House of Ideas (Lorenzo Mango)

HOUSE OF IDEAS
Text by Lorenzo Mango

The Museo Archivio Laboratorio per le Arti Contemporanee Hermann Nitsch is not just a museum dedicated to ideas but a museum where ideas will be born. I mean that since ever the
artistic work of Hermann Nitsch is based on a research, thinking and reflection, on the concept of
art and at the same time a self reflection based on the human being, on men’s cultural ethics (in the most archetypal meaning of the term) and on men’s deepest identity which have been mostly
reloaded during centuries. The work with blood that is the main characteristic of Nitsch’s aesthetics, they mean a comparison with what we truly are and with the deepest and darkest taboos which are related to our primitive cultural origins. The upcoming museum is today and has to be in the future the place where this side of Nitsch’s poetry finds its highest correspondence, in this way it’ll be a place not a box. But mostly a house more than a place, as the Heiddegerian meaning of the term “house” stands for a welcoming, relaxing and edification place.
A museum is a place for studies, meditation and research. It’s definitely not Nitsch works’
warehouse, however the work will be shown in the museum and it will live together with the public. Besides it doesn’t want to be only Nitsch’s philosophy echo room. It’ll be a platform and the chance for discussion that starts from his aesthetics and aims to be a way of acknowledgment. I think that this may happen thanks to a methodical double direction work. The first will be horizontal and should wonder on the history problems, on the different fluxes that have been going through it and that poses the bases for an acknowledgement network that allow us to identify and make a deep study of cultural, aesthetical and formal dynamics related to Nitsch’s creative world. However this acknowledgement network is linked to a wider concept of thinking and experiencing art even if it’s not always well known and accepted. Beside this dimension there is a vertical one that should explore different themes not only related to the art world, which represent the real Nitsch’s research field, where he has been always making a deep study. As a result I see two different guiding lines which might be visible through monthly public events as seminaries and conferences but also through the daily research that has to be independent from the public and from external expiries. From this point of view the realisation of a material and virtual archive is of extraordinary importance: on one hand a paper archive that contains materials, documents, information and data, on the other hand a virtual network where everything related to Nitsch’s philosophy and artworks will be saved. The Museo Archivio Laboratorio per le Arti Contemporanee Hermann Nitsch aims to be the place and the chance where both professionals and students work together. Only thanks to these conditions the museum will become a real house for ideas and not of ideas, as I said whose concept should not only preserve admitted ideas but promote research and reflect on ideas in order to let them being always new and reformed: a place where ideas are always on the move through an acknowledgment itinerary where Nitsch’s work is the main landmark.