WITH LOVE AND RAGE.NOTES ON THE REASONS FORA COMMISSION

Why choose Isaac Julien for Palazzo Te? The answer seems simple: one of the world’s most acclaimed artists decided to draw inspiration from the architecture and frescoes of one of the masterpieces of late Italian Renaissance. An honour for the palazzo and the Fondazione that manages it, and a significant challenge for the artist. In actual fact, the idea to commission Sir Isaac Julien was not based on reasons of comparison or preconception. Rather, it emerged quite naturally, as a consequence, or even better, as a convergence of conditions and opportunities.

REASON I

Firstly, the 500th anniversary of Palazzo Te provided the occasion. Following the remarkable experience with Gerhard Richter and Titian’s Annunciation seven years prior, it was an appropriate moment to revisit contemporary art.

It’s worth pausing right here for a moment just to make sure there are no misunderstandings. Every time you engage with a work of art you accept the possibility of a dramatic turn that might alter the present. Every time and with any work of art. The paintings of Titian or Rubens are no less ‘contemporary’ than those of Picasso or the film images of Isaac Julien. They require a different kind of mediation, a different gaze, if you like, but they are not on a particularly different level in terms of knowledge and experience.

In autumn 2021, as we emerged after the Covid-19 pandemic, a decision was made with the scientific committee to explore Palazzo Te’s complex decorative schemes and some of the principal layers of interpretation associated with them.In recent years, the Te has become Aphrodite’s palace, which embraces the conflicting relationship between desire and knowledge¹, a palace of Wonders from which a sense of 16th century magic emanates ², the seat of imperial power hosting the European dream ³; and finally the palace of metamorphosis, Ovid’s Sun Palace, symbolising hope for the humanistic and secular redemption of the world ⁴.

REASON II AND REASON III

The 500^th Centenary, beginning in spring 2025, centred on the theme of metamorphosis.

Once again, Claudia Cieri Via brought us back to the 16th century with a collection of 30 works, some of which originally said to have been commissioned by the Gonzaga for Palazzo Te. These highlight the frequent motif of metamorphosis in the painting of the time.

The 500^th Centenary was by then ready to address modern times; to show even more clearly the power of the simultaneity of themes and forms. And to suggest the crucial idea that the cultural heritage can and must be a source of inspiration, vision and active and positive transformation.

Two years ago, I started discussions with Lorenzo Giusti, director of GAMeC, whom I met during our collaboration for Bergamo-Brescia’s Italian Capital of Culture in 2021/22. These exchanges inspired the second key condition, and it was this that became the idea for today’s contemporary exhibition.After long discussions and visits to Mantova, Lorenzo Giusti suggested Isaac Julien. Despite being an important English video maker, he had never had a solo exhibition in Italy. His aesthetic would be a good fit with the Fruttiere del Te, which had been closed for seven years and were to reopen for the celebrations.

My initial approach, therefore, was guided by a common train of thought with Lorenzo Giusti and the belief that there was a clear aesthetic affinity between Isaac’s works—particularly Statues Never Die—and the palace’s message. This intuition was confirmed at the end of July 2023 during an afternoon visit to Tate Britain, where a major monographic exhibition of the artist’s work was underway.

Meanwhile, the third condition: having contacted Julien through Marc Spiegler, we conducted our first site visit at Palazzo Te. During this visit, and encouraged by Lorenzo Giusti, the idea evolved: rather than a solo exhibition, we would produce a new, site-specific work centred on metamorphosis, filmed within Palazzo Te itself.

This was the suggestion that Isaac Julien conceived with Mark Nash at the end of a day during which Giulio Romano’s charm had clearly influenced the English artist’s poetic imagination. It was exactly what I had hoped for.Isaac’s encounter with the palazzo inspired the creation of a new work of art.

In 2024, Isaac Julien’s participation in the Mantova conference on Metamorphoses, alongside Lorenzo Giusti and Giuliana Bruno, and a visit to his London studio, sealed the deal. Meanwhile, the development of a mood board and logistical planning, supported by the invaluable contributions of Robert Rosenkranz, progressed steadily.

REASON IV

At the end of January 2025, Lorenzo Giusti and I joined Isaac and Marc in Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Marc and Isaac, both professors at the University of California, Santa Cruz, had longstanding connections with Donna Haraway, the circle of anthropologists close to Anna Tsing, and the founding group of the Center for the History of Consciousness, including figures such as Carla Freccero, James Clifford, and Angela Davis. It was in this environment that the film’s thematic core began to materialise, described and commented on here in Lorenzo Giusti’s fine essay, and it was to Santa Cruz that Lorenzo and I were invited for a round of interviews and reflections.

