Robert Pettena
Gioco del saccomazzone
City Screen 2021 – Loop Festival Barcelona
10.11 – 10.12.2021
Saccomazzone is a game of seventeenth-century origins where two players on a pedestal hit each other with a strip of cloth while maintaining a constant distance between them. Whoever is hit the most loses. This game, very popular in the past, is often present in paintings and sculptures. In the Boboli Gardens in Florence, there is a statue of Saccomazzone players, sculpted by Orazio Mochi in 1620 based on a drawing by Romolo del Tadda.
TALK
12.11.2021
‘Un-mappable zones for a de-colonization of space and mind’
Robert Pettena focused research on mapping historic Florentine gardens, both existent and full of evocative statues; and no longer existent, such as the Tivoli Gardens. In the Boboli Gardens, he came across post-Renaissance statues of games, including a long-forgotten game called Sacco Mazzone. This involved blindfolded participants trying to hit each other with a piece of cloth. He performed this game for the first time in the Manifesta Exhibition in Palermo near the Botanic Gardens in the center of Palermo, where illegal horse and cart races sometimes take place at sunrise. He and his fellow performer wore jockey outfits and wielded their pieces of cloth like horsewhips.
Robert Pettena’s work, like the gardens, is in a state of continuous evolution, a progressive way of working, including videos, installations, and photos. The fragments of terracotta that he made from the ruins of the Tivoli gardens are like fragments of time.