Flag Semaphores
An ongoing series of creative interventions with communities outside of major cities.
Flag Semaphores is a live public art work that chronicles creative intervention with communities through collective portraiture. Part public video installation, part live performance, we immerse the viewer in a multimedia exploration of space, history, community, and architecture. Fragments of text, works on paper, and video create a micro memoir; a deep inquiry into the effects of fascism, poverty, death, and civic redemption. Flag Semaphores creates a free public art work that is for and created with communities that are otherwise underrepresented inside of traditional art spaces.
Flag Semaphores: Basilicata
Starting in 2020/21 we launched this body of work by exploring my family’s migration from Southern Italy to America during WWII. Filmed throughout the Basilicata region in Southern Italy, this work included a deep re-framing of the famous memoir written by Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli, as well as conversations with artists, agricultural workers, citizens of Marconia and Pietragalla, and digital tours from Los Angeles through Google Street View.
In addition to a thirty minute performance with single channel video, written by Bonnell and performed by Gabriella Rhodeen, eighteen works on paper, a three channel video installation, and a 25 foot jib sail with the Abracadabra incantation were created and installed as part of the Una Bocata d’Arte festival.
Created in collaboration with performer Gabriella Rhodeen
Original text written by Jesse Bonnell
Flag Semaphores: 2020 & 2021 was supported by Castello San Basilio and Fondazione Elpis as part of the second edition of Una Bocata d’Arte.
Rhodeen pictured at Sixth Century ruins called the Tavole Palatine, a Greek Temple dedicated to the goddess Hera. This on-going series looks at a variety of material centered on visual and verbal communication to phantom spaces and people across vast distances. A large part of that conversation centers an active engagement in diversifying and empowering those who feel that they do not possess ownership or agency inside of an artistic space. Both during Una Boccata d’Arte and in the final iteration, the project creates accessible international performing arts exchange as it builds relationships with rural communities over multiple years.
Amulet Against Fever
Sail Cloth, 25 x 15 x 23, 2021
Amulet against fever is the recognizable Abracadabra phrase written in triangular form, which when recited by a speaker from top to bottom or in the opposite direction, has the power to ward off diseases. Tracing the etymology to Hebrew, the phrase means “I create as I speak.” Triangular and hand written, these appeared on the doorways of most Londoners during The Great Plague of London.
In the book, Christ Stopped at Eboli, the writer Carlo Levi describes seeing many locals throughout Basilicata in the late 1930s with this amulet hung around their necks. Fitting for our current world in need for this ancient magic and hope. We are creating multiple quilted works using sailcloth as the primary material. Here we installed a 25 foot Jib Sail with the triangular form of the magic phrase on the side of a church in the Italian mountain village, Pietragalla.
Selected performance text written by Jesse Bonnell
Flag Semaphores: Basilicata
Gabriella:
I can hear the voices of our dead ancestors, rapping at the windows. Mother’s arms empty, without babies and nothing but loss. A sacrificial lamb listing at sea in plumes of hot smoke . Purple smoke surrounds the woman's body like Judy Chicago. Like the Black Madonna. Tethered together in suspension. We all participate in early outdoor ritual in Marconia. And reading pages from Carlo Levi - chapters one through twelve. These cryptic lines that Christ stopped short at Eboli. A hopeless feeling of an infant's death. We see a few cars in the distance. The Christians are coming to see a historical painting. In the painting I see Mary Magdalen. She had reddish brown hair. She had strawberry cheeks and looked happy. Do you know this painting by Caravaggio. She is in grief and a state of ecstacy. Caravaggio painted this in hiding somewhere in Zagarolo in 1606. Art made in exile.
It's hard to breathe. Your chest was pressed against the medical film plate. With the camera behind you. Moving from back to front, it takes an x-ray of your heart, lungs, blood, airways. The bones of your chest and spine. This landscape of desert plants and dried up water beds. Posteroanterior landscape of your chest filled with liquid and no air.
This is in-motion portraiture of you and me. It’s your Grandfather and Grandmother in Bernalda or Pietragalla. This is a document of our experience. The painting of you, the story of you, the quilt we made for you is here. We can see the messages. We can survive the plague.
This is a year long art work. This is a long passage at sea.
Performance, 30 minutes, single channel video, sound, 2021. Performed by Gabriella Rhodeen.
A taurus shaped donut, in which viewers can enter and walk around at their leisure. Wrapped in sailcloth, the documentary style projections cascade over the surface. Internal lighting and sound design create a light-box globe like cinema, which references zoetropes creating a stroboscope dream machine. The sculptural rotunda is designed in collaboration with London-based architect Brian Spring (AIA, RIBA) and Jesse Bonnell.
The Taurus seen here in the center of Castello San Basilio’s public square. The circular tunnel was first created in response to the 11th century architecture of the castle. The structure will remain the central sculptural object for the project.
We created several other filmed performances throughout the pandemic as part of our research. ‘Anti Lullaby’ was written and performed by Sarahjeen François and ‘Eboli’ was performed by Gabriella Rhodeen with text by Carlo Levi was filmed and edited by Jesse Bonnell.
