical lines of thinking linking to the history of the Colonia, of ENI, of Lanerossi.
The first revisited blanketmugs have been presented to the public during the Open studio of Saturday, December 10th.
1. PBLab#0. Anna Poletti and Giorgio Tollot wear two of the pieces, in the woods of the Colonia. Photo: Giacomo De Donà
2/3. Lanerossi blanket and Richard Ginori mug, as interpreted by Andrea Visentini. Photo Brando Prizzo
4. The blanket printed in the Print Lab experiment by Sofia Bonato and Matteo Valeri. Photo DC Archive
5/6. Details of the blanket as interpreted by Gianni De Val.
7/8. Details of the blanket as interpreted by Michelangelo Penso. Photo Brando Prizzon
9/11. Details of the blanket as interpreted by Marta Allegri. Photo Brando Prizzon
12. Cristopher rests: silence. #CristopherDeer
In regard to De Val’s blanket, we wrote, one day: […] which has accepted to play with this blanket. The six-legged cur is as stupid as it can become. An “x” closes its eyes: is the dog blind? The human being is? Or there’s something up in ENI? Who’s throwing up what? The assassin is wearing a leash, says Gianni? Maybe the blind dog keeps on eating men and women, whole and in entire platoons, to then dribble or spit out what remains of them, a corresponding icon, depersonalized, a red stain of bloody meat, mained body stark against the red flickers and flashes, in the suspended space of the industrail cultural, social and existential skinning? This black dog, as if made out of rags and opposed to the other; this theory of the mutilated fighters-witnesses that come out of the maw of the divoratorExpeller (the cur’s physiology is round; more than devouring, it transforms, in the neverending cycle. It’s the dog itself that produces, before it consumes, the rare meats. To produce them in stock, to produce them always, making a thread of them go by, keeping the bank humid. It’s not hunger. It’s ferocity, blind, and organized traffic).
