Interview With Fine Art Photographer Mario Pischedda
By Carol Tipping

Having seen the work of Mario Pischedda on pixiport.com I felt compelled to interview this man who makes pictures that communicate so deeply. It might have been easier to search for his name on the internet BEFORE I asked him if I could interview him! I guess I never realised where I would be going in the next 24 hours! Mario Pischedda is as intense as his images are serene moments of insight to last only in archives of the viewer’s mind.

Mario
I love your work!
How is your English?

Mario Pischedda wrote:
about me

mariopischeddainmovement, Collegno amnesiac, unlikely author, shortcircuiter of words, overweight, feeling his age slipping by, has decided to adhere to himself in a world of people dispossessed of their identities, ph/oto/graphs in a disorderly way, sings in solitude and farms organically, art is of instantaneous nature in images and in words and in sounds and in videos, pursues an entropic project that is asystematic and disorderly, chaotic and stoic, revolutionary and conservative, has no archives nor memories that are increasingly fading away, each moment is the start of the perennial contradiction of a transient life and art’s constant and useless tautology and this desperate and despairing anxiety is what he tries to bear witness to on the rare occasions that are given him or present themselves ...because everything is highly inconsistent and transient etc. etc. etc. et-choo

Ah Mario ! I can see that your English is not a problem, Your "about me" could be the whole interview. We could stop now!

But I would like to include your poem

Quote:
Sì quello che vorrei non è quello che è
Vorrei vorrei scrivere alla George Mackay Brown
Raccontare anch’io di mari in burrasca
E di visi solcati dalle rughe e dalla salsedine
Ed invece questo non sarà mai
La vita mia è più modesta
Non posso evocare gli eroi che non ci sono
L’epica appartiene al passato
Io vivo incollato alla sedia
Attaccato al computer
A scrivere questa persistenza della monotonia
Questo non mi darà lustro
Né diventerò ricordo indelebile della comunità locale
Ho solo questa mediocrità familiare come valore da sbandierare
Il resto è solo immaginazione che diventa sempre più scarna
Che impoverisce ogni giorno
Io comunque non mi allontano dal mio scranno
E continuo imperterrito il supplizio della scrittura uguale a sé
Un paesaggio interiore scarnificato
Deserto
Privo di spume sibilanti hissing spume
drifts of rain raffiche di pioggia…

Mario gives this rough translation:

one harp-song
inscape in the poetry of Mackay Brown.
inscape in the poetry of Mackay Brown
Yea, what I would want it is not what it is.
I would want - I would want to write like George Mackay Brown,
To also tell of seas in squall
and faces plowed from the wrinkles and the saltiness
but this shall never be.
My life is more modest
I can't evoke the nonexistent heroes,
epics belongs to the past.
I live glued to the chair
attached to the computer
writing this persistence of monotony
that shall give me no lustre
nor shall I become eternal memory to the local community.
I've only this familiar mediocrity to flaunt
the rest is only imagination that becomes always poorer
that impoverishes every day
yet I won’t go away from my seat
and I continue imperturbably the torture of writing the same things
inscape eroded
desert
without hissing spume or drifts of rain...

© Mario Pischedda 2003

I first saw your photographs on pixiport.com. They spoke so strongly to me that I wanted to do an interview with you and find out more about you. . It was only when I looked for you on the internet to see what else you were doing that I saw your videos and then your poems - you are everywhere.

I love the way you are using ph/oto/graphs - video - poetry - and sound to grasp the meanings of life that you want to remember. To describe the images as "Transient Moments' is very apt because in each one there is only a fleeting moment. Here - and then gone, For ever.

