Zambeccari & Son

 
 

The launch of a balloon from the roof of the flower shop in London in 1783 had unforeseen ripple effects, leading the way to great social changes and eventually the unification of Italy in 1861. Based on the story of Comte Franscesco Zambeccari and his son Livio this historical research and performance was developed as part of the Blackstock Green House in 2012.

 
 
 
 

Comte Zambeccari’s perilous trip across the Adriatic Sea, 7th of October 1804

It was two o'clock. The compass had been broken, and was useless; the wax light in the lantern would not burn in such a rarefied atmosphere. We descended gently across a thick layer of whitish clouds, and when we had got below them, Andreoli heard a sound, muffled and almost inaudible, which he immediately recognised as the breaking of waves in the distance.

 After having torn and cut away everything that did not appear to us to be of indispensable necessity, the balloon, thus very much lightened, rose all at once, but with such rapidity and to such a prodigious elevation, that we had difficulty in hearing each other, even when shouting at the top of our voices. 

I was ill, and vomited severely. Grassetti was bleeding at the nose; we were both breathing short and hard, and felt oppression on the chest.

 I could not account for the reason why the moon, which was in its last quarter, appeared on a parallel line with us, and looked red as blood.

 Although we descended gently, the gallery was sunk, and we were often entirely covered with water. The balloon being now more than half empty, in consequence of the vicissitudes through, which we had passed, gave a purchase to the wind, which pressed against it as against a sail, so that by means of it we were dragged and beaten about at the mercy of the storm and the waves.

 Without the slightest doubt we should have been drowned if heaven had not mercifully directed towards us a navigator who, better informed than those we had seen before, recognised our machine to be a balloon and quickly sent his long-boat to our rescue. 

The sailors threw us a stout cable, which we attached to the gallery, and by means of which they rescued us when fainting with exposure.

At once the balloon mounted with incredible rapidity, and was lost in the clouds, where it disappeared forever from our view.

Wonderfull Balloon Ascents, Camille Flammarion, 1870, Ed Casell, Peter and Galpin

 

City: London

Year: 14th of October 2012

Partners: Blackstock green house team, RARA

Miraculi

 
 

A theatre project based on the story of the inhabitants of Lampedusa and their daily live at the edge of european frontiere. The project came about when a group of theatre students gathered with anthropologist Valentina Zagaria and decided to go on a month long residency on the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2013.

City: London/ Paris/ Lampedusa

Year: 2013- ongoing

Role: Set design and production assistant

Partners: Theatre Senza

www.theatre-senza.com

Alpana

 
after language day.jpg
 

21st of February is an important secular celebration for the Bangladeshi community. It is known as ‘mother language day’. On this occasion we created a series of traditional ‘Alpana’ paintings in Altab Ali Park. This involved several months of research to find the artists who could master the ‘Alpana’ technique and work at a monumental scale.

 

Le 21 février est une fête importante pour la communauté Bangladeshi. A l’occasion d’une célébration organisée dans Altab Ali park nous avons réalisé une série de peintures traditionnelles. Ce travail a nécessité plusieurs mois de recherche notamment pour trouver des artistes capables de travailler à une  échelle monumental et connaissant la technique de l’Alpana.

  

City: London/ Whitechapel

Year: 2011

Client: LDA/ TFL/ Tower Hamlets Council

Organisation: Muf Architecture/ Art

Role: Project manager

Partners: Altab Ali Foundation/ Bangladeshi Welfare association/ Swadinata Trust

Contact

For any enquiry please send me a message using the form bellow

or send an email to: mrbenjaminperrot@gmail.com

Ghana blog

 

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - CHALE WOTE FESTIVAL 2018

The El Warcha team are heading to Accra, Ghana, to participate in the Chale Wote Street Art Festival. We will be working with the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of James Town to build an installation in the public space with local materials.

15 to 27 August 2018

Blog - Text: Valentina Zagaria; Photos: Nao Maltese

The project was funded by the Rambourg Foundation and the Cité de l’Architecture de Paris.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAY 1

Having all landed in Accra at various hours of the night, the Warcha team was fresh enough to start the day at 11am. We were brought a Ghanaian breakfast favourite – fried egg sandwiched in toast bread and black tea – to our rooms, but felt in need of coffee, so ventured out for a wonder around James Town, and ended up ocean side.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAY 2

9am start. Woke up after a bumpy night, with the street music, call to prayer and charismatic preachers competing for the title of loudest hotel room guest. Malaria pills swallowed, we kicked off the day by heading on a market research trip. The aim was to get a sense of costs and of what material was out there that we might want to play around with for building our installation for Chale Wote.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAYS 3 & 4

We then visited the slave castle. We were about twenty people on the guided tour, apart from us most of the visitors were Ghanaian (in Elmina there were American and Nigerian visitors as well). The guide explained how the slave trade was run here, how people were kept for months in dungeons in almost total darkness with very little ventilation, like sardines, forced to eat, sleep and defecate in the same squeezed spot, the floor we were walking on was formed as a result of layers of those inhumane conditions.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAY 5

First official day of the Chale Wote festival. Nao and Valentina went to fetch the artist and press badges in the morning at Brazil House – the festival headquarters, from which a procession of artists will take off this afternoon to launch the festival. The curators were finishing setting up art works along the walls, since as from today the building will hold the Shika Shika Art Fair. We have stocked all of our bamboo in Ussher Fort, which neighbours Old Kingsway, the space where we will be working. Badges and bamboo in hand, we were ready for our first day of work.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAY 6

