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The Heavenly Table

The Heavenly Table

Has anybody ever tried to imagine a solar system in a pan? Has anybody ever played music in a glass orchestra in order to move the universe?

Welcome to La Tavola Celeste (The Heavenly Table).  La Tavola Celeste is an interactive installation which takes its inspiration from the text “Il Grande Orologiaio/The Great Clock-maker” by Francesco Niccolini and describes a poetic journey through Astronomy, using a long table strewn with objects coming from the Kitchen World. Sentimentally tied to Joseph Cornell’s boxes and Daniel Spoerri’s tableaux, this installation reinterprets the knowledge of the sky, the weather and navigation advanced through the discoveries, the attempt, the mistakes and the men involved over a period of 400 years which affected our view of the world from 1300 to 1700. The table has always been a place of sharing, conviviality and collective rituals. In the light of this sense of awareness, The Heavenly Table is like the work top of a great chef, who, with a harmonious dance of tools and utensils, cooks time, lays the years and creates dishes so as to offer these to popular knowledge in a dimension where “knowledge” is also “tasty”.
The Heavenly Table aims at awakening the spirit of the explorer rather than that of the spectator, by stimulating a willingness to bring oneself into play rather than nourish detached observation so as to offer interaction with things based on the pleasure resulting from the wonders and displacements that the most banal ordinary life is able to offer.
 La Tavola Celeste literally is a place that offers refuge to time, just like a traveller who decides to lay down under the stars – it is a tool to convince time to halt for a while and have a chat with anybody around by means of familiar objects.

What & Who

La Tavola Celeste was conceived and created by the Cultural Association “La Luna al Guinzaglio” in its creative workroom “Il Salone dei Rifiutati” and is coproduced with the Superintendence for the Historical, Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage for the region Basilicata. La Luna al Guinzaglio (literally The Moon on a Leash) is an artistic association based in Potenza that has been present in Italy’s creative scene for more than a decade. Its mission is to promote an ecologically responsible approach with a specific eye on childhood and inclusive relationships. Each workshop, performance, installation or event is an experimental process in which the broken object or the object that is supposed to be littered invokes stories, relationships and collective creative dimensions. The Superintendence for the Historical , Artistic and Ethnoanthropological Heritage for the region Basilicata coproduced The Heavenly Table in the context of the program for fostering contemporary arts “Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea (PAC)”, an operational tool that the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities has implemented through the Directorate General for the Landscape, the Fine Arts, Architecture and Contemporary Art (PABAAC). The PAC’s objectives are, among others, to enhance the contemporary public artistic heritage and to spread contemporary artistic languages.

TRAVEL PROPOSAL

The Heavenly Table proposes different ways of exploration:
The red trail: some ordinary table objects are linked to boxes by a red line. With the help of the boxes, which will make the objects illuminate, work or move, you can go into the matter more thoroughly.
The white trail: by reading the indications on the table-cloth, you can explore the “satellite objects” marked by white lines.
Childhood of Time: this exploration of the space under the table will make you experience the origin of time through plays of light, antique calendars and mythological images.
And if you are not able to crouch down, there are trays with mirrors to enable you to peek under the table.
Big Pen: thanks to the App and the bar codes on the table-cloth, you can listen to the “Big Bang” of The Heavenly Table: the text “Il Grande Orologiaio” written by Francesco Niccolini’s “Big Pen”.
You can download the App here or on the website www.lalunaalguinzaglio.it/app.
Star dialogues: The Heavenly Table gives you the opportunity to get to know the makers of this adventure: sit down on a chair and sip the rhymes of the verses with your ears while talking to philosophers, astronomers and explorers.

THE AUDIO OF “IL GRANDE OROLOGIAIO”, READ BY THE AUTHOR FRANCESCO NICCOLINI

The Stars of the Moon

Conception, planning and realization
Rossana Cafarelli
Mariangela Tolve
Annabella Santangelo
Promotion and intergalactic dialogues
Sara Stolfi
Technical star solutions
Gino “Ginius” Gobetti
Texts and planetary recipes
Gianluca Caporaso
Artistic execution and Moon landing
Giusaf Hayate
Graphics and boreal ingredients
Andrea D’Andrea
Art direction and selenographic coordinates
La luna al guinzaglio

Celestial thanks to:
Tonia Bruno for her voice as well as for the heavenly moments of silence;
Gianluca Lagrotta for the registrations and his cosmic laughter;
Raffaello Cafarelli for the digital applications and his bittersweet music;
Domenico Colucci for his generosity and his spicy advices;
Rocco Sacco and Carmen Giacummo for their brilliant efficiency;
the Operators of the ecological platform ACTA – Potenza for their solar helpfulness;
to the Moon People who has taken us on this journey.

Gallery

the making of