Your photographs are of almost nothing - a corner, a line of a beach, lights from a car window, a bend in a road - yet they are completely gripping. Is "freezing a moment in time" a deliberate choice Mario? Do you think of TIME being an important issue in your life? Like you are running out of time - maybe you never stop seeing and feeling and hearing - and have to record this as you experience it so you wont lose it. You live your art.

i don' t know if i've understood everything you said, but i want to follow my instinct and give you a free answer. i'm very happy because you are so sensitive - i think the artist suffers when looking at reality. 4 me it's so, mine is a philosophical approach, i don't conceive conceptually pain, illness, enemity, i love simplicity, being anonymous & poor, frugal, few things, ordinary life & ordinary people & there (if it is possible) i will catch the essence. i'm going very slowly with vocabulary, you may mix & whip, i think that an image is universal language, condense many words, see a ph/oto with music, i ph/oto/graph with ear and not with eye, feeling before and seeing after, i think that you caught my feeling, my interior and this is very good 4 me - it's very difficult to find persons with my same sensibility. i have appreciated your interest 4 me, now i have written in a rough and instinctual way, but i hope in the future to answer more appropriately...

i send to you inside a room of the house of Böcklin.

ciao Mario

Thank you for the ph/oto/graph of House of Bocklin.

and the poem - I understand this to translate – in English:

"In the same moment I have understood that that minute would never be returned, that it was swallowed in order always and that no life would have ever found it again in any time" I can also see now that your "ph/oto/graph word is very important to you. The "oto' is the ear and not the eye”

The sounds in the House of Bocklin feel like memories to hold on to. Ghosts of the past.

I have been looking at your picture on Pixiport Of the sea.

You are brave to show us that picture. So many people would say Oh why is this all sea and that is all. There is more feeling in the sea than words can tell. A simple, minimalist picture is showing us more about the moment because nothing gets in the way.

I can see your idea of the fleeting moment - "frozen in time" as an image. What about your music?

When you are making music do you improvise? (Is it Improvvisi?) (Make the music as your heart feels to make it?)

i don't make music, i listen to all music: jazz, classic, pop,religious, spiritual, all, i think 2 understand and feel the ph/oto/graphs it's necessary go inside the soul of the artist and the music isolates from the world, it's essence, purity and beauty, the image it's to all appearances superficial but 4 me it's more deep, deep interiority, deep night, nocturnal walks, i think music and atmosphere and silence help to feel the soul of the artist, almost inside the church, who sees my ph/oto must choose your preferred music and after enter inside, 4 the oto you have interpreted very well, the slogan may be: ear not eye, or if u prefer :ear & eye...& soul, heart, the images must leave the author and must be the heritage of humanity the ph/oto it's always anguished because it's a continuous elaboration of mourning, in every ph/oto there is inside all my soul, all my tremors of the existence, i hope have been clear with u like water...still & at last purity & beauty...be frugal...be Maecenas

Thank you for 5 giugno 2005. it makes me smile that the boy who is diving in to the water is alone - the mother and sisters are busy and not taking any notice of him. They are serious and concerned with every day things. The boy is lost in his own world. He is happy and carefree. He can be crazy.

Mario you talked about mourning, anguish and desperate anxiety - do you not experience the feelings of joy and calm? Happiness?

Your videos - there are so many. I have looked at so many of them and wish I could speak Italian to understand more. (I signed up to uTube to see your videos. i have so much to do on a sunday - but i have been with you all day!)

The spampoetry - why do you say spam?

i have taken your words to understand this:

Questi sono i giorni più fertili
Per scrivere poesie inutili
Poesie a perdere
Che non arrivano a nessuno

And translate to English the best I can - literally:

These are the more fertile days
In order to write useless poetry
Poetries to lose
That they do not arrive to nobody

Mario where do you live at the present time?

do you have any plans for new work? ( though I think you do not work by plans - but by your instinctive feelings)

Is there something you would like to say to finish?

u r making magnificent work, i no plan, not new work but new york, u good intuition, i'm wild & instinctive, spring-water, beautiful to talk with u, when i receive these input it's encouragement 4 continue my research in perfect loneliness & insanity, 4 my health i decided to be autistic man...and olive tree blown white in the wind

A true artist works in loneliness and insanity. It is the way to connect (join) with your soul. When you say "insanity" I understand the process to be like a therapy for your mind. (dont worry about working that out!)

