“Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas”: Petrit Halilaj & Álvaro Urbano at Ocean Space, Venice

Thirty aluminium sculptures, which are also musical instruments, are shaped like hybrid creatures partly fish, partly birds. When played, the melodies they produce recall at once the singing of birds and sounds from the sea depths. During the exhibition period, ending 4^th November 2023, a cast of musicians and performers activate the installation during scheduled performances.

Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas by Petrit Halilaj e Álvaro Urbano  was commissioned by TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. The installation was created for the exhibition Thus waves come in pairs, curated by Barbara Casavecchia, commissioned and created by TBA21–Academy as a site-specific evolution of the curatorial fellowship program The Current III‘.

Information and insights below the interview.

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Petrit Halilaj & Álvaro Urbano Portrait in their studio, Berlin, 2023. Courtesy of the artists, TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet. Photo:Agustin Farias.

You have both often created exhibitions and installations in abandoned or ruined buildings that have important historical/political connotations. How did you approach the peculiarities of the Church of San Lorenzo, what were your first impressions? Although very suggestive, it is not an easy space to deal with.

Álvaro Urbano: Not easy at all. We knew the space from pictures, but when we saw it for the first time in person we realized it was much bigger. Not only is the light peculiar, but also the sounds, the echo has an amplification arc of almost four or five seconds.

We were very impressed by its history: in addition to being a church with a double altar, it was the place where Antonio Vivaldi, influenced by its architecture, composed many pieces, and it was also the first stage of Prometo. Tragedy of listening by Luigi Nono (a sound action on texts prepared by Massimo Cacciari and taken from various authors including Walter Benjamin, Aeschylus and other Greek classics, 1985 N.d.T.) These stories of music find an echo in our work.

Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano, “Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas”, 2023. Exhibition view of “Thus waves come in pairs”, Ocean Space, Venice. Co-commissioned by TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Courtesy of the Artists and ChertLüdde, Berlin; kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York; Mennour, Paris; Travesía Cuatro, Madrid / Mexico City / Guadalajara. Photo: gerdastudio.

How did you weave the different threads of thought that shaped the work into a single narrative?

Petrit Halilaj: It usually takes a long time to get to the final version of a work. We visited the space twice and had many conversations with Barbara Casavecchia and Audrey Teichmann of Audemars Piguet Contemporary. It’s true that we wanted to relate to the space and its musical history, but we also intertwined many references to art history into our work.

In particular for the suspended egg, which is also a moon that invites multiple points of view, it opens up big questions. We wanted to bring an extra level of meaning, to add something special in the present by bringing together memories of the church, our personal memories and those of the community.

The creatures that are images but also birds and fish raise questions about how queer is the Ocean and how little we know about it. The more you look at these creatures, the more they take on different metaphorical meanings: you can reflect on them, or even dream of becoming like them, creatures free with their lives, fluid in their social, sexual and reproductive and life.

Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano, “Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas”, 2023. Exhibition view of “Thus waves come in pairs”, Ocean Space, Venice. Co-commissioned by TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet Contemporary. Courtesy of the Artists and ChertLüdde, Berlin; kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York; Mennour, Paris; Travesía Cuatro, Madrid / Mexico City / Guadalajara. Photo: gerdastudio.

If I’m not mistaken, it is the first time that both of you have used aluminium as a material for sculpture.

Álvaro Urbano: The interesting thing is that the material is reflective of the surrounding space, so that sculptures become part of the space and the space becomes part of them. Aluminium is also one of the most recycled materials. In our separate practices, we have often used metals, but this is the first time for both of us that we used aluminium. It is a pliable and thin material, which recalls the fragility of the times in which we live. The main challenge was to give it strength. Drawing on it and shaping it we gave it structure, but the whole process was really intuitive.

Petrit Halilaj: To create the work in a limited time, we combined our two studios and also experimented with three-dimensional shapes, but when working with aluminium we immediately liked the illusion of a sculptural presence on a flat sheet and the possibility to project shadows, to convey the idea of presence and absence at the same time.

Álvaro Urbano: In 2020, we made a short film with shadows, commissioned by TB21 – Academy entitled Un Sogno un Pesce. [in which a curious fish crosses the terrestrial world N.d.T.). Unintentionally a lot of this work resounded in the making of Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas : thoughts of fairy tales, fiction and shadow theatre.

Your creatures are also instruments, did you work with musicians to produce them?

Álvaro Urbano: If you try to imagine our studio over the last five months or so, there was a clash of trumpets, drums, a madhouse! A din of trumpets, drums and conversations, and the noise from the construction of the pieces. It was crazy!

