Clemente Ciarrocca (b. 1994, Rome; lives and works in Berlin) is an artist and theorist whose multimedia practice explores intimacy’s foundational and fugitive relationship to discoursive entities such as sight, property, subjecthood. Rooted in interdisciplinary assemblage, gesture, audiovisual montage and a poetic approach to theory, the work draws methodologically from the traditions of philosophical fiction and prison writing.
slowosmosis @ gmail . com
SELECTED DOCUMENTATION
THE JOYS, 2025
preview
press release, floorplan and checklist
walkthrough
Crisis of Representation - companion text to the show
Precarity & Grace Audio Service - exhibition soundscape
A Divagation - Gabriela Acha on The Joys
Photos by Max Eulitz and Marc Gemini
IF TOMORROW’S SUN FINDS YOU WITHIN MY BOUNDARIES, 2025
preview
press release and works list
Politics in the Closet - script, transferred to sound to feature in the show
Gazes Upon Gazes, Disembodied - Review by Emily Nill
Contemporary Art Library
Photos by Max Eulitz
TO KISS ON A BATTLEFIELD | ACT 1, 2023
press release
exhibition text
In the atmosphere remains - companion text to the show
Aftermath - epilogue
Photos by Logan Wolfe and Yun Gi Ahn
WRITING
On Intimacy
essay, read at ADULT ENTERTAINMENT, Berlin, 4th July 2025
Crisis of Representation
booklet, companion text to The Joys on view at Aktionshaus, Berlin, Summer 2025
Politics in the Closet
script, part of If Tomorrow’s Sun Finds You Within My Boundaries on view at Obelus 2, Berlin, Spring 2025
Five people lock themselves up in a closet to get sober, forget the world, and experience total darkness.
The Fetish Diagram
diagram, designed in collaboration with Myour Gape
Driven by the illusion of its positivity, civil society unfolds as a space chartered by the relationship between liberty and property. However, to understand liberty in terms of property is to irremediably dwell within an atrophic dimension of fetishism.
Bad Gateway
exhibition text for Henri Haake’s Bad Gateway at Obelus, Berlin, November 2024
Mea, Precious Angel: Provocations Toward a Modularity of the Abyss
book, 50 pages, cellulose, printed by the artist in edition of 50 in Berlin, DE, May 2024
Mea, Precious Angel is the companion text to the exhibition Until This I Mean This, originally on view at Obelus, Berlin between May and June 2024. An experiment in falling disguised as an attempt to fly, Mea draws on Audre Lorde's 1978 articulation of erotic power in "Uses of the Erotic" and pushes into uncharted territory. What begins as an engagement with Lorde transforms into a psychotic monologue delivered by the angel Mea Dow, who introduces a new affective category: the limic. The limic names a condition of extreme erotic indulgence in the lush and rampant space—the limit—flourishing between two whose individuation and identification are suspended. In the narrative, identification and identity are understood in connection to their shared Latin root, idem, meaning 'sameness', standing in contrast to the unbridled diversity of experience. Through a dense weave of poetic prose drawing references from academic theory, poetry and literature, Mea develops the logic of the limit into what is in the text is finally introduced as "the alcove": a conceptual space that traces objectification back to its origins in intimate, individual life. Mea's conclusion is unforgiving: the dimension whereby the unknown is casted into nothingness, the Abyss, is fundamentally modular and a-semantic: it originates within a hyper-specific, subjectual intimacy antecedent and posterior to discoursive categories such as sexuality, religion, gender, race, or economic class. The text playfully experiments in style and setting with a contemporary reimagination of the “pasquinata” , a public and provocative mode of institutional critique original of early medieval Rome. Beneath its apparently crafted surface runs an improvised descent, a single, unrevised movement that refuses the safety of analysis and correction.
