ARTE
Enough — a thousand years are enough for the artist Daniele Sigalot
An art production bringing to life one of the finest works of a major Italian artist: a mix of irony and electronics — a true masterpiece of conceptual art.
Project summary
Daniele Sigalot is one of the brightest and most ironic conceptual artists, well established on the contemporary-art scene.
He says he doesn’t particularly love painters, but as an artist himself he ended up befriending some of them. One day he happened to witness a discussion on pigments — some of which would last no more than two hundred years.
Sigalot then reflects that, although 200 years may seem a long time, even immortality would probably not be enough for a painter. Back in the dark of his studio, he wonders how long he would want one of his own works to last and, modestly, decides that for him a thousand years would be enough.
So how do you make a work that lasts a thousand years? The answer is Enough, made with our help and inaugurated at the end of November 2019 in our Spazio Chirale gallery.
- Developing the artist’s concept
- Design of the interaction process
- Technical design
- Technical realisation of the work
Deliverables
How do you make a work that lasts a thousand years?
Sigalot provides the answer with one of his characteristic semantic-perspective flips: you build a counter that, after a count-down of exactly 31,556,908,800 seconds — a thousand years — switches the work itself off.
The construction of the counter and of the entire mechanism of the work — from start-down to the final shutdown a thousand years after the moment of inauguration — was entrusted entirely to Chirale.
Results
The work was built in wood, acrylic and solid-state electronics. Power is supplied from the regular electrical grid, but a sophisticated system of permanent memory and back-up batteries, paired with an RTC clock, ensures that — once started — the work permanently records the moment of inauguration and, whatever happens, is always able to resume its inexorable count-down.
It was started during the opening event held at Spazio Chirale on 21 November 2019. At 7:00 pm sharp, Daniele Sigalot made a performative gesture that permanently changed the state of the work, which has since done nothing but keep its count going. When the thousand years are up it will switch off with a final twist known only to the artist and to one member of our team.