My Animation short “Reptilica” has been recently printed to Film.

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The american videoartist Bill Viola has said that: “The digital era will overwhelm us, as it happened with the industrial revolution. And I am not talking about technological changes, such as the internet, Twitter or in art. The changes will hit all of life: from politics to science, from medicine to culture. Will change our way of life. The role of artists will be even more relevant. Our vision will communicate knowledge and compassion.”

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100×100 website

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VOTE ART

CAM Casoria Contemporary Art Museum

Opening: Sunday
February 24, 2013 at 6pm

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Curated by
Lino Strangis & Veronica D’Auria

Video presentation
by Giovanni Viceconte

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MACRO
Museum of contemporary Art
Rome

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Inside Art Magazine

www.insideart.eu

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oil on canvas
110 x 110  cm
2011

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oil on canvas
100 x 85  cm
2011

Women’s glance

On next november 25-29, at P.A.N. (Palazzo delle Arti Napoli)

Magmart festival, in collaboration with the collective ‘Urto!’ presents: Women’s glance, screening of videoart by women, curated by Enrico Tomaselli 12 videoartists, from Italy and other countries, show 12 videos:

CESTA – Marta Daeuble
CYANIDE – Barbara Agreste
CRY ME – Francesca Fini
EVA/EVE – Loredana Raciti
DEVOTIAMO – Silvana Sferza
O SNU – Lucija Mrzljak
PASSING BY – Maria Korporal
ROSE IS A ROSE – Evelin Stermitz
QUEST’ESTATE LE ZANZARE SARANNO PIÚ CATTIVE – Silvia De Gennaro
TASTE – Maarit Murka
THEM ME – Nisrine Boukhari
TU-BI – Lidia Meriggi

Artists interviews are curated by Giuseppina Di Pasqua and Lorenzo Mantile, of Ar.C.A.Na Project. * the interviews will be available on www.magmart.it, by vernissage date, on November 25

Metamorphose

We are presently in the midst of an artistic uprising. The Metamorphose exhibition speaks for itself when conveying that the art world is quickly being transformed by a new media generation. The digital world is taking form and moving rapidly by way of computer, television, radio, phone and the Internet. New Media art is a genre that emerged in the 1960s with the development of new technologies, and encompasses artworks created with these technologies including: digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics and art as biotechnology.

Artists are reinterpreting, reinventing, and redefining not only what it means, but what it takes to be an artist in this advanced environment. With this unbridled expansion of creative output, many artists have a way of creating art that is effortlessly shared with its audience by digital means. This exhibition is an examination of the strange and eerie most often associated with that of Surrealism and is also apparent throughout New Media art. The work in Metamorphose represents a minute segment of New Media art that emphasizes the human presence either in its whole, or fragmented as a conceptual theme.

Including national and internationally known artists in this exhibition stresses the importance of bringing more acclaimed work to the community for cultural proposes. Sound artists, Ed Osborn and Mark Snyder, accentuate the eerie feelings of Surrealism while giving the audience a more complete sensory experience when viewing the exhibition. Videos by Barbara Agreste exemplify the power of sound with moving picture combined to create a complete conceptual design. Digital collage artists, Matt Manley and Osvaldo Gonzalez, convey a wide array of possibilities mixing traditional media with digital image to produce a truly unique work of art. Interactive sculpture collaborated by David Otis and Ricardo de Sousa Costa allows its audience to physically engage with the piece to demonstrate the significance of human involvement in art, and lastly web art by Ben Benjamin illustrates the complexity and interconnectedness that the internet provides to the art world.

Metamorphoses new media artworks challenge expectations and expand our understanding of art. The eight artists in this installation at the South Haven Center for the Arts are major contributors to this new media generation seeking this change of perception from their viewers.

Melissa Warner-Talcott, Curator

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oil on canvas
120 x 90  cm
2011

oil on canvas
90 x 84 cm
2011

oil on canvas, 77 x 51 cm, 2011

oil on canvas, 77 x 51 cm, 2011

oil on canvas, 77 x 51 cm, 2011

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Chessboards

The chessboard is a playground. Visually a floor with no patterns would convey the feeling of inconsistency: it could become a slippery floor, one with no reference points, no distinction between near and far, and maybe no clear divide between the sky and the earth.

The checkered floor indicates me precisely where it begins and where it ends, it also makes me recognize any of its irregularities, the lines that cross it make me be sure of bumps and holes, I feel secure on it, and I would definitely better dance with my feet on it rather than choose a one color floor.

