VIP = Violation of the Pauli exclusion principle is the new project by Margherita Morgantin produced by Xing and winner of the eighth edition of the Italian Council, the program aimed at supporting Italian contemporary art in the world promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity (DGCC) of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism (MiBACT).

VIP is a research path that starts from the observation of subnuclear and astroparticle physics images in relation to artistic imagination, practiced through personal sensitivity as a form of scientific data. The title borrows the name of one of the particle physics experiments in progress for years in the underground laboratories of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics under the Gran Sasso massif: VIP is the acronym that names the experimental search for 'impossible atoms', whose appearance would represent a violation of the Pauli exclusion principle, one of the main cornerstones of modern physics and our understanding of the universe and matter.

In VIP = Violation of the Pauli exclusion principle the artist's body and experience are part of the scientific tools used for field research. VIP is articulated between 2020 and 2021 through different degrees of involvement of various interlocutors and audiences in the processing and presentions of its results.

The Gran Sasso mountain chain is the physical and symbolic centre of the investigation of Margherita Morgantin thanks to its exceptional double perspective.

VIP takes place UNDER THE MOUNTAIN, in the largest underground laboratory in the world devoted to the detection of rare phenomena and physical events that should not take place, thanks to the 'cosmic silence' guaranteed by a massive layer of rocks that separates these laboratories from the atmosphere as a natural coverage; and ABOVE THE MOUNTAIN, on the plateaus of the Gran Sasso national park in the Abruzzo region, in an exceptional environmental area that is important for its high altitude biodiversity. 

The two places, under and above, are two 'base camps' for the research: the first is solitary in the underground; the second is shared by the artist with invited guests, and takes place outdoors, exposed to climatic events. 

The underground camp is devoid of radiation like an open window into the depth of matter. Here the artist faces the limits of knowledge and the forms of 'reticence' of matter, and looks at observation practices and direct or indirect methods of exploration. The open camp welcomes atmospheric events through meteorological instrumentation, refining a process of tuning and sensory listening in presence, with the involvement and interlocution of figures with a multidisciplinary extra-scientific background, from live arts to sound, to philosophy.

The 'base camps' are followed by 'moments' of study, dissemination, comparison and exchange in a cycle of installations, dialogues, performative and sound presentations, implemented in collaboration with the Accademia di Belle Arti of L'Aquila, the Gran Sasso Science Institute, La Salle de bains in Lyon, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Palazzo Lucarini Contemporary in Trevi, Serralves Museu de Arte Contemporanea in Porto, MAXXI L'Aquila, and Live Arts Week X in Bologna.

The research process will eventually be condensed into a precious artist book, a large scroll that collects drawings and traces in a flow, that will become part of the collections of Ca' Pesaro Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna in Venice on the occasion of the exhibition DAMA LIBRE dedicated to Margherita Morgantin which will open in September 2021.

Part of the writing and drawings that accompany the project also converge in the book Sotto la montagna Sopra la montagna published by nottetempo.

Margherita Morgantin is an italian visual artist born in Venice who lives and works in Milan. She graduated in Architecture at the I.U.A.V. Department of Technical Physics, studying methods of forecasting of natural light. Her work is articolated through different languages, ranging from drawing and installation to performance, and moving on a thread that connects language, philosophy, mathematics and visual culture. Contact and cohabitation, observation and imagination, are the open intervals that characterize the work of Morgantin. She has contributed to many group shows and festivals in Italy and abroad. She has participated in contemporary art exhibitions in Italy and abroad, and carried out special actions and projects in different contexts including Museion (Bolzano), Galleria Continua (San Gimignano), Villa Croce (Genova), MAMbo and Xing (Bologna), La Biennale di Venezia Danza. She published the books of short texts and drawings: Titolo variabile (Quodlibet 2009), Agenti autonomi e sistemi multiagente (with Michele Di Stefano) (Quodibet 2012), Wittgenstein (nottetempo 2016), Lo spazio dentro (with Maddalena Buri) (nottetempo e-pub 2020), Sotto la montagna Sopra la montagna (nottetempo 2021). Since 2013 she also works as Pawel und Pavel, a collaborative project on writing and performance with Italo Zuffi. She has collaborated with sound/visual artists and choreographers such as Michele Di Stefano/mk, Roberta Mosca, Richard Crow, Mattin, Alice Guareschi, and the Diotima women philosophical collective. She teaches artistic anatomy, scientific illustration, and performance techniques at Accademy of Fine Arts in L'Aquila.

www.margheritamorgantin.eu