From State To State is an artist’s book that presents a preview of the work of the same name by Diego Tonus; a mobile archive conceived as a political portrait, consisting of a paradoxical collection of 17 years (2006-2022) of all the travel tickets archived by the artist on the joruneys that were part of his artistic practice and research. Planes, buses, trams, subways, taxis, trains, ships, cars, vans, bicycles, wanderings and walks. While the tickets are reminiscent of all the nomadic movements and dynamic situations of thought in which new ideas germinated and were then shared with the artistic community, this archive is the record of all the artist’s travels, their costs and environmental impact (CO2 emitted), the kilometres, the hours invested in traveling and the testimony of how individual travel can influence a collective environment (both physical and thought). Begun in 2006 as an obsessive and caring gesture, over time this accumulation has become a collection in which the tickets are seen as parallel notes to the artist’s ideas and investigations, which will continue over time with future travel. From State To State is both a visual testimony to the apparent freedom and possibility of movement between borders and the visualization of the collective experience of constant surveillance exercised over a subject.
The volume accompanies the exhibition presented at the CSAC, Università di Parma, Abbey of Valserena, from 25 February to 30 April 2023. It contains texts by Diego Tonus, Lorenzo Benedetti, Francesca Zanella and Pietro Rigolo, and presents the work in its twofold nature of digital archive and physical archive with photographs of documentation of the work and its specially designed components. It also presents the results of a “travelling conversation” between the artist and the authors whom he involved, conceived as a focus to present the features of this mobile, adaptable and expandable archive. Finally, it brings together visual materials documenting the exhibition and highlighting the relation between the collection and CSAC, which acquired From State to State as part of the Award PAC2021 – Plan for Contemporary Art promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.
€ 24,00