We had worked in the past with several composers, but never in such close collaboration. Joe Summers, maker of instruments with recycled materials, and Lugh O’Neill, composer and sound designer, helped us a lot. Working with them was an extraordinary experience.

Petrit Halilaj: Going back to how we responded to the history of San Lorenzo, the church is a container of sounds and spirituality and we were very happy to do our concert of almost an hour with zero cables, no digital amplification support: all the sound is completely analogue.

View of the studio of Petrit Halilaj & Álvaro Urbano, Berlin, 2023. Courtesy of the artists, TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet. Photo: Augustin Farias.

And the sound of the aluminium when the sculptures are shaken also adds to the musical performance.

Álvaro Urbano: Yes, that was one of the starting points. When aluminium sheets are moved they produce sounds like waves or wind, which is why they are also used in theatrical performances.

During the preview of the exhibition you mentioned the importance of drawing to both of your artistic practices: what drove you to choose to work with a deconstructed aesthetic that blends sculpture, performance, sound and installation?

Petrit Halilaj: I think that these sculptures, working by challenging the fragility of the material by giving it a structure, were the meeting point of both our backgrounds. Everything came naturally, as if we had needed to know each other for twelve years to get to this.

Álvaro Urbano: Exactly. The beauty in this collaboration was the mutual acceptance and compromise that we addressed in a very positive way.

Petrit Halilaj : We both accepted how each could contribute in a different way to the work and were always clear about what we wanted to achieve. The totality of the project welcomes the diversity that is necessary for the success of the whole.

Since the beginning we never forced our collaboration. Not rushing it helped, so when the time came to tackle a project of this scale together, we did it with a good degree of maturity.

Portrait of Petrit Halilaj & Álvaro Urbano in their studio, Berlin, 2023. Courtesy of the artists, TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet. Photo: Augustin Farias.

How much do you structure your work in the planning phase and how much do you create spontaneously during the installation of an exhibition?

Álvaro Urbano: We usually tend to plan a lot at the beginning, but then we go with the flow, ‘sculpting’ the space as we work, taking into account how the space is accessed, where the light comes from and so on. We changed plans many times, also due to the non-binary nature of the work: performance but also installation, the hybrid creatures and the egg which is also a moon and is many things at once.

You mentioned that the egg/moon was made of a particular material and that it wasn’t easy to make.

Álvaro Urbano: The material we used is that of dental prostheses; it had to be light, because the egg/moon hangs from the ceiling, and this material hardens very quickly.

Petrit Halilaj: We carefully studied the colours of the church and added pigment to the material when it was wet so that its color was not uniform and harmonized with that of the partially peeling walls.

Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano,: Sali e Tabacchi in the performance Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas , Ocean Space, Venice, 2023. Co-commissioned by TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet Contemporary | Photo: gerdastudio.

I was very impressed and amused by the costumes of Sali and Tabacchi, the two seagull characters, a tribute to the omnipresent Venetian birds. Petrit, the costumes that you have repeatedly exhibited and worn in your exhibitions have a particular meaning. I read that you made them together with your mother, and that they are somehow linked to your reflection on identity. Can you tell me about it?

Petrit Halilaj: If I think of the way in which I used costumes before knowing Alvaro, they tended to be very fluffy and funny and handcrafted, then they got better when my mother helped, as with the moth costumes I made for the Hammer project in L.A. Alvaro also used costumes. Just to give an example, Alvaro used them for the performance Skin and Bones when he dressed in costumes reproducing architectures.

Together, with the help of assistants, we now create more detailed costumes. Though retaining the concept of a non-real scale, they have a realistic presence, like Sali and Tabacchi, with their glass eyes.

Álvaro Urbano: …and performing with them is really fantastic. I’m a little stiff but Petrit is very good, his movements are phenomenal!

Petrit Halilaj: The costumes always bear the desire to open up and question oneself. Both Sali and Tabacchi and also the egg/moon are somehow in search of an identity and recognition, they communicate transformation, costumes convey the idea of fitting or mis-fitting, and in any case, their funny presence calls for acceptance. At the same time, a costume hides one’s feelings, no one knows if you are sad or happy under it.

View of Petrit Halilaj & Álvaro Urbano’s studio, Berlin, 2023. Courtesy of the artists, TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet. Photo: Augustin Farias.

Asa gay couple married in Germany, we face different contexts in each country. In Italy, we are once again questioned and discriminated against, in Kosovo we are still far from obtaining even a civil rights’ law.

