Presence over Projection

Grace Xu on flute

 

Dario Paini on sax

 

A Gathering Sustained by Generosity

The second activation of the Stateless Mind Pavilion at Museo delle Mura was not secured through institutional structures alone. It was carried here by people — through generosity, solidarity, and friendship.

Artists traveled at their own expense. They brought their instruments, their works, their time, and their trust. What unfolded in the space was made possible not by infrastructure, but by a shared belief in the necessity of gathering, listening, and creating together.

This was not an abstract notion of community.
It was community, enacted.

The names of those who made this gathering possible appear later, in acknowledgment — not as an omission, but as a continuation of the Pavilion’s ethic: presence before identification.

A Condition Within the Exhibition

During the opening of my solo exhibition, the Stateless Mind Pavilion was activated not as a marked section or formal program, but as a condition within the exhibition itself.

There was no signage.
No announcement.
No visible framework declaring its presence.

Musicians appeared within the space.
An augmented reality intervention surfaced quietly.
Video works coexisted within the environment.

The artists were not named in the moment. Their participation will be acknowledged later through documentation and catalogue form.

This was not an oversight.
It was a structural decision.

Presence Before Naming

In this activation, authorship was not erased — it was displaced in time.

Stateless Mind proposes a reversal of the usual exhibition order. In many institutional contexts, identification comes first: artist name, biography, category, medium. The encounter is filtered through information.

Here, the encounter preceded identification.

Sound, gesture, movement, and image entered the space before being classified. Viewers responded to what was happening rather than to who was performing. For a brief time, the reflex to locate, categorize, and situate was suspended.

Recognition did not disappear.
It shifted — from the immediacy of experience to the slower space of the archive.

Presence came before the file.

Threshold as a Site of Adaptation

Stateless Mind is not a stage. It is an environment that asks the body and mind to adjust.

Rather than offering fixed roles or clear boundaries, it places artists within a shifting field — one where signals are subtle, expectations are undefined, and orientation must be negotiated in real time. In such a space, the first response is often uncertainty. The second is learning.

A threshold is not merely a passage between states. It is a condition that trains perception. Without clear markers of inside or outside, performer or audience, beginning or end, the body searches for cues: where to stand, how to listen, when to act, when to wait. The mind recalibrates. Attention sharpens. Breathing changes. Awareness expands.

What initially feels unfamiliar becomes legible.

Discomfort becomes information.
Hesitation becomes observation.
Gradually, new rhythms form — not imposed from outside, but developed through presence within the environment itself.

For some artists, this adaptive process feels immediate and energizing. Improvisation and situational awareness allow them to move with instability rather than against it. Openness becomes a resource.

For others, adaptation unfolds more slowly. Practices grounded in structure or preparation may experience the threshold as exposure. Yet even here, the body learns: it finds alternative anchors, new strategies of focus, different ways of holding presence without familiar frameworks.

Neither response is a failure.
Both are forms of intelligence at work.

Adaptation, Not Uniformity

The varied reactions within Stateless Mind do not indicate disagreement in value or intent. They reveal different tempos of adaptation — different relationships to uncertainty, control, and recognition.

Some artists enter and adjust immediately.
Others require time to observe, process, and reorient.
Some reshape the environment through action.
Others reshape themselves to meet it.

Stateless Mind does not resolve these differences. It makes them perceptible.

A space that challenges habitual structures will inevitably steady some while unsettling others. This is not a flaw in the environment but evidence of its function. It reveals how artistic practices — and the bodies that carry them — negotiate change.

If everyone feels equally comfortable, no adaptation is required.
If adaptation is required, learning is already taking place.

The threshold is not a test.
It is a site where the human capacity to adjust, endure, and reconfigure becomes visible — where the unfamiliar is not conquered, but gradually absorbed into experience, becoming part of how we move through the world.

Statelessness and the Time of Recognition

Stateless Mind engages not only with geography and identity, but with time.

In many experiences of migration and statelessness, one exists before one is registered. Presence precedes documentation. Memory forms before records are made. Recognition comes later — sometimes much later.

By delaying authorship in the exhibition space and relocating it to the archive, the Pavilion mirrors this temporal condition. The artists are not hidden; they are acknowledged through documentation, but not at the moment of encounter. The structure briefly prioritizes lived presence over institutional identification.

This is not a universal model.
It is a specific gesture — tied to the ethics and inquiry of this project.

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Special Thanks

With deep gratitude to the artists whose presence made this activation possible:

  • Grace Xu (USA) — flute — traveled from the United States

  • Dario Paini (Italy) — saxophone — traveled from Switzerland

  • Fadly Sabran (Malaysia) — augmented reality intervention — traveled from Malaysia

  • Dalida María Benfield & Chris Bratton — video work, 2026, looping MP4

Across continents and without institutional support, your generosity, trust, and willingness to show up gave life to the Stateless Mind Pavilion.

 

Paini and Amir 

 

Fadly Sabran's Echoes of the wall, AR, 2026

 

Dalida Maria Benfield and Chris Bratton's Five excerpts. (video), 2026

PIc: Gabriele Mizzoni