What is O.S.I?

Interview with Annina di Oronzo and Marco Bedini, founders of the O.S.I. group.

Osi means: Occupation of Internal Spaces. We transform the everyday habitats of private homes: bathroom, kitchen, living-room, bedroom, store...all with a live art set.
"We began with our friends homes", says Annina di Oronzo, a visive artist and creator of the project. Tired of the usual evenings in bars, bored with trailing herself from one part of the city to another for events and performances.
In the home, we don't "live" it any more, apart from sleeping, and getting rid of tension after work and with living everday life with our partner. Our home ends up being a confusion of tension; a implosive location to regenerate and revitalize. We began in Rome, but discovered that there were the same neccessities in other smaller cities. Thus we went to homes of those people, equipped with video camcorders, cameras, and audio recorders to try and understand something about their lifestyles, and then re-interpret and re-invent a form of performance based upon the captured information. It came naturally to us how to "live" these spaces, creating events which occurred simultaneously in all points of the home. For example we remember a couple who told us...they were tired of seing the same iron beside the heap of clothes to wash in the store room, during the week, before the cleaning lady arrived, and who expected to find a kind of "Glade airfreshener" advertising scene.
I must say that our performer, immediately re-baptised "Magdalena of the Monks", really blasted away the image of the old store room. We have great fun doing this in peoples homes - we began in Rome and were then invited to Florence, Bologna, Milano...in December we'll be in Berlin. The artists work amongst the household belongings and everyone else together - musicians, performers, visive artists, supervised by an architect and an anthropologist who re-study the location to "live", together with the home owners. Just because people who lives their home in a normal way, don't have ideas for their own habitat; every couple and family we met, had untold dreams about their way to live a home. Marco Bedini, one of founders of our group always says: "The risk of opening a home is known. The pleasure of opening a home is unknown" and it's exactly like that, infact one of our fears which we affront most frequently was that of persuading home owners to open their personal spaces. Afterwards, however, everyone gets to know each other, and the Osi guests are no longer strangers - they become a part of the event.
Creating an Osi event is great fun. We arrive at the appartment to occupy, two weeks beforehand, to get to know the habitants of the home, and their daily habits. We call it the reccy (reconnaisance) and it is actually already an event in itself; something between a backstage registration and a Nanni Loi style documentary, with the purpose of analysing the "lived" areas of the home and the home owners themselves, to create a temporary break between the spaces and who "lives" them. Then we agree a time and method organisation plan, together with the neighbours, after which we choose a date for the event.

What is Osi?

M,B,
Osi is an act of psycomagic. An event which tends to reconstruct the passage of a lived space, through the different areas of the habitat, and the actions which are created within that internal space. The reconstruction of an existential path, through actions which normally occur in a private habitat to capture the futuristic dimension of this ghostly world.

What does "living" signify to you? How do you live?

M.B.
Living is an attempt to reconstruct everyday habits; to try to stay in your own home, knowing that no space will belong to us forever.

How was this idea of creating events in lived, private spaces, born?

M.B.
The idea was born during a normal party with the same old boring friend. Therefore, we asked ourselves: "Why not organise events in strangers homes, to requalify their monotonous way of life, in a monotonous way, in their monotonous habitat?"

Is an Osi event a form of art, or a show?

M.B.
An Osi event gives you the possibility to find an actor in your wardrobe, because after the first time you see an actor in your wardrobe, you'll always see them there.

How do you manage to convince people to organise an event in their own homes?

M.B.
We simply tell them: if you want to discover a part of your future - entrust us with your space...we don't have problems with the size of the area, every space is adaptable. The society of the show has, within itself, it's own pathology of practical order and organisation: bookings, the entrance queue, last minute extra seating in the last row...esthetic experience, put to test under the iron rules of the fabrication of fun. On one occasion only, we will bring the event to your home...and we're not balloon blowers.
How do you construct an Osi event?

