The Villa Filanda Antonini artist residency was founded in 2021 and is situated in a villa and former silk factory in the industrial region of Veneto. In the 1990s, a renovation destroyed much of the historic character of the site, and little archive material still survives.

During my residency I was drawn to the potential of the site, attempting to rediscover or redefine its mythology. To this end, I have created four objects:

I. A scrying machine. The English term scry implies a type of divination, to tell the future or to look into the past, usually through the medium of a reflective mirror or a crystal refraction. The Italian term is more materially-oriented: cristallomanzia.

The plaster mechanism in faux lapis lazuli reproduces the negative space of a spinning wheel. Where one would normally find the axle, that point of contact between the wheel and human labour, one finds an alabaster crystal. This divination mechanism is linked to the larger structure with rusted metal found on the site.

II. A display device. This plaster sculpture resembles a television or an audiovisual apparatus frozen in time, using a black-and-white terrazzo panel to imitate a noisy, illegible, weak, or impossibly distant signal.

III. A small mosaic representing an unwinding spinning wheel and/or a tape reel, opening the green corridor behind the factory.

IV. An informative panel representing the horizon, opening up the field behind the factory.

These objects are accompanied by a small archive of papers and objects documenting their creation and conception. I hope they may be useful to you and to future residents.

Lucian Moriyama

Lancenigo

28.10.2023