Anyone gazing up at the Janiculum Hill last night may have been perplexed to see illuminated words scrolling across the Aqua Paola, one of Rome’s most elegant seventeenth-century Baroque fountains.
The projection was the first in a series of four illuminations by the contemporary American conceptual artist, Jenny Holzer. Best known for projecting texts onto urban spaces and onto architecture, Holzer’s publically broadcast words are meant to be comments about the environment in which they are displayed. Reading the messages, Holzer hopes, will stimulate us to become aware of the ways we are conditioned by our everyday landscapes. To this end, her trusims have appeared in such public venues as movie marquees, baseball scoreboards, as well as in and on museums.
In projecting on Rome’s historic monuments, Holzer achieves two ends. First, she reminds us that ours is not an ordinary cityscape for it is puntuated by majestic ruins that are often thousands of years old. Yet, but projecting words that are as grand in scale as the architecture itself, she turns the monuments into stage sets, making them merely the pages upon which an altogether new (but temporary) text is inscribed.
Holzer has received international acclaim for her work. Her work has been shown worldwide at such places as the Venice Biennale, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Some great tennis was played in Rome over the course of the past two weeks as the Internazionale d’Italia (the Italian Open Tennis Tournament) took place at the Foro Italico, just north of Rome’s city center.
The Foro Italico, a sports complex designed in the 1930s under the reign of the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, features indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a track, tennis courts and a soccer stadium. Mussolini built the sports center to encourage young Italians to keep both bodies and mind fit (and faithful to the Fascist regime). As such, the track and the tennis court were embellished with colossal marble sculptures of athletes who preside over all athletic efforts while showing off their fine physiques.
From 5-20 May, the clay courts hosted some of tennis’s most talented players. Their sheer athleticism, combined with tenacious and strategic play, provided Roman spectators with exciting afternoons and evenings. Rafael Nadal continued his record-breaking streak of clay court victories, while women such as Amelie Mauresmo, Serena Williams, and Svetlana Kutnetsova offered an admirable display of physical virtuosity and mental focus. Rafael Nadal and Jelena Jankovic came out on top of the men and women’s tournaments, but there were other winners on display as well: tournament sponsor, Fila, cut a bella figura by providing stylish ball girls - complete with sporty purses and midriff-baring polo shirts - for the final matches.
