Bolide

Simone Cametti has been following a rather secluded path in the art world for some time. His projects are always the result of physical effort. He climbs mountains, he works marble, he literally paints entire portions of landscape, with a premise that unites his works, time. In all of his works, the duration of the creation becomes part of the work itself. The Bolide project is a series of videos that document an experience lasting several months in an abandoned building on the outskirts of Rome. The building, not completed, was intended as a hotel. Nine floors for a total of 144 rooms.
For over a hundred days the artist entered furtively at night to stay until dawn the following day. The ground floor does not have any access stairs, access to the first floor was solved by Cametti with the aid of climbing ropes. The operation that occupied him for several months was the detachment of all the lighting from each room to concentrate it in a single room on the ninth floor of the building. Over 150 light tubes for a total length of five meters. The installation divided into blocks, connected by circuit breakers, involved seven switch-ons, with a frequency of thirty seconds between each other. The neon lights were turned on on the night of April 19, 2018 for a few minutes. The expected power overload caused the connections to fail, returning the room to total darkness.
The video, mounted on several vertical monitors, documents the paradox of long months of tiring preparation for a final event lasting just a few minutes.

The work is presented on seven vertically positioned monitors measuring 50 inches each. The videos and images tell the documentation of the months spent inside the building. Every single audio and video is reasoned to define the installation.

For some months I have been working inside an abandoned building in Rome. The structure, almost completed, was intended to be used as a hotel but was never put into operation, 144 rooms distributed in nine floors. Twice a week I sneaked in at night to stay inside until dawn of the following day. The ground floor has no access stairs, so it is necessary to climb with ropes and reach the first floor. Inside each room, I found 230 cm neon tubes. During the first phase of my project, I removed all the lights from the rooms and assembled them in a single room. The name of the project is "bolide", a term attributed to meteors entering the earth's atmosphere, and thanks to the friction with it, they light up. This is the phenomenon known as falling stars. The completed indoor installation is over 150 neon lights for a total length of almost five meters. The installation is divided into 20 neon blocks connected by magnetothermic switch, for a total of 7 lightings. The documentation of the work in spaces was made with videos and photographs. In addition to this, I planned to switch on the lights one time on the night of April 19th. The neon lights, distributed in seven blocks, will be put into operation every 30 seconds. Over a few minutes, the current overload will make the connections jump, bringing the environment back to total darkness.