(I am smiling because I am looking at your singing dog! on uTube) Click here to see video.

omigod I love your dog spampoetry you sent from uTube! Click here to see video.

ph/oto/graphy opposite to useful
u r painter, i wish u transform my zelfportrétt titled "metaphisical break" in a painting...i would like to have my glasses very yellow, in contact with God..

stupendous in future we can make together an exhibition of new paintings from my photo, i put the ph/oto/s and words and u transform in eternal paintings, together in harmony...sarebbe bellissimo!

So – we are now collaborating on our new paintings? Mario is that kind of person. Told you I shouldn’t have started this!

 

Pixiport Photographers In The News

Ami Vitale

There are rare moments when one is able to capture a vision of the past and a look into the future. I have been fortunate enough to glimpse a group from the nomadic Fulani tribe after they settled, became farmers and now struggle to adapt to a world that has thrust itself onto them in uncompromising ways in the West African country of Guinea Bissau.

The Fulani, who once crisscrossed the continent of Africa tending the precious herds of cattle, was a civilization whose renowned physical characteristic was its constant movement. The movement that they were accustomed to spun the threads of a rich social fabric of traditions and rituals, many of which continue to endure today.

This is the story of one Fulani family’s life; the age-old rites that persist and those that die in an Africa that few can ever imagine. Among the things that sets them apart from most other ethnic tribes in Guinea Bissau is that they are Muslim. Islamic traditions such as female and male circumcision, five prayer times a day, the Islamic calendar and multiple wives are just a few of the traditions that make up the structure of life in the village. Local beliefs and traditions have come together to produce a brand of Islam that is unique to its area and it’s people. From the belief of tree spirits to the use of traditional medicine or "voodoo", the mixing of cultures that took place centuries earlier have produced a society that blends a unique spiritual universe with the often brutal day to day existence of the physical world.

To an outsider the village may appear to be a place where people live simply and are struggling to survive. While part of this may be true, the social hierarchy and politics among members of the tribe are far more complex than any modern western society. The village is a place where people’s lives are caught up in a rigorous power struggle that is influenced by the past, the present, and the promise of the future. It is a place where the dead and unborn play powerful roles in the fate of the living.

In 2001, with the help of the Alexia foundation I was fortunate to witness this culture working from a calendar far different from our own. It was my hope to present a meaningful look into their lives to show the dignity and humor that exists in their struggle to provide for their children in a place that can be unforgiving to the human body and soul.

The Himalayan region of Kashmir, nestled between India and Pakistan has been called "a paradise on earth" ever since the 16th century when Mughal emperors discovered its pristine beauty and made it their summer capital. Indians took their annual pilgrimages to escape the heat of the oppressive, dusty plains and British colonizers found their way around a law that prohibited outsiders from owning land by building floating houseboats on the idyllic lakes. Today Kashmir is more famous for being the axis of relations between India and Pakistan, a “nuclear flashpoint” that could spark an unthinkable war in South Asia.

The conflict has eroded much that once defined Kashmir. Hindus and Muslims once shared neighborhoods, schools, and close friendships, but nearly all the Hindus fled Indian-governed Kashmir after being threatened by Muslim militants, and are now scattered across India. Sufism, which exerted a gentle influence on Kashmiri Islam for more than a dozen generations, has been gradually pushed aside by the fanatical Sunni Islam practiced by militants from Pakistan. For centuries, Kashmir’s Mughal gardens and wooden houseboats offered diversions to weary rulers. But leisure has vanished from Kashmir. No one visits, and fear has tainted the lives of those who make their homes amid its apple and apricot orchards, in its meadows and in the creases of its mountains.

