BAGPIPE
Bagpipe, Robert Pettena, 2003, 8′
He runs ceaselessly round the floor of the former textile factory, a huge empty space that has been set aside to be converted into a contemporary art gallery, a project which never comes to fruition. The bagpipe player invades the whole space with the sound of his instrument, as the Scottish army marched with their bagpipes before them to instill terror into the armies opposing them.
Born in Penbury (UK) in 1970, Robert Pettena spent a large part of his youth and adolescence between Brixton (London) and San Giovenale (Reggello, Italy). In 1990 he moved to Florence, where he attended the Accademia di Belle Arti. Robert Pettena is an artist-cum-traveller probing the wonders and inconsistencies of the world, seizing conflicting aspects of reality in a manner both poetic and a provocative. Alongside photography, video-art and installations, his work includes performances and site-specific projects involving other players besides himself, often hailing from the artistic underground in which Pettena has identified a potential and an energy that he transfers and channels into a variety of situations, sparking a short-circuit in his audience’s senses.