It is an horizontal plane traced with charcoal, and painted with thick varnish: the Chessboard, the place where precise and well thought moves are to be made by many pieces. A large checkered floor with actors as elements of the game, could be the parody of a real life battle.

Imagine to stand on this kind of floor, or on a big chessboard where the squares are sufficiently big to contain comfortably both feet of an individual, then you would impersonate one of the pieces of this game: standing there would mean waiting for some check from anywhere, and anytime to come and scatter you away, you are then playing a “life game”.

Look out for your life, be really careful not to stand on the Bishop’s path, or the Tower’s: remember how all the others pieces move, and in what direction they’ll go…

In my video “The Tower Trilogy”, the first part is about a frenetic and intermittent movement of the head of a doll child, trying to deceive and escape from this kind of dangerous external merciless check. It is a mortal check, but until it really comes in, you don’t really know where it comes from, as it always gets its targets by surprise.

Years ago I was observing a friend of mine performing a strange game with his life: after seeing that I decided to set up a scene in my video that would have to convey a sense of “insecure position”, representing an endangered and uncontrolled state in a mad and exessively fast world of betrayal.

This kind of position on the red spot of the checkered floor would have to be clear: the “self”, the piece owned by the viewer, is exposed and threatened by an invisible checker at any time… The Trilogy is about the “loss of control”, a theme that I kept following and developing throughout all of my video work.

The loss of control is a major subject in my visual research, and it is thanks to the possibility of making the images “move” with film and video, that I’ve been able to represent this concept the way I wanted.

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In this video the Rain is made out of blood: a constant red rain falls on the vegetation of the town.
Here the concept of violence is not expressed literally with scenes of cruelty, but it is symbolically represented by the never ending rain that exists through the all duration of the film. This video does not present a resolution to this sad scenario, there are only few moments in which the rain stops, and leaves violently shaken by the wind moving in slow motion inhabit the screen.

The violence of the wind is here only a preface to another sad paragraph of rain. Rain starts with bunch of dry leaves and brunches that fall on the floor to subsequently draw the attention to a garden where we see some blood dripping on the grass, and hear a sound of two single notes echoing; at every change of scene there is the falling of a red flower, a brunch or a seed making a sudden dry noise.

This kind of object-falling represents a loss or a sacrifice, or even a sudden waking, that always brings us back to the observing of the red rain. This video does not present a narrative with a beginning, a middle point, and a resolutive end, but it confronts us with the same action repeated over and over in different places, therefore ironically it is like a vinyl record playing always the same music.

The irony of the content adds to the well thought composition of the images, and to the dynamism of some shots: this beautiful imagery is contradicted, and although coexists with the discomfort of the viewing of blood.

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My film Cyanide has had a peculiar beginning. It originated from a period of my life of extreme depression, and uncertainty, and it was an action I was performing every day that made me think about developing the more predominant images of this film.

I was cycling in the winter through a path covered in dead leaves. I found myself going many times back and forwards along the same path: the leaves had fallen over it from the trees that grew at its right side, and there were so many of them arranged in a rather ordinate way. They cached my eye many times, they nearly became a fixation to me: the vision of these leaves coming towards me and passing by, as I drove away, became very important.

They surely must have had a meaning which I could not grasp, but they were also nice to look at, and shiny. I could not find an answer to many of the questions about my life at that time, and usually, when things get so hard, I tend to turn to images for a possible explanation, or an answer; it might sound silly, but things, objects, images, places can talk to you, even if they do not communicate through spoken language, neither they are rational or clear, even if they only give you a hint, or a confused indication, they can help you to put the events you are experiencing in a different perspective.

I do not know today the meaning of those leaves, but looking at them was enough to make me develop Cyanide.

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Maybe Cyanide is about the world that’s being poisoned, but there is more to it. It is about acknowledging death: observing up to nausea everything you do not understand, or that bit that puzzles your mind. Many leaves on the footpath may mean a repeating pattern, a recurring event, the same signification over and over through a crazy  journey. Once you have printed into your consciousness that particular shape you can start to remember about it in order to recognize it the next time it crosses your way. That is why the many leaves wouldn’t go away… Even if they are the supreme detached element, it is their image that would not really detach. A residual part of the dying thing had to stick to my head as departure and separation is always a painful experience. It is possible that the sticky image of whatever is “gone” is just an anchor, a secure place, for the stability of what stays close: that bit that cannot afford to go within the subject. There are no limits to what can go wrong, in fact in this video, as well as the many repeating patterns, occasionally other frightening elements appeared on my imaginary way: those red bones are reminiscent of previously consumed meals, crashed mirrors of impacts, and keys are the possibility of a way out. What is left within the self, together with all its impressions and images, is the way out to freedom. It is very hard to see freedom into such a dark and constrained scenery, with trashed particles, and that unbearable sense of claustrophobia, there is no clean rain here to clear dust from the mourning stage, and the rain is black and mean, in fact the last action does not suggest freedom at all, it rather looks more like a total eradication of the “walking being”, the viewer/author is pushed away together with the large amount of leaves, the search for a way out is only an imagined  possibility here, only a hope behind the door…