I wandered briefly into the poetry of Kashmir in November of 2001 and could not let go. Whether trudging through the perfectly etched landscape that included rice fields cascading into the valleys like delicately carved staircases, sipping saffron tea in the warmth of a Kashmiri home or being cradled in the tranquility of a wooden shikara, a gondola style boat, on Dal Lake, this place filled me with affection. I wanted to understand Kashmir and delve below the glassy reflections in its still lakes. The mountains were mirrored perfectly until the oar hit the water, a crack rippled through the reflection and one began to sense that all is not what it seemed. Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir once bustled with life and laughter. Now it lies neglected and pockmarked with craters. Hotels have been turned into barracks, guns peek out behind broken glass windows and netting protects the bleary eyes soldiers from the frequent grenade attacks. The surrounding mountains, once lush and dotted with delightful Alpine cottages sit quietly as structures deteriorate and collapse. The poetry of this magnificent culture has degenerated into the language of mourning and everyone here is held hostage to the suffering. The gaping hole of years of conflict have been filled with the corpses of young men and those spaces that remain free lie waiting to devour still more.

These photographs are dedicated to all those who have died and to those that are living in the shadows of those deaths. It is my desire to give justice to the beauty, strength and suffering of Kashmir’s people and to the unique richness of their history and culture. I hope to inspire in others the feelings that Kashmir has given rise to myself, particularly the simultaneous apprehension of beauty and terror. I believe that all the inherent beauty will survive despite humanity’s ongoing attempts to control and destroy it. Because in this intricate place, where truth and fiction are sometimes inseparable, politics and poetry overlap, the pain is sometimes too great to bear, yet joy is still possible.

In February 2002 the city of Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat, once famous as the adopted home of Mahatma Gandhi, was the scene of some of the worst communal violence that India has seen in a decade. In retaliation for a gruesome attack by Muslims on a train carrying mainly Hindu pilgrims that left 59 dead, it sparked an orgy of violence that threatened the secular credentials of India. Mobs swarmed into Muslim communities and killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of men, women and children. The city burned as thousands fled their homes and the official death toll was over 1000, though estimates by human rights groups placed the figure much higher. The wounds from this man made tragedy will take a long time to heal as the bloodbath still continues on a smaller scale.

More about Ami Vitale

 

PixiPort, a "Portal To The Arts" is THE online venue for the marketing of fine art photography and its photo artists, showcasing their Fine art photography art works. PixiPort offers educational and informational opportunities in art photography to the public.
This "Portal To The Arts" is facilitated through the web site, www.pixiport.com with the cooperation of many leading professional photo artists under the marketing and direction of Helyn Davenport, an award winning, INPA Honorary Fellow, photographic artist, who's work is a mainstay on the site. Each month different international photographers are showcased.

A very popular and informative portal is "The Quill in Focus" Included in this portal is our poetry section with various poets"CloseUp with Carol Tipping" a very popular feature, offering one on one interviews with the various photographers featured on PixiPort. "The Voice Behind The Lens", which is the very creative written contribution of photographer Michael Dubiner expressing how photography plays a role in our daily lives. This series is updated regularily featuring topics relative to the art of photography.Ken Windsor is the editor of our Pixiporter newsletter. Call to Artists Listings for Art Photographers, events, exhibitons, grants, juried exhibits, opportunities for artists.GLIMPSING AN INSIGHT photo artists Interviewed by Scarlet James. Our weekly photo art gallery has new photos by photo artists which is is updated each week.Be sure to bookmark this photography gallery. Each month we select a photograph as the Fine Art Photography Artist Of The Month winner which is sponsored by Digital Art Supplies. 20th Century Art History Art the history of art terms defined. Art Words,Art Terms and Definitions of Art Words where you can learn more about art words and their meanings.
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Fernando Hocevar

A solid aesthetic background guides him in his fine arts search. Starting as a photographer he participates in numerous and important competitions, obtaining several prizes that stimulates his activities in this field. Nevertheless, not fully satisfied, the necessity of a more direct contact with the materials for art works guide him to oil painting and the creation of his own world of landscape. He begins to develop a very personal technic and works in an endless series of paintings called «Landscapes in the country of the calm». In 1997 a deep change takes place in his creations. Without abandoning the spirit and beauties of his works he starts developing his landscapes by digital processes, medium in which he starts working passionately. After two years of work in this field, in 1999 he surprises Mendoza with an exhibition of 40 works at the Modern Art Museum of Mendoza. This show of large size digital works suggestively named «Landscapes under the hidden moon» is, in the opinion of the specialized critics, the most important sample of digital art work carried out in Argentina at the time.

