Arturo Hernández Alcázar's Blind Horizon at Naples' Serino Aqueduct

Mexican artist Arturo Hernández Alcázar (b. 1978, Mexico City) has created a site-specific sound installation titled Blind Horizon in the Augustan Aqueduct of Serino in Naples. The work is the first residency of the cultural program Underneath the arches, curated by Chiara Pirozzi and Alessandra Troncone in collaboration with the Associazione VerginiSanità. The program aims to bring artists from different geographical areas to interpret the underground aqueduct space, fostering dialogue between past and present. Hernández Alcázar spent over a month in Naples as a guest of the Fondazione Morra, tracing the ancient water path and collecting sounds from the city, including neighborhoods, foundries, former factories, and streets. The installation features eight megaphones connected by thin wires that rise and fall along the large arches, diffusing these captured sounds. The artist describes the work as a "sound sculpture," where sound is shaped like a material and interacts with the space. The megaphone symbolizes mass control, just as the aqueduct controlled water. Blind Horizon is a metaphor for a horizon that is both controlled like architecture and blind like a dark night, balancing precarity and contingency. The project's name also references a 1930s song later used by Gilbert & George in their 1970 installation The Singing Sculpture, highlighting the link between contemporary and ancient.