Acre · 2017

ita · eng
In francese (ma anche in italiano) per acre si intende l’unità di misura del terreno agricolo, ma âcre è anche il carattere amaro che in questi anni ha assunto una parte dell’entroterra bretone, quello non rappresentato dall’immagine convenzionale per il turismo, ma da un territorio meno conosciuto ed indagato, dove all'apparente rigoglio della natura e alla bellezza dei luoghi è sotteso un conflitto dovuto all’uso sconsiderato dei pesticidi nelle campagne e alla massiccia presenza degli allevamenti intensivi. Acre è anche il titolo del più recente lavoro fotografico di Pino Musi, in forma di libro, frutto di una residenza d’artista svolta nel 2016 presso il Centro d’arte e ricerca GwinZegal di Guingamp. Il progetto ha avuto come filo conduttore la relazione tra le architetture minime, funzionali e la morfologia dell'area della Côtes-d’Armor ed è concepito come un attraversamento critico che si sviluppa in due direzioni: quella che dalle fattorie contadine si estende alle periferie dei piccoli centri urbani, passando per i siti delle industrie agroalimentari e l’altra, che rimanda alla storia della fotografia di paesaggio ed alla riflessione sul lavoro di alcuni autori che ne hanno rappresentato importanti fasi di transizione.
testo correlato (originale in francese):
Campagne photographique (extract) / Alexandre Quoi
"...La campagne d’exploration, menée sur une vaste étendue du centre de la Bretagne sillonnée en voiture, a vite révélé une certaine équivalence entre la typologie du bâti des fermes traditionnelles et celle des constructions sans âme de lotissements périurbains. L’étude de Pino Musi s’est dès lors élargie à d’autres objets architecturaux afin de souligner la connexion existant entre les corps composites du monde rural actuel. Le livre, qui constitue la destination favorite de l’auteur pour ses travaux, sied parfaitement à cette démonstration. Au fil de la séquence, une soixantaine de photographies restitue ainsi un itinéraire à la manière d’un long travelling. Ce parcours débute par des abris de fortune bordant les routes, auxquels succèdent hangars et exploitations agricoles, il passe ensuite auprès d’imposants bâtiments de l’industrie agroalimentaire, s’attarde dans des bourgs en voie de désertification, avant de s’achever dans les zones pavillonnaires liées au phénomène de rurbanisation..."
"...La question du point de vue s’avère aussi déterminante, tant il faut à l’opérateur choisir la bonne distance pour définir clairement les relations spatiales entre les différents éléments. Car c’est bien à un jeu d’ordre formel que se consacre Pino Musi, lui qui a été nourri par l’esthétique minimaliste et qui se montre désireux de trouver dans le réel l’équivalent des formes plastiques de l’abstraction géométrique. Un certain nombre de ses images insistent sur l’enchevêtrement des constructions successives, tandis que d’autres isolent jusqu’à la monumentalité des vues frontales qui barrent l’horizon du paysage. Cette recherche sur les effets de planéité peut, à bon droit, le rattacher à la généalogie d’illustres photographes qu’Éric de Chassey a retracée autour de la notion de platitude. Alors que son enregistrement neutre et équilibré de façades aveugles évoque immanquablement le souvenir d’un Walker Evans, c’est l’ascendance de l’œuvre de Lewis Baltz qui semble davantage encore façonner sa démarche..."


libro correlato:
Acre
In French (but also in English and Italian) acre is the unit of an area of land, but âcre is also a French word that stands for the bitter character of Brittany’s backcountry – that part of the land that is far from the conventional tourist image – as it has become in recent years. A much less known territory, where the illusory lushness of nature and beauty of the landscape hides an inconsiderate employment of pesticides in the countryside and a massive presence of intensive livestock farming. "Acre" is also Pino Musi’s recent photographic work, the result of an artist residence at the GwinZegal art and research center in Guingamp. Musi’s work focused on the relationship between the minimal architecture and the morphology of the Côtes-d’Armor area.
related text:
Campagne photographique (extrait) / Alexandre Quoi
"...The exploratory plan, undertaken over a huge expanse of central Brittany, criss-crossed by car, in no time revealed a certain equivalence between the typology of the traditional farm buildings and that of the soulless constructions of peri-urban or so-called rurban housing estates. Pino Musi’s study then broadened to include other architectural subjects, so as to underscore the connection existing between the composite entities of the present-day rural world. The book, which is the author’s favourite medium for his works, thoroughly underwrites this demonstration. During the sequence, some sixty photographs thus re-create an itinerary in the manner of a long tracking shot. This journey started with makeshift roadside shelters, followed by sheds and farms, and then moving to impressive buildings of agri-business companies, and lingering in small towns becoming depopulated, before ending up in the suburban zones associated with the phenomenon of rurbanization..."
"...The matter of the viewpoint also turns out to be decisive, because the cameraman has to choose the right distance to clearly define the spatial relations between the different elements. For it is indeed an interplay of formal order that Pino Musi is involved with, he who was brought up on the minimalist aesthetic, and is someone evidently keen to find in reality the equivalent of the plastic forms of geometric abstraction. A certain number of his images emphasize the entanglement of successive constructions, while others single out, to the point of creating something monumental, frontal views which block the landscape’s horizon. This quest for the effects of flatness - planéité - may, with good reason, link him to the genealogy of illustrious photographers as traced by Eric de Chassey around the notion of platitude - flatness more in the sense of dullness, perhaps. While his neutral and balanced recording of blind façades inevitably conjures up memories of a figure like Walker Evans, it is the ancestry of Lewis Baltz’s oeuvre which seems to forge his approach even more..."

related book:
Acre