M.B.
An Osi show is invented, by interviewing the occupants and studying their space at least two weeks before the event. Then we decide the areas and nature of the performances: from the projection of porn on the neighbours wall, to a buth performance; from an electronic music concert, to animated sculpture; from vegan banquets, to an ecological dinner with the theme "Colour". The entire exhiliration of the omniverous being. We are a nine headed dragon and every individual, nurtures themselves in a different manner, as well as having a different thinking process. Nothing in any event is ever the same, and neither is each habitat which is transformed into a form of art.
Even the participation in an Osi event, signifies entering into circulation of the event and becoming part of it. A passive form of participation doesn't exist, as neither does a standard method of participating during the twelve hours in which the event takes place. Simple spectators don't exist. You may be involved in the moving of a lamp or even the construction of a lamp...

What does Osi signify for you all?

M.B.
It has a literal significance, because a friend can lend his space to us, whereas, in other cases, when a habitant decides to entrust us with their habitat, we return their space back to them after the event.
However, nothing will be the same as before.
We don't want to create currents, movements, avantguard associations or families, the only elements we need are spaces, open to us, which are always different. The artists don't represent a continuous group of intervention, but of different groups, singles, and other affirmed artists, who all work on the project to be created. You could say that we're the hard discount store of performances, within which you'll be able to see a Portuguese Filodramatic actor, a Norwegian circus performer, a German fire eater...
We are financed by a contribution of our hosts, the home owners.
At present, we're collaborating with the Urbanistic Department of the Architectural Faculty of Rome, for the creation of an event and a workshop on the theme of living. On that occasion we'll reproduce the dynamics of an Osi event.

Interview with Laura Martini and Daniele Vazquez from the Research Center of Single Locations.

What does Osi signify?

D.V.
Osi signifies, Occupation of Internal Spaces, but the term occupation has more to do with the anthropological production of spaces, than with it's immediate political significance. As the Research Center of Single Locations, and as a group of architects and anthropologists, we bring our reflections about the production of locations, into Osi events. We're not interested in the topographic classification which is a vogue today: non spaces, heterotopias, dystopias...we're not interested in tout court spaces. In our opinion, a space shouldn't be thought about as something empty to fill - we think of it as the opportunity to take artistic contents into homes, as empty containers. The space becomes a product to be filled; the space doesn't pre-exist before living it, it's the living of it which produces the space. Occupation of Internal Spaces, therefore, signifies the production of a new temporary space, on the basis of one which already exists; a new space which would still leave traces and persistence in everyones memory.

L.M.
The home is lived on the basis of routine; a mental space overriding the physical one; when people ask us to create an Osi event in their homes, they accept that their mental space will be reconfigured. The distribution of objects and people within that space will change with the works of each artist, producing new mental constellations; the habitants will see their home as they would never have imagined, and this renews their way of living. The question of the matter is to use an architectural language, as a form of replanning of the mental space of the home. Instead of calling a designer to refurbish the home, you can call Osi to reconstruct the same perception which you have of your own home. We deal with the creation of new mental maps: Thus as an Osi initiative, we created a map of the home, indicating and in each room, which the event was to be held and which would have broken the purpose of it's normal usage. The bedroom became a theatre, the living room - a cinema, the kitchen - a concert stage, the store room - an angle of a forrest, and the shower - a small countryside farm industry, producing tomato conserve...We distributed this map, layed out and folded just like a map which tourists use. It was a guide to orient yourself around the event.

D.V.
I mentioned before that the spaces are products to live - this signifies that we're not dealing with a representatve object, but an amalgamation of ideas, thought about by the people who live that space. The difference? The same map designed by a topographer, and the one we could instinctively design by memory. In this difference, there are distortions of affective and imaginary nature. Within this difference, the artisti work of Osi comes forth.

L.M.
This signifies that also our same perception of the rapport between space and art ? parziale; the situation is complete, only by the way in which the participants have lived the event. For this reason, during one of the first Osi events, we did the parody of an experiment held in the 60's about the rapport between architectural spaces, and the affectionate-subjective perception of the space, whilst showing a video and distributing a questionaire. The end result was to discover how the participants perceived the riconfiguration of the spaces within the home. When asked "What is the occupation of an internal space?", 80% of people replied, that they considered an internal space as an affectionate space, sentimental, interior and not simply physical. Thus, the occupation of internal spaces, signifies above all, the creation of social relationships in a new manner, and this perception of the events integrates and completes our discussion.