ONLINE GALLERY
VisualContainer Video Art Distributor
Curated by Giorgio Fedeli (Italy)
Nature & culture in contemporary society: a vision from the deep green heart of pixels
The relationship between man and society around him has now become such a crucial point for life in common and possibly for life itself that it is also an ever-growing issue in the third Millennium videoart. When the spaces get so inhospitable to the most effective credentials and potentials of the human being with reference to its very self, its siblings and the surrounding environment, the camera’s electronic eye goes and seeks new chances for an union, new horizons for a meaning, new aethetical and ethical revelations for a living. The video art environment is currently offering more and more “ecological” and “environmental” works, often presenting a very light and uncomplicated vision where the pixels’ electronic wind meets a greater and more natural breath, to which we all have to address. Because this really does belong to us and it’s the one and only force that will be possibly rescue us, in our dignitiy and identity. Also or maybe mostly thanks to the great wonder of a video artwork where man and nature, man and man, micro and micro world come across and live together in a such a positive way that we can’t resort to anymore. www.visualcontainer.org
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Now wait for last year, by Rebecca Agnes 2007, 4’6’’ The car crashes into nothing. It simply gives in, it surrenders. And the flesh changes appearance, boosting a new vegetable life. To become a plant, leaving off the animal skin. To go backwards into evolution to a micro organism (if this would really mean to regress). Neither a vegetable nor an animal state, not the least a fungus. To break up into the organic fluids, with hair tangled up on the steering wheel. The skin stretching out with such new fermenting lives, multitudes of rebelling germs, which build up towers in the putrefaction. And the days passing-by. Fog, rain, fireflies and flocks of migrators. To eventually access a new spring, totally fresh beyond our imagination. Not as a single individual anymore, but as an unconscious multitude. |
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25.765, by Riccardo Arena 2008, 7’ 25.756 is a video-installation belonging to the “Four times tree” project A in Shangai, the first of a series of site-specific works in several part of the Earth. We are at the presence of a wildlife reserve produced by an unknown catastrophe, which organically merges all the elements and thus tells us about the adventure of this human generation thanks to the harmonizing of its remains. Such eurhythmy of parts helps approach the scenery in a less catastrophic way than it could actually result at first sight, giving eventually way to a melancholy celebration of an ideal future. Resembling the creator of a garden, who doesn’t play within a pre-constituted project but acts in touch with nature and the suggestions it provides, the four times tree is the fruit of the spirit arising from the observation of the very elements the tree is made up of. |
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Save our Souls, by Alessandra Arnò 2008, 2’46’’ The opening main figure is a reminder of the 3-character study at the basis of Bacon’s crucifixion. Among these waiting forms enter a superior being which then gives way to a series of events. This video can be read from several approaches and it shows a metaphor of human life, both lay and religious, that eventually ends up with a storming sea….an held over final scene foreshadowing a new cyclic beginning… |
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H2O, by Elena Arzuffi 2005, 3’49’’ Alternation of animation drawings and real images depict a narrative in which the precious natural element is the protagonist of the title, examined and described by a biologist or a similar figure to the microscope. |
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Secondo Vento, by Silvia Camporesi 2010, 3’45’’ The second wind according to Gurdjeff’s dissertation is the most powerful energy we can access when “ordinary” energy is over. This video relates to the chance of a spiritual raise accorded by the beauty and grace of martial arts. Shaira Taha, karate European champion, is playing parts of kata Unsu (a simulation of fight to be performed with great precision) within a cell. She will be able to get out of it thanks to a jump resorting to the second wind energy, raising her limits. As soundtrack, a melody tune by the artist in an unexisting language. |
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Anamorphosis, by Daniela Di Maro DDM 2008, 11’ Through an empathic, slowly cadenced journey, there we assist to an emergence from the depths to the surface of matter, from its elementary to its complexity. The perceptive ambiguity of the nature of sound and images suggests plausible scenarios, surreal or completely abstract, to the mind, forming a "journey" from the micro to the macro world that tells the time of creation, from the basic elements of atomic structure and cellular organisms, which often don’t lead back to recognizable entities. In this case, the mode of video editing is called "videoation" as the sequence of images was created after the sound. |
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C6 H8 06, by Iginio De Luca 2008, 2’01’’ An aspirin tablet dissolves into a glass of water. The shot enlarges the image so that the object is not immediately familiar to the viewer. This video ironically compares two different spatial dimensions (the micro and macro range) and two contexts which are apparently unconnected, the daily and the cosmic one, respectively. |
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Tracking, by Global Groove 2006, 5’12’’ By reversing the mechanical process of the tracking shot, in this video the flowing of the image is not played by moving the camera or adjusting the focal properties, but rather staying within a fixed framing. In this latter, close-up and depth of field have been alternated, so as movement and immobility, dreams and ordinary banalities. |
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A Midwinter Night’s Dream, by Maria Korporal 2010, 3’37’’ The artist portraits herself sleeping in a warm and cosy ambient near the fireplace with the cat purring. She falls into a dream in which she seems to experience a rebirth. A flamingo with its head in the water is moving in concentric circles creating a whirlpool. Struggling with her arms and legs, the artist finaly manages to emerge. |
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Eppursimuove, by Luca Christian Mander 2009, 3’40’’ Space. Time. A view from high, as to take away from things. |
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The City and The Other, by Albert Merino 2010, 3'10" A character that lives isolated in himself, transform the universe around him, after a casual meeting. |
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Remote Body, by Sabrina Muzi 2008, 5’ The symbol becomes body and the body becomes nature thus introducing to an apocalyptical vision of the past or future time of the world. Electronic sounds mix up with an arcaic imagery reminding of the primordial rite of the human/nature relationship which enslaves and sets free at the same time. Remote Body is the quest for a state of empathy but also the recurring question by a human potential that is continuosly being cast away from the natural environment. |
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Man/Wo, by Mauro Romito 2006, 4’8’’ A succession interplay between a man and a woman, as it may happen in a relationship or a within a power structure between sexes and genders. A multi-level play where language interconnects performance. The man asserts himself and restates the fixedness of the game. The woman persists in the play but follows a very fast evolution with several variants, till impatience brings her to the final unhinging. The man keeps calling himself by repeating the word MAN, which gives access only to a part of the dramatic scenery; in fact, despite repeating the non-sense sound WO, the woman resumes the whole of the game. Only from their succession can the word WOMAN finally exist: it may be made up of different physical and vocal elements such as a spit, a cough, a chant or total silence, but remains eventually engraved in the viewers’ memory just for the repetition. Rather than being due to the obsessing and univocal sense of the word “man”. |
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