Anri Sala's Hypnotic Installation in a Historic Bergamo Palace

Anri Sala's audio-visual installation 'Time No Longer' is on view in the Sala delle Capriate of the Palazzo della Ragione in Bergamo Alta, as part of the exhibition 'Transfigured' curated by GAMeC director Lorenzo Giusti. The work features a turntable floating in zero gravity aboard a space station, playing an arrangement of Olivier Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time', composed during his imprisonment in a German camp in 1941. Sala focuses on the solo movement 'The Abyss of the Birds', written for clarinet and performed by fellow prisoner Henri Akoka. The piece also references saxophonist Ronald McNair, one of the first Black astronauts, who planned to record a solo aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded after liftoff in 1986. Clarinet and saxophone become the two sonic poles of the work, merging historical narratives marked by solitude and vulnerability. The 16-meter floating screen and dynamic lighting create a disorienting experience with no intervals, while flashes from behind the screen illuminate the frescoes, generating temporal short-circuits.