Eidkum Mabrouk! This morning there were a lot of cows being led around the maze of small streets that make up James Town to be sacrificed, especially around Zongo Lane, where the Muslim community reside. On our way to Old Kingsway at 10am we passed by men and women impeccably dressed in white – the colour of festivities, whether it be the Ga Homowo or the Muslim Eid – heading to visit family to wish them happy Eid. We resorted to joyous, albeit somewhat nostalgic for the boys, rounds of phone calls to families and friends in Tunisia throughout the day.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAY 7

Today the El Warcha team was scheduled to participate in a panel discussion at the National Theatre at 1pm. We didn’t have much time to work in the morning, so, with heavy hearts, we focused on finding a potential new space for our installation. After almost daily negotiations with both local “landlords” and the festival organisers (who would have rather have us work in Ussher Fort – a solution which didn’t suit us because it is not in the public space), the festival warned us that we will have to move our installation out on Friday lunch time after all. The reason for this is that Old Kingsway will be used for concerts over the weekend, and the festival organisers couldn’t negotiate for us to stay because these concerts are not directly organised by them.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAY 8

Only one day left to get our installation built: the pressure is on! Ben and Aziz, who had worked until midnight last night, were back in Old Kingsway by 9am. One hour later they had already managed to get another structure standing, and were joined by the rest of the team. We now have three structures in the space – one is completely finished, while the other two still need work to create seating at the bottom and to integrate the wiring for the LED lights. Seeing the three structures standing is impressive, and we can already imagine all the different possibilities for positioning them in relation to one another so as to create different kinds of shapes and spaces.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAY 9

El Warcha fi telvsa! TV time for Ben and Mohammed, who woke up at 6:00am, ready to head to the Citi TV headquarters, only to find once we got there that we would be on-air at 9:30am. Valentina went to fetch breakfast – egg and bread and Nescafé poured into transparent sachets for takeaway purposes – as Nao filmed the guys getting their make-up done for the big screen.

EL WARCHA FI GHANA - DAY 10

Let the festival weekend begin! Last night we left Old Kingsway feeling tired but happy after a week of hard work. The installation, though, didn’t seem like it had reached its full potential yet: we all wished we could have had a couple more days to try different positions for the structures and for the LED lights, and to continue building on what we had found. At this stage though we just had until 2pm – when the festival was to officially kick off.

Exoplanet - 2020

Exoplanet, mixed media on paper, 59x49cm, 2020, London

DE35D691-8525-42F2-9FF7-81ABC72E007B.jpg

Sand dunes of the Medina

For every mound of sand that appears a stone wall is being replaced by a concrete one.

Materiality and longevity are central to our understanding of historical heritage. The few elements from the past that we can feel and touch are precious ways to be able to relate to that past. What remains once all has been replaced, reused, reclaimed? This question is particularly sensitive in the medina of Tunis, a world Heritage site, that is continuously being rebuilt.

“The city grows, its population as well as its civilisation are expending. Construction materials, labor and craftsmanship are being refined, all this up to a certain point. Once this height is being achieved, the wealth and affluence starts to decrease. Consequently the habits of building robust and refined monuments is being lost. The labouring force and craftsmanship skills slowly disappear. Stones, marble and other construction materials are become scarce. People start to reclaim material from empty buildings. Stones from the monuments, houses and palaces are being reused indefinitely until everything wears out completely.”

Ibn Khaldûn , Al – Muqaddima 1377

100 Chairs

The throne (sarîr), the chair (minbar, takht), the armchair (kursî) are pieces of wood put together or a step (used as a seat), in order for the king to sit above his courtesans and for them not to be at the same height. […] However, a kings only steps on to a throne once he has enough pageantry, strength and wealth. Originally, the Bedouins didn’t even consider it. 

The first Muslim to have sat on a throne was Mu’âwiya : he argued it was because of his body weight. 

Ibn Khaldûn , Al – Muqaddima 1377

Seating above the ground is not something we often question, but what Ibn Khaldûn tells us is that there is more to it than its convenience. The chair is part of a wider state of body and mind. 

In Ibn Khaldûn ‘s work mankind rather than evolving in one direction is in a loop between two opposite poles. On one side is the figure of the nomadic Bedouin who uses his own strength to protect his interests and provide for himself and his family. On the other end is the sedentary man weakened by his wealth and education needing the state to protect his assets and foster his lifestyle.

The comparison between the two archetypes makes an interesting reading of the body language. The Bedouin is unsettled while the sedentary is static. One is standing on his legs but the other is supported effortlessly above ground sitting on a chair. One is contemplating the world while the other is acting upon it. This might well be a self-analysis of the great Ibn Khaldûn himself. He was both the resilient nomadic and cultured sedentary. At a time when power was changing hands at a fast past Ibn Khaldûn was always on the move, making enemies and patrons on all sides of the Mediterranean. As well as being a well averse politician he is one of the most famous scholar of the 14th century, still regarded today as the founding fathers of sociology. 

Part of the sociological analysis of Ibn Khaldûn is the rise and falls of empires and civilisations. 

The aim of civilisation is culture and wealth. Once this goal is achieved, civilisation declines, following the same patterns as leaving creatures.

What Ibn Khaldûn says is that civilisation shouldn’t be regarded as the highest achievement of mankind but merely as the latest stage of a cycle that will eventually repeat itself. Culture and wealth in Ibn Khaldûn’s view can be overlooked underestimating the value of primal instincts, which can be of survival necessity in a situation of crisis. Ibn Khaldûn is even more abrupt in his judgement stating that wealth and pleasure if abundant are a source of corruption eventually ending up in self-destructing. 

The chair or the throne in this context becomes a symbol of the sedentary man waiting helplessly for the fall.