in the atmosphere remains
essay, companion text to To Kiss on a Battlefield, Act 1 on view at Gallery D301, CalArts, Valencia, CA, Spring 2023
A CROSS POETICS [selected writings 2022-2023]
book, 44 pages, alternate cellulose and transparent vellum, originally assembled for CalArts MFA Open Studios, April 2023, printed by the artist in single edition in Los Angeles, CA, USA, Spring 2023
Poem in Shape of a Wound
poem, 38 pages, inkjet on cellulose, originally exhibited in Untitled (2022), Gallery D300, California Institute of the Arts, printed in single edition by the artist in Los Angeles, CA, USA, January 2022
EDUCATION
MFA Art, CalArts, Santa Clarita, CA, USA, 2023
BA Philosophy & Economics, UCL, London, UK, 2016
RESIDENCIES
Workcenter Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, Summer Program, Pontedera, IT, Summer 2016
Birmingham Opera Company, Trainee Director under Sir Graham Vick, Birmingham, UK, Spring 2016
SOLO AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS AND SCREENINGS
The Joys
Aktionshaus, Berlin, DE
June 24—July 25 2025
If Tomorrow’s Sun Finds You Within My Boundaries
Obelus 2, Berlin, DE
April 26—May 17 2025
with James Krone
The Estate of Myour Gape
Fondamenta dei Penini, Castello 2432 Venezia, IT
September 5—November 24, 2024
curated by Yasmine Helou
Until This I Mean This
Obelus, Berlin, DE,
May 11—June 23, 2024
Tearing
gemini, Berlin, DE,
January 17—21, 2024
To Kiss on a Battlefield: Act I
Gallery D301, CalArts, Santa Clarita, CA, USA,
March 18—April 16, 2023
with additional performances by Kayla Dobbs and Aviana Glover
shade clinging to arrows in the quiver
Annex20, Santa Clarita, CA, USA,
March 1, 2023
with Logan Wolfe
Finite Eyes
Shorts Competition, 40th Torino Film Festival, Torino, IT,
November 30 & December 1, 2022
with sound by Giangiacomo Gallo
Senza Bisogno di un Regno (No Need No Kingdom)
Zambonina, IT,
June 22—July 20, 2022 (closed doors)
Molten Glass Drips Like Honey
Society of the Arts Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA,
May 4—15, 2022
with sound by M A Harms, Jack Herscowitz, Abigail Whitman
Untitled
Gallery D300, CalArts, Santa Clarita, CA, USA,
January 22—29, 2022
Cheeriah Zeroth
Gallery A402, Santa Clarita, CA, USA,
December 4—11, 2021
The Artist in its Workshop
John Baldessarri Studio 107, CalArts, Santa Clarita, CA, USA
November 29, 2021
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Infrastructures
UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA, USA,
January 19—February 3, 2024
À bientôt
CalArts, Santa Clarita, CA, USA, 2023,
April 29 & 30, 2023
with malavika rao, AK Jenkins, Lisa Banta, Gwendolyn Moon,
Asgerdur Arnardottir, Jonathon Hornedo, amanda teixeira, Kathleen Nolan,
Babele
Spazio Musa, Torino, IT
February 8—March 20, 2023
Mutual Gravity
CalArts, Santa Clarita, CA, USA
October 15—22, 2022
GLAS: Surfshop
Society of the Arts Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
February 22—March 31, 2022
CURATING
Program Curator at Obelus, Berlin, November 2024—present
SELECTED WRITING & SEMINARS
A Bright Darkness: Fugitivity and Intimacy in the Dark Forest
seminar and reader, recurring at Obelus, Berlin, meetings 1 & 2, Spring 2025
Mea, Precious Angel: Provocations Toward a Modularity of the Abyss
book, 50 pages, printed by the artist in edition of 50 in Berlin, DE, June 2024
to kiss on a battlefield / act 1 / exegesis
book, 54 pages, alternate cellulose and transparent vellum, printed by the artist in single edition in Los Angeles, CA, USA, Summer 2023
A CROSS POETICS [selected writings 2022-2023]
95 pages, alternate cellulose and transparent vellum, originally assembled for California Institute of the Arts MFA Open Studios, April 2023, printed by the artist in single edition in Los Angeles, CA, USA, Spring 2023
Reading Walter Benjamin at Six Flags
two-week intensive class, CalArts, Valencia CA, January 2023
Poem in Shape of a Wound
38 pages, cellulose, originally exhibited in Untitled (2022), Gallery D300, California Institute of the Arts, printed in single edition by the artist in Los Angeles, CA, USA, January 2022
AWARDS AND GRANTS
Project Grant, Associated Curator, Outset Contemporary Art Fund Greece, 2018
some references that are particularly dear to the artist:
https://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/obriene/art112/readings/oldenburg%20i%20am%20for%20an%20art.pdf -- https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/afc/afc2020004/afc2020004_37/afc2020004_37_ms01.pdf -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBu1KPKj3D8&list=RDoBu1KPKj3D8&start_radio=1 -- https://monoskop.org/images/c/c4/Lyotard_Jean-Francois_Libidinal_Economy.pdf -- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vR-VyBiD41VCHR1Pu7j9clvCYmK0b1XG/view?usp=sharing -- https://christed.faculty.arizona.edu/clas351/Phaedra%27sLove.pdf -- https://youtu.be/71aOjSk9QZ4?si=2Po2M9OK95Y7BBF5&t=434 -- https://youtu.be/WhvFVuWVHmQ?si=9M7m_0MDUVIw1QHJ&t=282 -- https://www.nts.live/shows/the-trilogy-tapes/episodes/the-trilogy-tapes