Thursday, September 17 at 5:30 PM Careof presents Quando l’occhio trema. Il flicker tra cinema, video e digitale, a video screening curated by Claudia D’Alonzo and Mario Gorni, in collaboration with INVIDEO and Digicult.

On the occasion of the inauguration, during a public discussion, the theme of ‘flicker’ will be explored by Claudia D’Alonzo from the Digicult network; Elisa Gattarossa from INVIDEO; Mario Gorni, director of Careof; Marco Mancuso, director of Digicult; and otolab, a Milan-based audiovisual experimental collective.

Quando l’occhio trema — taken from the homonymous 1989 film by Paolo Gioli — constructs a historical and methodological path on the use of the flicker technique through a selection of ten works, drawn from the video archives of Careof and INVIDEO, together with works by authors connected to the international Digicult network.

The ‘flicker’ is a technique applied in many forms of art, experimental film on film stock, light environments and installations, analog video, and digital audiovisual media. This technique is based on a specific perceptual phenomenon. Normal perception of moving images occurs at a frequency of 24 frames per second. By lowering this frequency to between 6 and 18 fps, a visual flicker is created that corresponds to a direct stimulation of the optic nerve, a proto-vision in which the visual rhythm synchronizes directly with our brain waves.

Flicker falls within the category that Edmund Husserl defines as perceptual “ambiguity,” as it offers the possibility to transcend the conventions of habitual knowing to understand and relate to reality through new possibilities, given by the destabilization — in this case violent, sometimes traumatic — of accustomed and automated perceptual habits.

Artists experiment with flicker both on a phenomenological level, involving the abnormal stimulation of our perceptual apparatus, and as a structural analysis of the codes of moving images.

The screening series Quando l’occhio trema offers a partial reconstruction of the historical path of this artistic experimentation, presenting works by authors from the history of cinema and video alongside some contemporary digital artists: Claudio Ambrosini, ape5+miky ry, Scott Arford, Alessandrà Arnò, Gerard Cairaschi, Paolo Chiasera, Antonin De Bemels, Thorsten Fleisch, Paolo Gioli, Graw & Bockler, Granular Synthesis (Kurt Hentschläger/Ulf Langheinrich), Girts Korps, otolab, Steina and Woody Vasulka.

Thanks to the collaboration between the Video Archive of Careof, the INVIDEO Archive, and Digicult, Quando l’occhio trema also takes shape as a moment of research, conceived as a dynamic tool through which to establish relationships and exchanges using archival material. This is an essential starting point for fostering dialogue between historical experiences of audiovisual experimentation and developments represented by the most contemporary artists.

This dialogue is increasingly necessary not only for the recovery, preservation, and enhancement of a fundamental historical heritage — that of experimental audiovisual work — but above all for defining the scientific parameters of interpretation and study for the heterogeneous and multifaceted production of digital art.

With the contribution of Fondazione Cariplo