Pessimism in art is always an attempt to make viewers aware of the worst possible unfolding of the events.

In my artwork I always alternate the figure of a real woman to the one of a doll. Reptilica is a good example of it: the real woman is always appearing in fast cuts, and close ups, small parts of her body, usually feet, legs and hands are shown in the frame.

The doll on the other hand appears in her entire figure: there is a rich variety of objects that can be put beside her, and it is very easy to create a setting using miniature elements, it also becomes more interesting to to look at weird reproductions, or distorted reflections of what surrounds us, like if the film frame and what it contains became a parody of the real world.

If you own a video camera, you can basically film anything around you, but most of the times, if the film is not focused, or structured, and if the shots are taken at random, on the streets for example, the outcome can really become uninteresting, too common, too obvious, or too flat.

With an artist a film can become a world of wonder, and treasures, if the right attention is given to the actual images that are shot. With only a medium sized box for instance, filmmakers can do amazing things, without the need to go outside their own house, the choice of objects, backgrounds and combinations is infinite.

The camera becomes the tool through which whatever existed as very tiny idea inside the artist’s mind transforms into a visual construct which simulates a real space, with depth, corners, colors, and life.

A film is mainly made of images. A filmmaker has to understand images, therefore photography is the key factor, how to make even only one photograph is very important when the time comes for shooting a film. A film is a succession of moving images, dancing images, rushing images, thunder images, storming images…

The succession of frames could be fragmented and a possible narrative could be nonsensical or distorted only thanks to the way a film is edited. A film is something to be done with a focus in mind because the camera will then be used to “focusing on things”, a very important part of filmaking is the “close up”.

If you really know how to put together a number of close ups, then you’ve understood a lot about how to make a film, a landscape is better drawn and packaged by oil painters, they will definitely do a better job with it, unless you have a wonderful setting constructed in a studio, never zoom out too much when some movement is happening in the scene, if you don’t want to bore the viewers, and if you haven’t got the right equipment.

Anyway, this “close up strategy” is what has worked for me, please note that even in the Hollywood studios a lot of shots are taken with the help of miniature settings, or computer generated 3D animation.

Why a lot of artists have this attachment and fascination for fairy tales? A rabbit in a box recalls Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, and this particular story is very dear to artist today, as I have seen many interpretations of the characters and the objects taken from this story. Animation, paintings, surreal art, many authors dig into this imaginary world of the unconscious which is often found in the content of fairy tales.

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The Tower Trilogy has three titles that originated in Italian: “La Torre, Le Formiche, Lo Specchio” and they translate this way in english : “The Tower, The Insects, The Mirror”. This animation is made with 16 mm film, and DV video, and it is very abstract although some figures appear on the screen at some points.

It is a work in which I explore the state of hysteria. The first piece, “La Torre”, is a 3D animation presenting a claustrophobic space in which some objects rotate on themselves on a chequered floor. In this piece there is an atmosphere of emergency and “loss of control”: the doll’s head spins on itself faster and faster in this dark space where a sense of prisony and oppression is staged by the absence of windows or doors, and a first stage of hysteria here  is identified with the worms crossing the room.

The theme of hysteria manifests more overtly in the struggle of the second section “Le Formiche”, in which a succession of images of shaking hair, falling flowers, black paint on canvas, and frenetic body movements inhabit the screen. With the obsessive shaking of the head of a real performer, this part also represents a moment of denial but at the same time a process of purification.

The third part of the trilogy, “Lo Specchio”, revolves around the theme of death in a settings very similar to the first piece “La Torre”, just this time the atmosphere in the room with the chequered floor has changed, because the struggle and the tension are now gone. Also the light is different, from night it has become day, the sunlight reached the room as if a window finally opened up in it.

