the european biennial of contemporary art
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artists

Peter Coffin

1972, Berkeley, US Lives in New York, US

Untitled (UFO), 2008 archival inkjet photographs

TRENTO

M7

In 1958, Carl Jung argued that the increased rate of UFO sightings could be understood as a corollary of the era’s pervasive atomic fears, a “uniting symbol” in the collective unconscious. Jung’s prompt postulated that the rate of sightings reported must have been indicative of a larger social phenomenon, a “projection-creating fantasy” giving shape to broader psychological experience. In fact, the frequency of UFO sightings is higher during times of war and it fluctuates with various kinds of social unrest and psychological stress – nuclear armament, poverty, and religious fanaticism – which have hardly decreased since 1958. This summer a UFO was built and flown over the Baltic and into the Gulf of Gdansk. It was witnessed by onlookers, the sightings captured on cell phone cameras, camcorders, digital cameras and 35 mm SLR cameras. The photographs are not unlike classic UFO documentation: they are grainy, blurry and may appear to be of dubious origin. While the flying object in these photos is real and can be accounted for, the documentation may give rise to a range of curiosity, skepticism and belief. By facilitating sightings, this project should encourage a kind of thinking that escapes the comfort of a rational perspective and recalls Pablo Picasso’s maxim that art is “the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”


Location

TRENTO

ANSELM FRANKE/HILA PELEG: "THE SOUL (or, Much Trouble in the Transportation of Souls)"

PALAZZO DELLE POSTE, VIA S.S. TRINITA’ 27, I-38100 TRENTO, ITALY

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