Stefano Conti - When I Killed Your Tulips
‘When I killed your tulips’ explores the archaeological notion of the social biography of objects. That is, how objects’ meanings can change and are renegotiated throughout history depending on the social interactions that they become entangled in. In this sense, objects are constantly transformed over time and they accumulate biographies as they repeatedly shift between ownerships and places.
The project is part of my research aimed at investigating the migration of cultural material. I am fascinated by the methods that archaeologists use to fill gaps in information to reconstruct the past. Such actions that often are not linear in time. They seek a linearity in history that is difficult to find, where most of the time only fragments of history can be recovered. Similarly, in ‘When I killed your tulips,’ I want to visually emphasize confusing gaps in information, combining materials from the past with materials from the present in order to see what can emerge. Synthetic materials are juxtaposed with natural ones in a continuous back and forth over time. Like archaeologists, I dig into the photographic prints to find new visual possibilities, constantly working with layers.