By the end of 1999 Fernando Hocevar is rewarded with one of the most important art prizes in the world, the Fiorino d'Argento, at the XVII Premio Firenze-Europa, Digital Art Section, a contest sponsored by the European Parliament and the Florence, Italy, Government. In march 2000 he is awarded the Great Prize of Honor, at the Fourth Digital Creation Awards of Japan, contest of great world importance. By the end of 2000 Hocevar obtains Honorable Mention at the «Hyperart Biennale 2000 held in New York, USA. At the beginning of 2001 Hocevar is awarded the GRAND PRIZE at the 5th Internet International Art-Photo Contest, carried out in Japan with the participation of 500 works from 48 countries around the world. This recent award, added to the previous ones, makes Fernando Hocevar one of the most important international artists in the new discipline of digital art works. His last works took him to India, invited by the prestigious Interior Design Architechture Bilkey Llinas Design (Palm Beach - Hong Kong) to do works that nowadays are part of the Grand Hyatt Bombay and Grand Hyatt Kolkata interior decoration, after the job he did for the Hyatt Hotel Mendoza, Argentina. This important buildings collection has more than 60 pieces.

Lou Oats

Selected Recent Exhibitions, Competitions, Publications, and Collections

2004
Completed photo essay of the Copper Basin Railroad, Hayden, AZ. Completing photo essay of the Magma Hotel, Superior, AZ.
Summer shooting in Chicago: viaducts, street scenes, and creating a series of whimsical digital composites, "Family".

2003
Preparation of two large portfolios for gallery display: Jim's 76 and The Old School.
Creation of this web site for the direct sale of photographs.

2002 (Competition)
Best of Show & Viewer's First Choice--"Superior Mountain Festival Art Show".
First Place, Photography--"Southwest" Art Exhibition, Cobre Valley Center for the Arts. Globe, AZ.

2002 (Juried Exhibition)
"Identity" Exhibition Step Gallery, ASU campus, Tempe, AZ. Composite Digital Images.
"All Digital" Exhibition Harry Wood Gallery ASU, Tempe, AZ. Composite Digital Image.
"Third Annual Photography Show", Quintessence Gallery, Chandler, AZ. Three images.

2001-02 (Solo Shows)
"The Road to Globe" Boyce Thompson Arboretum. Black and white images from 1999-2001 plus several composite digital images taken on or near Arizona Route 60 from Phoenix to Globe, including Superior and Miami, AZ.
"Images of Superior". Community First Bank, Superior, AZ. Black and white images of historic landmark buildings including images from Superior vicinity.
Twenty four images featured at Cobre Valley Center for the Arts, Globe, AZ.

2000 (Competition and Touring Exhibit)
"A Chandler View: Photography within our City's Borders". Chandler Arts Commission. Two photographs chosen for touring exhibit and purchase for public collection.

2000 (Competition)
"Dia de Colores" Festival, Superior, AZ. First Place, photography

Public Commissions
Superior Chamber of Commerce. Historic Buildings photography project for brochure to attract film producers to Superior, AZ.
Champlin Fighter Aircraft Museum, Mesa, AZ. Photographs featured on museum web site.
Pinal County Historical Museum. Photography of unique exhibits for postcard sales.

Publications 2001-02 (Books & Magazines)
Book:"Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun". Twin Lights Publishers, Inc. Three color photographs featured.
Book: "Tucson to Tombstone and Beyond ". Twin Lights Publishers, Inc. Six color photographs featured.
Magazine: Photographic, "Shooting Stunning Cityscapes", Nov. 2002 Featured color photograph.

Public Collection
Chandler Arts Commission, Chandler, AZ

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"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." - Adlai Stevenson 1900-1965