LUNG-TA was born as a site-specific intervention for a collective exhibition at the Tevere Art Gallery in Rome, and as a memorial project for the victims of the covid pandemic in the Rome Metropolitan Area. The project is inspired by Tibetan prayer flags.

Contemporary art always has different levels of interpretation, and by reading visitors’ notes and reviews after the exhibition at the TAG gallery, the element perceived by the public was instead that of reinterpretation of the tragedy of the pandemic, now that we see the light at the end of the tunnel, in a playful, de-dramatizing, even cheerful perspective. Several visitors missed the connection with the Tibetan flags and interpreted the installation as a “cheerful carnival of colors in the Brazilian way”.

Burningmax, in addition to experimenting with contemporary art languages, is also an electronic music DJ, and is linked to the community of the Together Mansion, one of the expressions of the Burning Man spirit in Rome, having also played at some events of the “Room Beats” cycle promoted by Together Mansion. The electronic music initiative, on the occasion of Rome Art Week 2021, is revived with the inclusion of contemporary art interventions. For the occasion, the organizers of the Together Mansion asked Burningmax for a new LUNG-TA intervention.

In the spirit of DJing, Burningmax therefore “remixes” the meaning of LUNG-TA proposing LUNG-TA Remixed, a version of the same installation redesigned in a site-specific key for the spaces of the Together Mansion, and reinterpreted in a way that not only marries the spirit of the “Contact” initiative, which aims to celebrate the return to normality of interpersonal relationships, but also the spirit of the public who, at the end of the tunnel of anguish and mourning generated by the pandemic, intends to celebrate the return to life and social relationships.

LUNG-TA Remixed does not propose the same installation presented at the T.A.G. gallery but, using the same tools and media, purged of the surrealist messages of the “mother installation”, gets reinvented for an audience that wants to celebrate an explosion of festive colors, rather than a mourning metaphor.

This is how the surgical masks of LUNG-TA Memorial, from Tibetan prayer flags, got “remixed” and became an element of hope and joy with reference, why not, to joyful parties with Brazilian favela sound-systems, to celebrate a renewed return to human contact and social relationships that we have all been deprived of for too long.

While the LUNG-TA memorial anchored itself to the first steps of the “7 phases of mourning”, the darkest ones linked to pain and depression, with “LUNG-TA Remixed” Burningmax marries the desire of the public and the spirit of the newfound community of the Together Mansion, passing directly to the last stages of the process, those of reconstruction, acceptance and hope.

Martina Di Lorenzo is a Roman artist whom Burningmax met on the occasion of the collective exhibition at the T.A.G. gallery, and with which a harmony was born that has already generated ideas for future collaborations. Martina participates in Room Beats // Contact with her “Distributore di Poesie”, an installation that combines poetry and literature with a high level of interaction with the public.

Thank you to the organizers of Room Beats // contact at Together Mansion in Rome for the invitation to participate in the event included in the Rome Art Week 2021 calendar. 

Thank you also to Martina Di Lorenzo for the joint promotion of our reciprocal installations, and for the “pARTner in art” complicity.