When, upon reading an article by Giovanni Casu about Marcel Duchamp’s Obligations pour la Roulette de Monte-Carlo, I began a conversation in Monaco about the possibility of a Monte-Carlo Bonds 100 years celebration, my thought was that even simply managing to show the framed bond in the lobby of the Casino would have been already a coup. Creating an audiovisual performance plus a series of sculptures around this Centennial was therefore a most exciting opportunity.

Casin0péra is a portmanteau word I coined specifically for this centennial. It is the umbrella under which I decided to group my work on these celebrations, and it also aims to celebrate the uniqueness of the very venue where it all premiered: the Garnier building which at once—and famously—hosts both the Casino and the Opera House in a truly legendary one stop-shop.

This work compelled to coexist two seemingly opposite realities: a roulette game (with its highly-ritualized and formalized elegant vocabulary of gestures) and a proper operatic scene with a particularly poignant historical hinge: a libretto in Monégasque language in which Monaco’s National poet Louis Notari, writing in the 1920, channels the life of mid-1800 lemon farmers whom up until Garnier’s development were the sole custodians of the place about to become Monte-Carlo, and key to Monaco’s financial subsistence. 

Casin0péra gave me the possibility of addressing themes I’m interested in, namely the relationship between art and value, as well as reflections over the gold standard. The Casino is the fitting situation to meditate upon that, as in that very space such a relationship is twice mediated: jetons coins gold, i.e. a chain of simulacra. 

Just like bold linguistic pairings of the kind found in Duchamp’s Bonds, Casin0péra offers simultaneously representations of Order and Chaos. These representations run visually and aurally alongside each other’s up until the very end of the piece: an allegorical ending in which they meet—and short-circuit—through Art.

S.A.R. LA PRINCESSE DE HANOVRE PRÉSIDENTE DU CONSEIL D’ADMINISTRATION DU NOUVEAU MUSÉE NATIONAL DE MONACO

STÉPHANE VALERI
PRÉSIDENT-DÉLÉGUÉ DE MONTE-CARLO SOCIÉTÉ DES BAINS DE MER

BJÖRN DAHLSTRÖM
DIRECTEUR DU NOUVEAU MUSÉE NATIONAL DE MONACO

Curated by Benjamin Laugier
From a Proposition by Luciano Chessa
Based on Research by Giovanni Casu
With Production Assistance by Agnès Roux and the Logoscope,