GIULIA PISCITELLI SYSTEM
work in progress

Dec 11, 2024, 7–11pm

Flip Projectspace
Via Giovanni Paladino 8
80138 Napoli NA, Italia

"The project Biometric Agency started in 2015 from an urge I had shared by Padraig Timoney, to imagine a symbol that had a deep significance for me, one that would create a connection with the people invited to participate in the project. Those who have joined the project so far have different social backgrounds, different genders, different ages, different professions and different nationalities. As an artist, it was natural to involve other artists, also in relation to the fact that everything is realized through making a symbol visible.

I did not design the symbol; it is a reproduction of an existing one that can be found on the cover of all passports: the international AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Capture) symbol, which indicates the existence of a microchip collecting electronic data about the owner of the document. The design of this symbol corresponds to the graphic of a printed electronic circuit board.

The first scientific biometric identification method was developed in the laboratories of La Santé Prison in Paris by Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), who created an archive of measurements of the physical properties of inmates so that they could be identified if they were arrested again.

This creative biometric code does not record information on a single body but on a collectivity with multiple identities and different thoughts, and there is no external authority that stores and prepares the data for investigations, it is the coded people themselves who enter their data.

It is a self-filing that declares one's belonging to human existence, being it terribly sapiens, and not a controlling filing. I do not need a higher entity to tell me who I am.

I regularly involve people in the project by giving them a flag that I produce myself. All the flags have the same dimensions and feature the same symbol, but each is handcrafted, the symbol is obtained by bleaching the fabric, and this process differentiates them from one another. I ask participants to return a photograph with the flag, leaving space to their free interpretation.

I have been using this process because the flag is a symbol of political, social affiliation, or of belonging to a nation, but in this case, it stands instead for a unity that does not exist other than in creativity. I am deeply grateful to all the participants who have gifted me with their gesture and to all those who will participate in this work in progress."
Federico Del Vecchio

Giulia Piscitelli System

The location of Flip Project in Via Paladino, already documented in the photographic archive of the project, becomes on this occasion a "space of sedimentation" hosting a flag and a print that narrates its mapping through the contributions of many friends, artists, and curators who sent the image of "their flag," contextualized within their chosen imaginary.

Flip is not a place of authority and obedience but rather a space of resistance that, even on this occasion, takes shape as a site of hospitality and sharing for an "open" project by the artist Piscitelli, who has always been a promoter and activator of collective and "blurred" dialogues.

With the Matronage of Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee, Naples

A special thanks for the generous support of

Raimondo Spirito Artigiano
Trattoria dal 1946 Campagnola, via Tribunali

Thanks to Amedeo Benestante, Giosuè Di Marino, Sofia Sabaini, Serena Schettino for the very precious help.