INTERVIEW WITH RUBEN PANG/RENATO CORSINI - part 2
C: Good afternoon and welcome to MoCa Centre in Brescia, Italy.
Today we're interviewing Singapore artist Ruben Pang, hello Ruben!
C: Ruben is one of the participants in the Mechanics of Wonder show, which is coming up in Brescia in February 2018. But we also have a welcome guest: Renato Corsini, hello Renato! Renato is a photographer and also the director of Macof, the Italian Centre of Photography which is based at Moca Centre, which is where we are right now.
Renato, could you tell us something about Macof, what exactly is it?
Re: Macof stands for Palazzo Martinengo Colleoni, which is the venue that is hosting us and where we are right now. Macof is the Museum of Italian Photography. In Italy, there are many museums and centres of photography, we purposely decided to pinpoint and underline the word "Italian" in the sense that we deal mostly with photography and photographers from Italy. And this not just for a trivially nationalistic view but simply because photography is such a broad discipline that in order to be as comprehensive as possible we decided to identify and limit our scope to Italian photography. We strongly believe that Italian photography has full right and merit to play a leading role both at world and European level. At Macof, we've set up a permanent exhibition on the historical protagonists from late XX century photography and thanks to the endorsements of some of our leading artists, we've reached our goal which is to educate and tell the story of what Italian photography has represented since the second half of the last century.
C. I see, thank you very much. And how does Macof's planning fit into Moca's complex calendar of activities and events, because it's two things in the same centre, basically...
Re: Moca is a large hub of different activities which range from photography to drama and innovation and inside this hub we share the privilege and responsibility of setting up shows specifically targeted on photography. Some of them are permanent but in other areas of the venue we have the opportunity of setting up about three temporary shows a year, some of which deal with a specific theme and some dedicated to a single artist.
C: Ruben, have you ever used photography in your art pieces? Are you in any way familiar with this kind of Art?
R: Actually when I was at Art school, the one aspect of photography that really, that I had fun with was the long exposure of light drawings and I thought, you know, it's very much like painting...
Re: It's painting with light.
R: And also photography is a medium itself. I think the more you use it, the more you know it's not reality.
C: It's true. He is a very versatile artist and in fact besides being a painter, a sculpture, he's also a musician, I read somewhere that you're a musician, is that right? Do you still play music and what kind of music do you play?
R: It's a serious hobby.
Re: After all what really matters is to have ideas, to have a project. The medium you use to carry out your project is another story. It can be a photograph, it can be an installation, it can be any other medium as long as it allows you to fulfill your project. Obviously, each medium has its own language...
C. And what exactly do you mean by "music is a serious hobby"?
R: I think I don't want to be erroneous in the sense that I declare myself an installation artist, I declare myself a photographer because when you say you are an artist of a specific medium I think that the kind of conviction that you go into is important because you're paying respect to the people who do it with absolute conviction so if I double it's something....
C: So you're not a musician?
R: It's serious and I love it.
C: And what instruments do you play?
R: I play the guitar and I've started learning to play the bass and started learning the drums and I did a bit of music production.
Re: He's a complete artist.
C: Thank you very much. Renato, thank you for being with us and thank you Ruben.
