Mostra 2018

CINEMODERNO 2018

Curated by Martina Angelotti

With Mercedes Azpilicueta, Filipa Cesar & Louis Henderson, Eli Cortiñas

29.05.2018 - 7.07.2018

Now in its second edition, CINEMODERNO is structured around the imaginary of video and its performative potential. The project takes the form of a festival extended over two months, during which artists are invited every two weeks to present a performative reinterpretation and reformulation of an already ongoing video-based research.

Since its first edition — which featured artists such as Eva and Franco Mattes; Anna Franceschini and Diego Marcon; Teresa Cos; Francesco Fonassi — CINEMODERNO has explored the language of video in all its multiple dimensions — sculptural, sound-based, and visual — in order to investigate forms of interaction between the visual narration of film and its hypertextuality, between the two-dimensionality of the projection and the three-dimensionality of its "staging."

CINEMODERNO draws inspiration from an anthropological perspective, one that Rachel O. Moore identifies in cinema through the definition of a “magical ritual” with the power to revive, heal, and enchant.

For this edition, CINEMODERNO takes shape through three live interventions that reconfigure different sets of space — conceived both for display and for experience — each lasting two weeks.

The invited artists, from diverse physical and mental geographies, share a research approach centered on the analysis of performative practices connected to cinema or its ritual dimension. These are often approached through found-footage and documentary techniques, exploring the notion of the “exotic” from very different geographic and critical perspectives.

From the video performance La Facultad (2018) by Italo-Argentinian artist Mercedes Azpilicueta, which investigates — through movement and the sound/video medium — the relationship between the female body and the social body; to the “Westernized” jungle of the Tarzan series by Eli Cortiñas, whose lecture performance unveils the research process and the relationship between artist and ethnographer; and finally, the political potential of Op-art brought live by Filipa César & Louis Henderson: a film made with lenses and photosensitive celluloid for the desktop localization engine, moving from the production of Fresnel lens materials to the invention of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), a tool that signals the obsolescence of the lighthouse as a means of surveillance.

Program

29.05.2018 h 20.00
La facultad, 2018
live performance by Mercedes Azpilicueta
set viewable until June 12

A performance in three acts
A text for a vulnerable body and unknown space
An intermittent flow of diverse voices, sound clips, and projected images.

La facultad is a term coined by Gloria Anzaldúa referring to a capacity developed by many in borderlands, enabling them to “see in surface phenomena the meaning of deeper realities.” It is an instantaneous way of perceiving, without conscious reasoning. It is a heightened awareness mediated by the part of the psyche that doesn’t speak, that communicates through images and symbols, which are the faces of feelings.

Concept, script & performance: Mercedes Azpilicueta
Dramaturgy: Agustina Muñoz
Video: Alan Segal
Choreography: Juan Pablo Cámara & Madelyn Bullard

13.06.2018 h 19.00
The Opal and the Sunstone, 2017
a project by Filipa César and Louis Henderson
live and reading with Louis Henderson
set viewable until June 26

The Opal and the Sunstone is an investigation exploring how optical technologies have profoundly transformed the ways in which we read, govern, and “visually possess” the world. Starting from Fresnel lenses in a lighthouse — a man-made object designed to illuminate the unknown — and arriving at global satellite navigation systems (GPS), the film critiques the Western construction of knowledge and communication, based on the projection of light.

27.06.2018 h 19.00
All Voodoo Happens at Night, 2018
Lecture Performance by Eli Cortiñas
set viewable until July 8

In All Voodoo Happens at Night, Cortiñas explores the performativity of archival material employed in her video installations. By reconnecting this material and blurring the lines where ideas of testimony and monument, narrative and technical media overlap, Cortiñas’ montage creates a confusion of point(s) of view within modern Western origin myths. In a time of hyperproduction of moving images, archaeological sites and nature reserves become an exhaustible source of fantasy, driven by myths of primal desire. Through the phantasmagoric transformative power of cinema, nature — in the case of Tarzan films, which constitute the core material of Cortiñas’ lecture — functions as a simple ornament, one that can be transformed into a new narrative negotiated with a living figure.

Special thanks to Studio Azzurro, Show Biz Milano, and Elianto Film.

