INTERVIEW WITH GABRIELE DE SANTIS
ELISA MUSCATELLI
Elisa Muscatelli – How would you describe your artistic practice to an audience encountering it for the first time?
Gabriele De Santis – Flying by Jesse Novack | Instrumental track
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MesS_YKCf68
EM – A harlequin riding a Williamsburg, spaghetti and basil in soccer shoes, Greek columns on wheels, but also takes on stances like all fasci are shit. How did your artistic vision come about?
GD – FloriDada by Animal Collective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuoIvNFUY7I
Child (of limousines)
What’s the best place (That you have seen)
All of the hands (That you have shook)
Home of the queen (of everything fancy)
Is there a smell (That you can tell)
Gives you some peace (sends you to hell)
All of the beds (That you have yearned)
Is there a dream to (where you’d return)
Where is the plight (With the most stars)
Where do you drink (By Echo guitars)
What’s the best shore (Seen from a boat)
Miniature heads that (colour the shoreline)
If you could rest (A minute to tell)
Get me some grass (Iridescent shells)
I know there’s a nest (Fit with a hatch)
Sunset a glowin’ (Makes us all sweaty)
I don’t even know where to begin or how I should start these days.
(The green mountain south or)
The Clay of the westerns
The Maryland meadows at midnight they do have a misty grace
(Take a trip to blue bayou)
Find Roy Orbison crying
A continent molded from glass or maybe a town I can taste
(Dresses that glow on)
Girls from Barcelona
I wanna discover the key and open the everywhere place
(A mix of sky from Montana)
Dipped in FloriDada
[…]
EM – In your works, we can perceive an atmosphere of playfulness even though the conditions of a real game are not there
GD – Become a mountain by Dan Deacon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtBmZYqZZjU
I got up
Tired in my flesh
I’m getting old now
I’m so lucky
Yet I forget that I’m still hungry
For the future
In this day ahead of me
Will I seize it or will I run
All the time
Is right here
It’s right now
I have this feeling
Almost all the time
I have this feeling
Like this feeling isn’t mine
Mystic familiar
It already knows
I can see it waiting for me to explode
Close your eyes
And it becomes a mountain
Become all around you
Become the sky, become the sea
Open your eyes
And remain the mountain
Breathing deeply
Feeling the day change with the breeze
All the time
Is right here
It’s right now
I have this feeling
Almost all the time
I have this feeling
Like this feeling is not mine
[…]
EM – Popular culture is a big reference for you, the protagonists of your works sometimes even have cult character names (like the dolphins DJ and Elliot in reference to Scrubs). What is your relationship with mass culture?
GD – Maledetta primavera by Loretta Goggi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foJV_y4mSiI
Wanting to hug and then
White wine, flowers, and old songs
And they laughed at us
What a hoax it was
Damn spring
What’s left of an erotic dream if
Upon waking, it became a poem?
If with empty hands of you
I can no longer do
As if it were not love
If by mistake
I close my eyes and think of you
If to fall in love again
You’ll be back, damn spring
What a cheat if
It only takes an hour to fall in love?
What was the hurry
Damn spring?
What was the hurry
If it only hurts?
What’s left inside me?
[…]
EM – In your Instagram stories, besides cycling, you have a collection of numerous recipes. Cakes, pizzas, an embarrassing carbonara y guacamole combo, you’ve even created an artist’s cone with a Dear Martina flavour. What is your relationship with the culinary world? Does it interact with your artistic work?
GD – Sis Around the Sandmill by Avey Tare & Kría Brekkan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l382GBQ8tU
[…]
Eat slowly and there’s my ha ha
They eat slow the others might ha ha
Eat slow the others might ha ha
Eat slowly and the others might wah ho
EM – If we had to look for a part of you in a book or movie, which one would you tell us?
GD – Stranger Things – Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein | Instrumental
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RcPZdihrp4