Careof's space temporarily becomes the studio of Lyndsay Mann, a Scottish artist in Milan for a research project within the FDV Residency Program. The Agent RiA is presented at Careof through an internet-access station and a screening in which Lyndsay Mann includes new works by artists featured on the online channel: Ruth Barker, Amanda Belantara, Valentina Bonizzi, Craig Coulthard, Alex Hetherington, Lyndsay Mann, Ewan Robertson.

Lyndsay Mann, graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art in London, is currently pursuing a PhD at Edinburgh College of Art. She works across video, sculpture, and installations, often integrated into complex projects and performances created to be recorded on video without a live audience. Her work brings together multiple research fields and references to oral tradition, theater, ethnographic film, as well as elements drawn from reality—materials from documented interviews combined with private stories reinterpreted through writing or performed by professional actors. Lyndsay is interested in exploring the meanings of origin, belonging, and community, observing the individual’s experience within the collective. She focuses her attention on the emotional and visceral characteristics of experience, on how environments, social factors, and specific conditions contribute to shaping a person’s physicality and behavior. Part of her work stems from an ongoing dialogue with disciplines such as psychotherapy, botany, and neuroscience.

In Milan, the artist presents some fragments of works in progress or recently completed, including Citizen (2012), inspired by Pablo Neruda’s account of the brief exile in Scotland of the Spanish poet Pedro Garfias in 1938 at the end of the Spanish Civil War. Citizen, based on a difficult conversation due to linguistic differences between Garfias and a local man, condenses silence and speech, performance and rhythm, action and memory.

In the exhibition space, Lyndsay pays particular attention to the project The Agent RiA: registeredinart, which she conceived and has been curating since 2010. The Agent RiA is an online and offline platform for moving images born from her need to share a ‘space’ with other artists, while also giving greater visibility to video works usually shown in exhibitions or festivals, letting them live in the public space of the internet. The Agent RiA is in fact online through the YouTube channel registeredinart. This is accompanied by offline screening work within festivals (Papay Gyro Nights, Orkney), exhibitions (Tate Modern, London and DCCP, Detroit), and projects (Middle Eastern Film Festival, Filmhouse Cinema, and Stills Gallery, Edinburgh).

“The Agent RiA,” Lyndsay clarifies, “is not an online gallery, but rather a growing collection. I am very clear with the artists I involve. I ask them for specific works, usually new productions to present through the channel. It is, I believe, a moment of dialogue with other artists, my need to share a ‘public space’ and open a discussion through the work.”

The Agent RiA is presented at Careof through a station with internet access and a screening in which Lyndsay Mann includes new works by artists featured on the online channel:

Ruth Barker, Gilgamesh Song, 2012, 22’46’’
Amanda Belantara, Sonotoki, 2012, 18’01’’
Valentina Bonizzi, Means to an End, 2011, 4’29’’
Craig Coulthard, Watching a Building in the Liri Valley for the Length of Time it Took Norman MacCaig to Write One Good Poem, 2012, 7’40’’
Alex Hetherington, 4–5 Spoken Scenes from Weekend on LSD for Darren Banks (Ron Vawter Crying), 2012, 3’41’’
Lyndsay Mann, Citizens: Teasel and Scabious, 2012, 19’11’’
Ewan Robertson+, Midnight Macedonia, 2013, 3’29’’

Lyndsay Mann’s invitation to take part in the FDV Residency Program, curated by Careof, was born from a dialogue between Careof and Scotland. Among the actions developed, there is collaboration with Stills Scotland's Centre for Photography and the Italian Cultural Institute, Edinburgh, on the project La Nostra Terra, Italian Photography from 1970s to today, and with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the University of Dundee (Scotland), initiated on the occasion of the presentation in Milan of the long-term research project REWIND | British Artists' Video in the 1970s & 1980s.

The work of Lyndsay Mann is supported by Creative Scotland. Thanks to: Stills Gallery, Scotland's Centre for Photography, and the Italian Cultural Institute, Edinburgh.

FDV Residency Program is a residency program for creatives born from the collaboration between the Culture Department of the Municipality of Milan and FDVLAB. The project is curated by Careof and developed with the contribution of Fondazione Cariplo.