Careof presents the first solo exhibition in Milan of ZAPRUDERfilmmakersgroup, an art-film venture founded in 2000 by David Zamagni, Nadia Ranocchi, and Monaldo Moretti with the purpose of producing and distributing the group’s film projects.

The theatrical collaborations (Motus, Fanny & Alexander, Societas Raffaello Sanzio) and the artisanal and self-sufficient production practice are reflected in a deviant, transversal path, where techniques from early cinema and off-format viewing devices recur. The three-dimensional spatialization of sound, the tactile and exuberant vision are constants of Zapruder’s fervent research, recognized as an active part of the artistic scene in Italy and abroad. The group is named after Abraham Zapruder (the amateur filmmaker who shot the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy) as a tribute to that exemplary case of amateur film, document, fetish, violation that crosses the private dimension and becomes dream, obsession, the human.

“Zapruder ceased to be a proper name that day in Dallas where everything began with the end of JFK. Zapruder, therefore, can be considered a collective name or rather a mythical image that indissolubly links the ear to the eye. The ear, that of the President of the United States, which in turn evokes the sacrificial ear of Van Gogh, the Suicide of society. And the eye, which participates in the economy of the scene both as spectator and sniper at the same time,” emphasizes Nadia Ranocchi.

The group’s film projects are more than a standard cinema format—they are mobile and flexible cinematic machines, on the borderline between visual and performative arts, often referring to what Zapruder defines as ‘cinema da camera’: devices and performative environments between embodied, tactile cinema and incorporeal theatre. Mostly self-produced, they shoot in their scattered studio on the hills of the Romagna coast and create visions for which they personally oversee every aspect: sets, costumes, filming, editing, music, dubbing, screenplay, and directing.

At Careof, ZAPRUDERfilmmakersgroup presents a video work shot in Piazza in Santarcangelo during the event I topi lasciano la nave (Yes Sir, I can Boogie), conceived and realized as part of the 2012 edition of the historic Festival del teatro in Piazza. The work is an image that erases itself as it unfolds: an invitation to listen and simultaneously a bow to the beauty of subtraction and emptiness.

I topi lasciano la nave (Yes Sir, I can Boogie) is a mimetic project, balanced between reality and live performance. The rules of its happening are predetermined based on a dance marathon aimed at the progressive emptying of the frame. The point of view is that of the sniper, the infiltrator, the excellent observer who moves among the competing couples battling for the stage and victory. Popular wisdom attributes to rats the providential power to escape imminent catastrophes. No one has ever proven they possess actual paranormal faculties, but it is certain they have a formidable sensitivity to high and low sound frequencies. This elimination dance marathon is a concert that could alarm the rats. The dancers competing are a musical instrument capable of unleashing a storm—for formidable listeners.

The theme of the paranormal, as well as the exploration of the theme of the couple, are also developed in the project Spell (2011), representative of the group’s work on stereoscopy, which they have been pursuing since 2006. “In the multiple meanings of the word Spell we wanted to bring together signifiers that cannot otherwise be named, among these the religious feeling which has nothing to do with ‘churchocracy’ or a specific religion. It is rather a bond that unites men in a community, that feeling of sharing, participation, and that respectful consideration for things and principles considered sacred. Pact of alliance, superstition, secret — how to spell all this? Spell is a stuck ping-pong game that cannot end, and Spell is a docu-drama about the cult of a dog with a hypnotizing gaze.” (N.R.)

Spell is presented at Careof in its multiple expressions: The Hypnotist Dog (2011), where Oscar, a dog with paranormal powers, and his master, Werner Hirsch, tell their story through a television crew; Suite (2011) (on display from March 20), a video work itself presented in the stereoscopic device Il mediatore (2011) and in Concerto per tennis da tavolo e organo (2011), inspired by experiments on telepathy by the American parapsychologist Charles Honorton. In the so-called Ganzfeld method (uniform field), to promote the transmission of thought between individuals placed in adjacent rooms, Honorton places half ping-pong balls on the subjects’ eyes and transmits background noise through headphones.

The overview of Zapruder’s stereoscopic works, awarded at the Venice Film Festival (Premio Persol 2011 for the most creative stereoscopic cinema for Spell and Joule), is completed with Joule (2010). Joule (J) is the unit of measurement for energy value, the work common to all living organisms to produce heat. The paradox of the useful is the act that consumes itself, without limit. Expenditure, pure loss. Form of worship, prayer. Exercise of surrender.

The project concludes on Saturday, April 6, during Miart with Suite per tennis da tavolo e organo (duration 30 minutes) by ZAPRUDERfilmmakersgroup, a musical score for a table prepared for ping-pong and Farfisa Organ, performed by two athletes of the Federazione Italiana Tennis da Tavolo, Francesco 'Fuzz' Brasini and Mattia Dallara.

Thanks to the Federazione Italiana Tennis da Tavolo (FITET)