While some dead flowers keep falling from the sky/ceiling together with fragments of mirror making a dry sound, everything else is unmoving until we see an outburst of rain: the sole element that can clean and restore hope to the sense of anguish of the entire film.

In this video the Rain is made out of blood: a constant red rain falls on the vegetation of the town.

Here the concept of violence is not expressed literally with scenes of cruelty, but it is symbolically represented by the never ending rain that exists through the all duration of the film. This video does not present a resolution to this sad scenario, there are only few moments in which the rain stops, and leaves violently shaken by the wind moving in slow motion inhabit the screen.

The violence of the wind is here only a preface to another sad paragraph of rain. Rain starts with bunch of dry leaves and brunches that fall on the floor to subsequently draw the attention to a garden where we see some blood dripping on the grass, and hear a sound of two single notes echoing; at every change of scene there is the falling of a red flower, a brunch or a seed making a sudden dry noise.

This kind of object-falling represents a loss or a sacrifice, or even a sudden waking, that always brings us back to the observing of the red rain. This video does not present a narrative with a beginning, a middle point, and a resolutive end, but it confronts us with the same action repeated over and over in different places, therefore ironically it is like a vinyl record playing always the same music.

The irony of the content adds to the well thought composition of the images, and to the dynamism of some shots: this beautiful imagery is contradicted, and although coexists with the discomfort of the viewing of blood.

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The Checkered Tunnel is a animation made entirely with 3D software. This short movie represents a fragmented space made of a chequered tunnel where the squares that fill its walls, floor, and ceiling alternate from red to white (the colour red is a metaphor for trauma).

At the opening of the piece the point of view of the spectator (the camera) is turning on itself in a chequered room with a missing wall leading to a black void. The camera moves back and forward unsure if to dive into the unknown darkness, or to stay in the trapping room with no other exits. Once the camera makes its move into the dark void, it suddenly encounters a chequered woman (her skin looking like the surrounding space reminds us of the chameleon’s mimicry) that soon goes out of the frame to enter a tunnel full of curved metal surfaces and mirrors.

This trip into a fragmented reality full of intense lights and reflections that, like obstacles, have to be avoided, and that create a blinding effect, ends into a bigger room which looks like a real chessboard where a chess piece with a woman’s head on its top (The Queen), trapped into a muddle of slowly moving worms, turns on itself while the other objects nearby – a dice, and some bishops – rest motionless.

The atmosphere of this place is surreal, the camera at one point turns away from The Queen and moves forward towards a cylindrical container with some illegible words printed on it, before moving into the dark exit of the room.

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ART SHAKE Festival III edition part 2 >>>Berlin

1 Night of 15 Video Installations, Performance and Live Set

ART SHAKE Contemporary arts festival Created and directed by Emanuela De Notariis

…***** ART SHAKE . III edition _BERLIN
curated by Fabio Campagna

Saturday November 27th, h 19.00
performance h 21:30

91mQ Art Project Space
Landsberger Allee 54 – Berlino
www.91mq.org
www.artshakefestival.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/artshake

The third edition of ART SHAKE festival is nomadic, changed and changing being born from the instability of existence. It spreads like a virus, deadly to the lethargy of feelings only, and after its succesful one week event in Rome, takes new life in Berlin. Where in 91 mQ Art Project Space it presents a one day event with videoart, performance and music, conceived as a synergetic exchange between the two cities.

ART SHAKE promotes art charachterized by hybrid languages and multiplicity of media, able to soothe the wounds of reality with wonder.
A fil rouge connects the different arts, all made of the blood of the controversial age we are living in. They metabolize conflicts and uneasiness of our age, skinning it and gutting its socio-cultural superstructures. And then sewing new skins over it, made of imagination.
Today blogs and poetry, comics and art history are all equal sources of inspiration, masters of a language of signs with an highly sensitive power, remedies made of imaginary, for a schizoyd society.

November 27th, 2010

ARTISTS:
Performance:
Ambra Pittoni – Yusuke Yamasaki – Square Noises
curated by Fabio Campagna

Video:

Barbara Agreste – Andreco – Elena Bellantoni – Alessandro Cannistrà – Ericailcane – Azzurra De Gregorio – Francesca Fini – Marco Giani – Emanuele Kabu – Luca Manes – Emiliano Monaco – Marco Morandi – Carlo Michele Schirinzi – Cosimo Terlizzi – Virgilio Villoresi Curated by Emanuela De Notariis

**** PERFORMANCE

Ambra Pittoni, Yusuke Yamasaki, Dance is not for ever:
Dance is not for ever is an Ambra Pittoni’s performance and sound project, interpreted in this occasion by Yusuke Yamasaki, that investigates other linguistic options for the transmission of a dance piece. In order to present the true, undefined sense of the choreography, the dance is presented as a score of breathings. A rhythmic body text that defines itself trough changes and alterations.

