Rossella Biscotti

Blackout

In a broader sense, the meaning of ‘blackout’ —primarily an electrical failure or momentary interruption, opens up to new organizations, perceptions and different ways of experiencing time and space. Every person caught in a blackout must redefine the potentiality of public space, relate to strangers and invent new temporary forms of organization. A blackout acts as the breaking point of an established order, on a personal level as a loss of consciousness or on a collective level, as the temporary disruption of political institutions for example.This special edition of Blackout was conceived in collaboration with the artist Rossella Biscotti in relation to the research on the term ‘blackout’, conducted during her residency at KADIST. Her enquiry in Paris started by looking into the city’s electricity and communication network, while she traced historical references of major power failures such as the New York blackout of 1977.