Brian Eno’s sonic and visual imaginary arrives in Parma “SEED” and “My Light Years” complete the expanded artistic project
Four years after his last creation in Italy and following the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement awarded by La Biennale di Venezia in 2023, Brian Eno returns with an intervention that does not simply occupy space, but reactivates it, listens to it, and rewrites it. Parma thus becomes the ground for a dual operation: on one side, the symbolic reopening and physical reactivation of historic sites such as the Complesso Monumentale di San Paolo and the Ospedale Vecchio, from April 30 to August 2; on the other, the construction of a contemporary imaginary grounded in generative processes, fluid temporalities, and participation.
The project “SEED”, hosted in the Giardini di San Paolo, takes shape as an open organism: the site-specific audio installation, “Installation for Giardini di San Paolo”, created by Brian Eno together with Turkish journalist and writer Ece Temelkuran, unfolds across an area of 8,000 square meters through a constellation of generative tracks in constant mutation. There is no privileged listening point: it is the visitor, by moving through the space, who composes their own experience, transforming the environment into a living score. Within this synesthetic dimension, sound becomes landscape and time expands, escaping any linear structure. The work, never definitive, will later be translated into memory through a unique vinyl and transferred to the Casa del Suono, as a tangible trace of an experience that is inherently unrepeatable.
At the same time, within the monumental spaces of the Ospedale Vecchio, “My Light Years” brings together for the first time, in an organic way, the entire body of Brian Eno’s audiovisual installations. Here, light and sound unfold as autonomous systems capable of generating ever-changing configurations. Works such as 77 Million Paintings and Face to Face fully embody this vision: the former constructs a potentially infinite visual and sonic flow, while the latter explores identity through the continuous mutation of faces, generating thousands of presences that have never existed. In both cases, the artwork moves away from the idea of a closed form to assert itself as a process.
What emerges is a conception of art as a system of relationships: between sound and space, between artwork and viewer, between architectural past and perceptual present. It is no coincidence that Brian Eno himself refers to the metaphor of gardening: planting, observing, allowing things to happen. Within this logic, Parma is not merely an exhibition site, but an active device of transformation, where heritage is absorbed into a new narrative that is both sensitive and shared.