1.1 Icon: Aldo Tambellini

Aldo Tambellini is an Italian-American painter, sculptor, poet and electromedia artist. He is the pioneer of the electronic intermedia and was the first to explore expanded art by rethinking the artistic space. He created a series of electromedia performances using projected paintings, films, video, poetry, light, dance, live musicians etc. Tambellini through his work took part in counter-culture activism. He also voiced his argument against commercializing artists for capitalistic propaganda and used performance art as a form of raising cultural awareness. 

Tambellini’s most expanded work in the “Black” series. He created a series of films, video, installations, performance, projections, poetry and devised them together to create an innate sensory experience. 

The Black Film Series: A sequence of seven films created in exploration of senses in the medium. The concept of the films range from total abstraction to assasination of Bobby Kennedy, The Vietnam War, Black teenagers in Coney Island etc. Through this he creates a sensory expansion and perception of the violence of the world. He created a series of poetry in essence of using Black as a concept and a form. His statement on handmade films: 

How intense is the intensity of light?

         How many images of blackness in a second?

         How many sounds in a pulsation of light?

         How does an instant of film span a million?

         How black is the blackness?

The Black film series includes:

 

Poetry: Tambellini created over 1400 poems exploring various structures and mediums. His round poems are an exploration of the non-linearity of text taking a circular form, creating its own language. 

Tambellini’s work is a sensory exploration and deconstruction of the media and the medium.  He raises awareness on important issues by creating a sensory experience among his audience through his exploration and combination of isolated artefacts, media and real people. As someone who is keen on exploring and revisiting linguistic expressions as a form of sensory experiences, Tambellini’s work speaks to me through its own vocabulary but is perceived uniquely through my phenomenology, creating an intermix of linguistic expressions within the interplay of his intermedia.