Adrian Paci

Adrian was born in 1969 in Shkoder, Albania. Lives and works in Milano

“The Column came out of a story […] there is in this project a coexistence of something conflictual and something fabulous, something real and something fictional. [...] there is a storytelling structure, and the chronicle of real facts mixes with legend and fairytale. Of course, one of the elements that I found stimulating with The Column was the production of a classical Western column model by a group of Asian workers on a voyage towards Europe. As you said, it is in a sense, for the column, a kind of ‘homecoming’. I heard from a friend of mine, a restorer, who needed a new marble sculpture for a castle he was restoring. Somebody told him that it could be done in China, because they have good marble, good craftsmen, cheap labour, and they can be quick because they can actually do the work while the marble is being transported by boat. I found it terrific. It sounded so weird, simultaneously sick and fabulous, something mythological and at the same time in keeping with the capitalistic logic of profit — merging the time of production with the time of transport.”
Adrian Paci on “The Column”,
Interview by Marie Fraser

“The Column came out of a story […] there is in this project a coexistence of something conflictual and something fabulous, something real and something fictional. [...] there is a storytelling structure, and the chronicle of real facts mixes with legend and fairytale. Of course, one of the elements that I found stimulating with The Column was the production of a classical Western column model by a group of Asian workers on a voyage towards Europe. As you said, it is in a sense, for the column, a kind of ‘homecoming’. I heard from a friend of mine, a restorer, who needed a new marble sculpture for a castle he was restoring. Somebody told him that it could be done in China, because they have good marble, good craftsmen, cheap labour, and they can be quick because they can actually do the work while the marble is being transported by boat. I found it terrific. It sounded so weird, simultaneously sick and fabulous, something mythological and at the same time in keeping with the capitalistic logic of profit — merging the time of production with the time of transport.”
Adrian Paci on “The Column”,
Interview by Marie Fraser