Spain, which in some respects may seem conservative and where the Church is even more present than in Italy, is incredibly progressive in terms of civil rights and recognition of LGBT rights.

What we want to ask is that as there is room for everyone, why should there be discussions about granting rights to some and not others, where is really the problem? So, impersonating someone else, and seeing that you can take it with irony and fun, is fine.

Álvaro Urbano: Yes, actually sometimes it’s easier to do it if you become someone else, and you do it with humour.

Petrit Halilaj: When we work together in fact, we tend to have a lighter attitude. As artists working individually, we feel responsible for every choice, from the work’s title to what we represent. Working together brings humour and a lighter mood.

When Barbara Casavecchia asked us at the beginning of the project what we thought of this collaboration, my answer was that we were interested, as always, in the poetics of work but not a poetics of absence or lament, rather of joy and celebration of presence, of being there. Somehow this work brings everything together: it is a symphony, an orchestra, which talks about the future and how we would like to play it.

Álvaro Urbano: This piece has a personal meaning for me, because the instruments were initially created to play the song “Ay mi pescadito”, which my grandmother sang to me when I was a child. I was so pleased that Petrit accepted this as a starting point for the work.

Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano:  Sali e Tabacchi in the performance Lunar Ensemble for Uprising Seas , Ocean Space, Venice, 2023. Co-commissioned by TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet Contemporary | Photo: gerdastudio.

Can you tell me about the importance of utopia and dream, recurring elements in both of your practices that also partly shape this intervention at Ocean Space?

Petrit Halilaj: Your question makes me think of the title of Szeemann’s famous exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form”. We do not think of dream and utopia as end results. Our work has more to do with wishes, positivity against all adversities: if you don’t have a family, you create one of your own, if they take away your rights, you dream of them a thousand times more intensely. This is what is worth calling a utopian dream for me, and we both believe in it. This is what makes a small fish huge or a flower gigantic in our work.

Álvaro Urbano: This brings us back to the song “Ay mi pescadito”, which tells of how one day fish will have wings and fly, and therefore it is also about dreams and utopia.

Petrit Halilaj, Alvaro Urbano, Installation View at 17th Rome Quadriennale, 2020, Stainless steel, canvas, acrylic paint, thread, Dimensions variable. | Courtesy: Alvaro Urbano, Petrit Halilaj, Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma, ChertLüdde, Kamel Mennour and Travesia Cuatroand. Photo: DSL Studio

Álvaro, since you mentioned flowers, they often appear in your work. Together you created the giant flowers suspended on the steps of Palazzo delle Esposizioni for the 2020 Quadrennial, symbolically linked to your personal story and your wedding.

Álvaro Urbano: The Quadrennial was hosted in a building from the fascist era, so we wanted to counterbalance that history and our first thought was to bring those gigantic flowers that had personal resonances. For visitors, climbing the steps under those flowers was also a very cinematic experience.

Each flower was a different symbol and had a date, the date in which we gave ourselves that particular flower, a simple personal gesture that we wanted to make universal. The installation was also an upside-down garden and a bouquet for everyone.

Petrit Halilaj: The idea was bringing generosity into the times we live in: in every place where we displayed flowers, they had a specific purpose, and in Italy it was very specific.

Petrit Halilaj & Álvaro Urbano , view of their studio, Berlin, 2023. Courtesy of the artists, TBA21–Academy and Audemars Piguet. Photo:Agustin Farias.

I’m curious to know what you think of the current debate on monuments that have contestable cultural affiliations, since you work in buildings with an often-problematic historical legacy, transforming their spaces with positive proposals. Doing this is more difficult when dealing with monuments.

Álvaro Urbano: I think it’s dangerous to generalize with a single answer, each case should have a different one. A friend of ours formulated the proposal to change new monuments cyclically, as is already happening in London for example. I find this to be a generous way of approaching public space. It’s not about imposing an idea but proposing change.

Finally, what will happen to Ocean Space during the months of the exhibition?

Petrit Halilaj: Every month our creatures will be activated by Venetian musicians who will improvise with the installation. After closing in Venice, the project will live in new contexts with new adaptations in museums and theatres. We’re really excited about some invitations we’re already receiving, but we can’t really reveal anything as for now.

I think this may also answer your question about monuments. The same work will meet different musicians and communities, and while maintaining its original meaning, it will raise different questions and relate to different presents.

Álvaro Urbano: Yes, what we are interested in is generating synergies and energies in different cities, and seeing how much this will also change the work itself.

Petrit Halilaj and Alvaro Urbano, Portrait | Photo by Angela Suarez, Berlin, 2021.