LI HAINAN

Fantasmata & Ambrosio’s Mnemonic

The project draws inspiration from the 15th-century dancer Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro (1420–1484), who around 1463 adopted the surname Ambrosio—a reference to the fabled ambrosia that rendered Achilles invulnerable. In the same year, building on his mentor Domenico da Piacenza’s (1390–1470) notion of fantasmata, Guglielmo developed a mnemonic system for dance: practitioners were required to train in the nascent ballet technique of delicate toe-tapping, experiencing the tense posture suspended ‘as if petrified by Medusa’ between steps—trembling, swaying—thus producing a sensory sequence that mapped dance movements in time-space. Guglielmo’s classical mnemonic for dancing soon became, alongside contemporary drawing lessons, an indispensable component of noble household education across the Italian peninsula under the patronage of the Sforza family—a performative code for mastering the choreography of power.

Within the theatricalised Platform, two robots recall this duet, now rich with contemporary metaphors. Atop each vacuum cleaner, a slender metal rod extends into a mannequin’s hand clad in a white glove, posed in La Main de Justice—the righteous hand of sovereign investiture. The robots initially circle the platform’s two golden fortresses in graceful non-interference, occasionally brushing against small golden summoning bells that punctuate their dance with ritualised rhythm. Audiences may watch this spectacle—robots wielding miniature sceptres in mid-air—or intervene by throwing artist-painted figurines into the arena, disrupting or directing the choreographic pattern, diverting or guiding the robots’ collision course along their cleaning path.

For those not yet on the Platform, a pair of white gloves drifts in and out of a split-screen sky projection, grazing a dark drapery that glimmers faintly with the spectral shine of medals of commemoration, labour, and combat. These two installations form a somber stage for the fantasmatic dance—suspended and ruptured in futile stasis: an unnamed sky holds aloft the perpetual warning COMING SOON, while medals stripped from private histories are reassembled by collectors into an arbitrary star cluster. Together they conjure a palpable yet wilfully overlooked absence—an aporetic tremor. Ultimately, all secrets are laid bare in the gaming box installed by the artist at the centre of the platform. Here, he unveils a casket lined in green velvet—while the century’s finest dancers, in vain, risk everything, pirouetting the fantasmatic rhythm on a pinhead, wagering gains and losses with the ruthless precision of the Kelly formula.