SQUARE NOISES, untiteld:
Square Noises is an experimental live set that combines contemporary dance practise and analog sound sources in order to analyse the function of body language within a dimension of improvised music practise.

VIDEOART
Suggestions from the moving images of 15 videoartists.

Barbara Agreste, Reptilica:
My white flesh is their flesh, my hair is a support for leaves, that look like small fragments of me I keep searching for, restless, inside your thoughts, washing them into my unconscious, that gives birth to your best nightmares.

Andreco, Sonata d’organi in fa (Self portrait):
I’d give you every organ of my body, I’m a magician with a special skill, which is much more than cutting women in two parts. Each one of my organs has a life of his own, because I’ve got the alchemical formula with which I really own my body, and I’m getting concentrated on yours now. Music!

Elena Bellantoni, The fugitive:
Red strings, made with my own veins not to get lost in unknown cities, hamper your walk to make you stop right where you ignore me, ’cause you’ re too concentrated on your daily life. Take a break, escape from your prison.

Alessandro Cannistrà, Shameless eyes:
Otherwhise I’ll kill you, slowly, byte after byte. But it won’t be my fault, I love you so much that I want you to be mine, I want you to be really inside me. Inside me in gestation. Bur I hate your shameless eyes, and now I can finally make them wet.

Ericailcane, Ammazzarne uno per educarne 100:
Don’t trust, you can’t be quiet, your house is not your refuge, the monkey beats the steps of you coming, the steps of the moment I’ll make a bonfire with your fears and your little bon-ton certainties. Come with me to discover the magic of numbers, I’ll make you study, or I’ll make necklaces with your eyes.

Azzurra De Gregorio, Virgen:
Be the virgin untouched! Be the virgin pure!
Death to pity! Let’s wash pity into blood, let’s cover pity with white clothes, let’s sacrify love and rip off the heart from the body’s flesh, because you’re not allowed, virgin, to violate it. Nobody can play inside the circle of witches united by the pact of murdering every wish.

Francesca Fini, Latin Lover:
You wanted a girlfriend, there she is. You didn’t want to hear my voice anymore, you wanted to heal your headache, you wanted to scan my female body to understand what I’ve got inside, then look at me now. And be scared now, adore me now, love me now.

Marco Giani, Memory of the world:
While the world is blowing out there, your body is in safety, nothing can hurt you, everything happens far away, everything gets regenerated under your divine eyes.

Luca Manes, 2160°:
And I spin around endless times. I spin around as I was a crazy paper boat in a fountain in the middle of the square of you memories, passing through so fast, and leaving an echo of their voice inside me. And it resounds inside me, while I look at you on the seashore, in summertime. I keep looking, slowly.

Emiliano Monaco, La dolce vita:
My perspectives have changed, I betrayed you. I lie on the sand and you walk by indifferent, throwing the sand of your ligh-heartedness all over me. Just today.

Marco Morandi, Feed me rainbows:
Tomorrow your fawns will swallow diamonds, to make rain with them and dance. Because I’m linving in a surreality where my thoughts are the geometry of your raimbow masks, and butterflies can regenerate us from all atrocities.

Carlo Michele Schirinzi, Notturno Stenopeico:
While how many people run away, toward a somewhere else they dreamed of, drifted by their whishes illegittimately born from desperate and hopeful night encounters. And I peer at you, like a voyeur or just like a guardian of your escape efforts, digging inside your memories, in your adventures.

Cosimo Terlizzi, Beauty:
I looked at you growing, I looked at your beauty ripening in the uncultivated fields in the landscapes of my childhood memories. Where colors were warmer, where every summer permeated the pores of my skin and it never vanished. I still smell it when I meet you.

Virgilio Villoresi, Rotten flowers:
I look at your childood photographs, when you dreamt of being, who knows, maybe just what you are. Offer your memories to me, while you sing, I’ll make a blanket with them, to make dream chocolate flavoured dreams, tonight.

web sites:
ArtShake: Rome – Berlin
www.91mq.org
www.artshakefestival.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/artshake

UNBROKEN BEAT OF SOUL

International Contemporary Video art
at the third Mediterranean laity festival

15 – 24 ocober 2010- Ex Aurum Pescara – