THRESHOLD-SPACES

I investigate the invisible but strong relationship between the human being and specific spaces which I call “Threshold-Spaces”.

These spaces take you to a different place, both physically and mentally, making you drift towards different inner realities.

PASSENGERS

The Museum is one of my favorite “Threshold-Spaces”.

I started working inside museums because, as a child, I spent a lot of time with my parents visiting museums across Europe. Initially, it was pretty boring but, as an adult, I came back to visit them again.

I like museums as a place — for what they represent, and for what you can find inside. I like the idea of the museum as a space that collects things that are the memory of humanity and the reflection of where humanity is going.

My research, however, looks at the museum as “Threshold-Space”, as a place that is distinct and different from the world outside. In fact, when you enter into a museum, you enter into another reality, another dimension of the reality that is your life. You enter through the doors and everything outside becomes further away and almost disappears.

I am interested in how people feel and sense in this space. They enter into a museum, and it is as if they get on a train; they are no longer visitors but they become “Passengers” traveling to different realities of the mind.

I record people in this liquid flow. I collect tracks from shreds of their mental explorations.

As critic Jerry Saltz says,"In a sense, the museum is an ecstasy machine: a building filled with wormholes and time warps, extrasensory switching stations and ecto-transporters, psycho-circuits and invisible diving bells. They are strange places where people stand in front of inanimate objects, talk to themselves, and experience rapture."

©2025 Luca Piola. All rights reserved.

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