The Greatest Show of All is Here!
July 07, 2009
Would architect Giorgio Polli (responsible for the construction of the Olde Fishmarket - Contemporary Art Exhibition Centre in 1913) have ever imagined that his remarkable creation built on the Trieste waterfront would be turned into the venue for a bizarre early-20th Centuriesque carnival of acrobats, magicians, mechanical wonders, sideshows and more, where the freshest and most amazing expressions of young international creativity will be displayed?
The ITS#EIGHT location is definitely a special place. Scenes from "Once Upon a Time in America" (Sergio Leone, 1984) were shot here. It was conceived as a fishmarket, though it has the structure of a church with a big central naive and 2 aisles. Most of you might not know that before turning into a classical religious architecture, this kind of structure was very common for housing markets. And since the building is surrounded by neoclassical architecture, the outside was made to blend in perfectly with this kind of aesthetics. So what you get in the end is a fishmarket that doesn't really look like one...It's more like a prestigious building, a beautiful space to house events and exhibitions. That's why a couple of years ago the town hall restored it and turned it into a centre for contemporary art. We were the first ones to use it with ITS#FIVE and we've been holding ITS there ever since.
We always want our guests to experience some kind of adventure when they step into the location of the event and we also aim at involving the senses as much as possible. We take special attention when developing the concept for each edition because we know that around that concept we willl develop the exhibition layout, the catalogue for the event, the printed materials...basically, all the different materials that will communicate ITS during the year. For ITS#FIVE, for example, we turned the location into a dream-like world where the accessories were displayed inside bird-cages in a surreal forest, with real grass to walk on and sounds of animals all around, while the photography exhibition was an apartment from the beginning of the 20th century with a pianist playing in the middle...
This time, as you can see from the above image, we've decided to completely twist the plot and radically change the structure of everything. The concept for ITS#EIGHT allowed us to study early 20th century circus set-ups, and we found dozens of old images of posters, photos of shows, of artists and their costumes, of what surrounded the circus, and the arrival of the circus caravans in town...Plenty of material that really inspired us and made us want to develop a circular catwalk in the middle of an amphitheatre.
There will be no perceptible divisions between the three different areas (fashion, accessories and photography) and it will look more like one single space where the finalists' creativity will play the leading role, surrounded by circus-like tents, magic boxes, cardboard cut-outs of artists performing (like the tightrope walker or the magician), real popcorn and cotton candy carts...
The Accessories Exhibition will be set-up in a Magician's Show. You will see his tricks around, his magic cards, his top hat, his magic wand and magical boxes. Photography will be the realm of the sideshows, the spectacles that used to be right outside the circus tent as an entertainment before the main show, with freaks, fortune-telling machines and bizarre shows. Moreover, the sounds will communicate the idea of entering a travelling show. You will hear the cannonball man attempting his record launch, the aerialist doing a triple vault, the lion-tamer using his whip....sounds that will surround you and take you to another place for a while.
We want you to leave reality for a while when you come to ITS. Step out of your real world and come and see the world of creativity of THE GREATEST SHOW OF ALL!