This visit provided a unique opportunity to spend an entire afternoon with Donna Haraway and several other faculty members, helping to affirm and deepen our understanding of the affinity that had guided our synergy up to that point.Donna Haraway arrived punctually at Isaac’s house shortly after lunch. She was greeted warmly. We sat around the large dining table, and a conversation immediately ensued, beginning with the story of Palazzo Te and continuing with the work of Isaac Julien.

Donna was cordial, militant and kind. She was quick thinking and got straight to the point. I took notes from which we can now extract some of the key passages.As soon as Donna sat down, she looked at Isaac and, with bright, affectionate eyes and a voice that barely dropped, told him, straight out, that the reason she was sitting with us was because Isaac’s work is made of Love and Anger, Love and Rage, as it should be for someone responding to a need.Here we go, I thought.

Then the floodgates opened. I’ll try to summarise the main points here, drawing from Haraway’s words:

“The first is the almost apocalyptic urgency that represents a call to action: the onrushing of death, the onrushing of extinction, not just death, the specificities of extinction.Faced with this, work, the task is to endure, to remain, in the face of the fall, the ruins. It is not building a utopia, even if utopia can be useful as a narrative tool.The task is to refuse cynicism.”“This is why”, Haraway says, “it is essential to work together, especially with artists and musicians. And not to deny the monstrous. And not to fall victim to terror, the terror of extinction, of the end. Not to fall victim to the stupidity of terror.”But what can the ability to truly reject cynicism be based on, even as an educational task? I can’t help wondering…The answer can only be personal, “It’s just the raw thereness and ongoingness of worlding, including in its biological formats. And we’re not above that or separate from it. We are of it and in it. And it’s full of living and dying of all kinds.”

She continued: “And the conceptual apparatus that I and a few other friends are calling sympoiesis, that making with, that poiesis that is wielding, that sympoiesis that is not autopoiesis, is not self-making, even in its most sophisticated forms.”

“It’s one word, eco-evo-divo. So that the ongoing metamorphoses of individual bodies, which are lifelong matters, not limited to periods of embryonic development or whatever, but it’s what living is about, this kind of ongoing metamorphosis of being alive at all, call that development. And in and with others who make each other’s habitats, for each other, both living and non-living players, call that ecology, in the many different temporal scales through which this ongoingness happens, call that evolution if you want, but that eco-evo-devo perspective, which for me is what being here is. It’s my I am, who am moment. It’s a profound kind of, it is a resolute kind of heaven and earth.”You’re talking about a way of being present, right?“Absolutely, it’s a mode of presence. It is a recognition of presencing as a genesis, as created.”And can this presencing be defined ‘poetic’?“It could be called that too. Look, I’m a nominalist of the old-fashioned type. Back there with Anselm and all. Yeah, there you got it…No, more seriously. I learned a long time ago when I was a high school kid and have held on to this, that the minute you name something like that, you’re committing an act of idolatry. The minute you give a name to what is and believe in your name, it is the definition of idolatry. So, of course we need names, and we need systems, and we need theory, but this thing, this ‘presence’ is unnameable in the strict theological sense. That Christian nominalist unnameability of God. The minute you name it, you’re done. And it’s something very close to other religious experiences. Buddhism, for example.”…“And it’s something that can be witnessed in the present. Works of art, music, analysis, petting a dog. It can be communicated and it’s infectious. I think it’s infectious, we live in a world of infections. And it’s a good thing even though one day it’ll probably kill us.”And to conclude:“I think there are many of us who are yearning, in bel hook’s sense, yearning towards something like this, lured toward this way of coming into who we are. And does that give me a certain amount of hope?It does, actually, because I think it energizes and activates and gets you out of bed in the morning with some sense of joy. Assuming your dog is there greeting you. Otherwise, the joy is a little harder to get.Nihilism is the constant temptation. And these days more than that. Nihilism of the soul and skepticism of the heart.”Then she stopped talking and looked us straight in the eye.The conversation was over.The choice was clear. Partly because, evidently, everything led to the heart of what has been done and imagined at Palazzo Te in recent years: rejecting cynicism, embracing change, diverting one’s gaze from nihilistic attraction, trying to make cultural heritage an opportunity for an act of creativity.Isaac, almost to himself, was muttering, “I’ll make a film about inhabitants of the galaxies.”

With love and anger, I thought—or rather, hoped—at Palazzo Te and, at the same time, in many other places around the world. I think we can stop here; the rest, with gratitude, is still to be seen.