* The following text is an excerpt from an interview made in 2016. The original version is published in PANORAMA (DIORAMA editions).
Filippo De Marchi (Segrate, 1993) studied at Accademia di Brera (Milano). His work has been exhibited at Fabbrica del Vapore (Milan). With BB5000 he exhibited at 9th Berlin Biennial (Berlin), Aldea (Bergen), Horizont Galéria (Budapest), Prairie (Chicago), Galerie Tobias Naehring (Liepzig), Hotel Art Pavilion (New York), Bid Projects and Davide Gallo (Milan), Studio E1 (Paris), Fondazione Baruchello (Rome), Platform Stockholm (Stockholm).
Your sculptures between the organic and the synthetic, between the natural and the artificial are detached from any “biographical” reference, so for this reason I ask you: where can signs of your presence be found, if at all? For example, you were telling me about your games as a child, that can recall what you continue to do, in the method…
Surely not only in the method but also in the approach, I try to treat these sculptures as freely as possible and, in this, I keep an instinctual attitude, the same that moved me to realize idols and dolls when I was a child. This very candid component survived within the work, I think it might be considered a sign of my presence.
What research are you conducting right now? Do you rely on a mainly textual or visual research experience?
Finding and consuming images and texts exclusively through the web you might say that the experience of my research would be hyper-textual. In the web I find it hard to find an identity and, sometimes consequential, to discern a text or image in themselves, they appear to me as the same thing. I couldn’t say which of the two media I prefer, nor which one of the two can, better than the other, originate in me the idea of a work, this indecision is a mirror of my contribution towards the research of ‘informative’ content or imaginative within what I do, more precisely I’m trying to keep my research in a context of fictional content that ranges from bioengineering to the videogame world.
What role has the formal exercise of the surface – or the speculation on its idea – in your work?
I treat the surface of things as searchable matter, navigable ecosystem or a shell in the very moment before its hatching, obviously the whole thing has a totally speculative and presumably hallucinatory nature.
Do you belong, like Giada and Giovanni in this book, to BB5000. Tell us, how did this collaboration start?
BB5000 was born in 2369, at that time Arcangelo Costanzo and me sounded out the depths of Jupiter looking for minerals to season the spritz, a night in New Seoul we met Giada; we were working together at a catering for a charity association (Save Zombiedog), from that moment on we started to travel together to save money on long distances, Giovanni and Francesco Costanzo I don’t remember exactly, I think we were in Bali or in Delhi – anyway they spared us a rip-off at the restaurant, and that evening began a strong collaboration.
Has there been a singular specific contribution by each one, to the creation of those that were the works at the exhibition, or has the sharing of an ultimate goal allowed a condition of total disappearance of ego in favor of a group one? Could you trace your own?
Surely Hyperrruin has been an unifying experience and, if necessary, cancelling for the personalities of each of us, personally during the months of planning and the realization of the exhibition I did not notice the disappearance of my self as rather the gradual generating, maturing, of an ego exterior to me in which I concur, another awareness shared with my colleagues, it can be said that the latter has generated the works participating at the exhibition rather than a specific singular contribution of ours.
From your experience, in which condition do you think is artistic education in Milan?
Milan has represented for me a base camp, a comfortable situation made of relationships and places from which I think it will be difficult to separate myself, in my current, and hopefully future education, it will continue to be there as the city where I met dear friends and colleagues, worked and travelled always starting from here, I think Milan is a bit of this for anyone living there and for those who lives it in the artistic field and not: a starting point, a place to return to.