ARTISTS BIO

Mercedes Azpilicueta
(Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a visual and performance artist from Argentina based in the Netherlands. In 2017 she received the Pernod Ricard Fellowship, Paris and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam in 2015/2016. She has an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute/ArtEZ, Arnhem, and a BFA from the National University of the Arts, Buenos Aires. Exhibitions and performances include, among others, Museion (Bolzano, 2018), MACBA (Barcelona, 2018), D21 Kunstraum (Leipzig 2018), Villa Vassilieff (Paris, 2018), REDCAT Gallery (Los Angeles, 2018), Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo (Móstoles, 2017), Chinese European Art Center (Xiamen, 2017), Onomatopee (Eindhoven, 2016), Zmud Projects (Buenos Aires, 2016), TENT (Rotterdam, 2015), Móvil (Buenos Aires, 2015), Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin, 2014), Het Veem Theatre (Amsterdam, 2013), Galata Fotoğrafhanesi Fotoğraf Akademisi (Istanbul, 2013), Raw Material Company (Dakar, 2012) and The Poetry Reading Program, Documenta13 (Kassel, 2012). In 2018 she will present her first major solo exhibition at the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art. Mercedes´work is represented by the gallery Zmud Projects in Buenos Aires.

Filipa Cesar & Luis Henderson

Filipa Cesar, born 1975 in Portugal, is an artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Berlin, and studied at the Faculty of Arts in Porto and Lisbon (1996–99), the Academy of Arts in Munich (1999–2000) and MA Art in Context, University of Arts, Berlin (2007). Filipa César has exhibited, among other places, at 8. Istanbul Biennial, 2003; Kunsthalle Wien, 2004; Serralves Museum, 2005; Locarno International Film Festival, 2005; CAG- Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, 2006; Tate Modern, 2007; St. Gallen Museum, 2007; International Triennale of Contemporary Art, Prague, 2008; SF MOMA, San Francisco 2009, 12th Architecture Biennial, Venice, 29th São Paulo Biennial 2010, São Paulo and Manifesta 8, Cartagena.

Louis Henderson is a filmmaker whose works investigate the networked links between colonialism, technology, capitalism and history. His research seeks to formulate an archaeological method within film practice, reflecting on new materialities of the Internet and the possibility for techno-animistic resistance to neocolonialism. In 2015 he was the recipient of the Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging Video Artist at the 53rd Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA, and a European Short Film Award – T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival, Wroclaw, Poland. Recent exhibitions include Projections: New York Film Festival (2015); The School of Kyiv: Kiev Biennial (2015); Conversations at the Edge 2015: Gene Siskel Film Centre, Chicago; Capture All, Transmediale, Berlin (2015). His work is distributed by Video Data Bank. A graduate of London College of Communication and Le Fresnoy – studio national des arts contemporains, Henderson is currently completing a post-diplôme within an experimental art and research group at the European School of Visual Arts.

Eli Cortinas
Born 1979 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, lives and works in Berlin. A large part of Cortiñas‘ practice revolves around the idea of challenging cinematic memory through analysing and re-editing pre-existing footage, or her own material. Disrupting and re-structuring narrative flows, she creates shifts of meaning (No Place Like Home, 2006). This method of editing as writing‘ generates a mixed feeling of both identification and alienation. In her videos, as well as in her collages and object arrangements, Eli Cortiñas creates an ambiguous and affirmative transparency – unveiling the role plays of a generation vaunted in the media as ‘lost’. Eli Cortiñas studied at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and at the European Film College Ebeltoft, Denmark. Selected solo exhibitions include Always bite the hand that feeds you at Convent Space for Contemporary Art, Ghent (2017), Five Easy Pieces and Some Words of Wisdom at Soy Capitán, Berlin (2015), Awkward Studies and a Decent Take on Serious Matters at Rokeby, London (2013), Love Is Worn Around The Neck, curated by Veit Loers at Kunstraum Innsbruck (2012). Her work was part of several group exhibitions, such as Film Footage Fotografie. Bildnerische Augenblicke mit filmischen Bezügen, Museum for Photographie Braunschweig (2017), 10 Emerging Artists. Contemporary Experimental Films and Video Art from Germany, Goethe Institute Canada (2017), Double Feature, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2017), Les Rencontres Internationales at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011). Eli Cortiñas has been awarded with grants and fellowships from Berliner Senat (2017), Villa Sträuli (2017), Villa Massimo Rome (2014), Marianna Ingenwerth-Stiftung grant for residency at the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo La Regenta (2013), Shortlist Award for young Film Art, Freunde der Neuen Nationalgalerie und Deutscher Filmakademie (2011), et al.