Catalogue > At random

From the Campidoglio to the Zoo is a film and sound work that examines the bridging of coloniality into a postwar Italy drawing upon the Ponte Flaminio, a bridge projected to celebrate fascist aspirations and to provide a ceremonious entry to the city, constructed based on the original proposal of Armando Brasini after WWII. The work borrows its title from an unpublished essay by author William Demby, written as a critique of the 1959 Second Congress of Black Artists and Writers which he attended. The congress, dedicated to the development of vision and solidarity amongst Afro-diasporic cultural producers existed in contrast to its hosting by the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa. The film is activated through a live sound performance recorded inside the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome, by Dudu Kouate and Justin Randolph Thompson drawing upon the essence of negritude advanced in relation to the congress and the fragmentary nature of global Black unity. The sound was performed using a range of instruments that are part of the ethnographic collection of the Pigorini Museum in Rome housed by the Museo delle Civiltà. This was the first time that these instruments have been played since their placement in the collection in some cases over one hundred years ago. The work was supported by the British School at Rome and the Museo delle Civiltà.

Justin Randolph Thompson is an artist, cultural facilitator and educator born in Peekskill, NY in ’79. Based between Italy and the US since 1999. Thompson is a recipient of a 2024 MAP Fund Award, a 2022 Creative Capital Award, a 2020 Italian Council Research Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, a Franklin Furnace Fund Award, a Visual Artist Grant from the Fundacion Marcelino Botin and an Emerging Artist Fellowship from Socrates Sculpture Park amongst others. His work and performances have been exhibited widely in institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and The American Academy in Rome and are part of numerous collections including The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Museo MADRE. His life and work seek to deepen the discussions around socio-cultural stratification and the arrogance of permanence by employing fleeting temporary communities as monuments and fostering projects that connect academic discourse, social activism and DIY networking strategies in annual and biennial gathering, sharing and gestures of collectivity.