+39: Call for Italy
curated by Claudia D’Alonzo (Digicult, IT)
Claudia D'Alonzo presents an overview of the contemporary audiovisual scene in Italy through the works of 13 authors. The screening features works going from video art to animation, from graphic design to videoclips and audiovisual synaesthesy. Presenting a range of approaches to follow the different tinges of meaning of what is ’the audiovisual’.
Screening programme–
UNreDELMONDO 2.0 – Elec,
Stip Melody - Vinz Beschi,
Fino – Blu,
Am i Born? - Fabio Franchino,
City Scan - HFR-LAB,
Infonaturae 1.0 – Kinotek + Emanuele Errante,
Oakland - Mylicon/en,
Sodium Penthatol - ZimmerFrei,
Forming - Progetto Antenna,
The Rain - Virgilio Villoresi + Ericailcane,
Quantize This - Ogino Knauss,
Waltz 57 - Niko stumpo
The Music Video is one of the audiovisual means of telling a story. Which is what happens in “The rain” and “Spiritual Healing”. “The Rain”, born as a collaboration between videoartist/maker Virgilio Villoresi and the illustrator Ericailcane, use the stop motion technique to create an environment of small things, traces of a delicate tale around desire, accompanied by the sound of Lou Rhodes (Lamb). “Spiritual Healing” is another videoclip, produced by a group of graphic designers and videomakers called 47th floor, with music by Zu: a gothic voyage that reminds of Hieronymus Bosch’s crazy and distorted worlds. The stop motion technique is also reinvented by the duo Elec in “Un re del mondo 2.0”, taken by an installation where sequences of photographs of a mechanic being become a video whose mounting is controlled by sound, thus giving life to one only piece that constantly deviates from predictable schemes, never repeating itself.
The video “Fino” by Blu (member of OkNo collective) looks like and escherian fairy tale. The illustrator uses animation to create a never-ending drawing whose shapes generate other shapes. “Waltz 57”, by illustrator, web-designer and film-maker Niko Stumpo creates, instead, a link between computer graphics and animation putting up a carillon of abstract shapes that dance in a visionary, dissolved environment. Graphic design is also the easthetic reference for the video “Forming”, by the group Progettoantenna. They investigate around the thin line separating creation and decay of a shape using the 3D technique: lights and shadows trace, cut and develop figures that are, at the same time, full and empty within a great liquid movement able to limit and recreate.
Zimmer Frei, from Bologna, unite theatre, music, live cinema and performance under a common idiom, exploring time and its perception, a main issue in videoart. Their work, “Sodium Pentathol”, is a camera-car subjective sequence-shot taken in Brussel’s bypass ring. Fabio Franchino, an artist that ranges from video to generative art, presents the video “Am i Born?”. A work where sound controls image thanks to a self-produced software, creating a poetic and intimate abstract path among inlaid shapes, lights, skin and body. Ogino Knauss, who have been pioneering research on the urban tissue transformations using video, vjing and live cinema, are present with “Quantize This”, taken from an installation of theirs which was commissioned by Domus magazine for San Siro stadium in Milano.
It is an investigation on the city of Milano using the concept of the ‘number’ as a sign that characterizes this city, ruling over its times of life. Urban landscape is also the main theme in a video series called City Scan, by Hfr-Lab, a multidisciplinary and experimental group. Architectural elements become audiovisual modules to be mixed and interweaved according to a practice which is half-way between graphic design and vjing.
From the livemedia scene, a work called “Infonaturae 1.0” . It is a collaborative work between musician Emanuele Errante and videoartist Mattia Casalegno, where sound paths and ever-changing pixels create a morphogenesis on the brink between organic and inorganic. “Oakland” , a video of group Mylicon/en, whose production is an original mix of digital abstraction and physicity, is also performative. The original TV source dissolves and is layered so as to become a flow of colours and sound.
The exhibition finishes with the video “Strip Melody” , by videomaker Vinz Beschi, who builds a complex score in the piece “Stripsody di Cathy Berberian” composing plugs and video fragments that use facial expressions of bewilderment along with onomathopeic comic-book sounds. Vinz Beschi realizes therefore a very original piece where voice, images, words and rhythm become elements to deconstruct and re-use.
Related links–
- – Digicult