Aldo Tambellini. A Cosmic Community
By Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado

Aldo Tambellini performed his first “Electromedia” performances with the Group Center, formed with his partner Elsa Tambellini, Ron Hanhe and Ben Morea (founder of Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers! A group that defined themselves as a street band with analysis). They sought in them a continuous change and expansion handling some of the concepts that are present in Tambellini’s work. Black, Black 2, Black Round, Black Zero (the best known) and other performances would begin to establish some foundation of his work like the conception of black as a nexus between cosmos and racial segregation – a subject that Sun Ra and Afrofuturism had also dealt with from other sides-. They also carried out various actions aimed at those institutions that hijacked art and creativity by reserving it for a small elite.

CREDO: We believe that the artistic community has reached a new stage of development. In a mobile society, it is no longer sufficient for the creative individual to remain in isolation. We feel the hunger of a society lost in its own vacuum and rise with an open active commitment to forward a new spirit for mankind. Creation is not the commodity of a status seeking class. Creation is the vital energy of society. We believe that the ‘our system’ is an enormous dinosaur extinguishing at a fantastic rate which opposes truth and freedom and that it has squeezed out of man the essential vitality which made him part of the human race. For that reason, “Group Center” consciously and intentionally chose to become a counter-culture, underground group trying to find ways to change and impact that harsh closed-in system.
Credo. Group Center, 1962.

Their activity would be brief but intense, and their spirit would continue alive in the space created in 1967 by Aldo Tambellini and Otto Piene on the top floor of The Gate Theater. They would call it the Black Gate and its origin would be the same as that of universe: first darkness, then light. At its inauguration, Tambellini’s Blackout would be followed by Otto Piene’s Proliferation of the Sun. Its doors were open. Fifty years later we will be able to go through them again thanks to a filming made by Aldo the day of its opening and, once inside the Black Gate, we will have the opportunity to enjoy the experience of Moondial.

“We are the primitives of a new era […] the rebellion is against man as an exploded economic commodity man as an exploited economic commodity man as a specialized entity we have witnessed the explosion of the Black man and the apathy of the artists […] the concept of art has disappeared electromedia is our era we must get to the heart of the medium to its tube its filament its energy we must produce visions from the stuff which media are made of it is”.
Black Gate, Aldo Tambellini and Otto Piene statement.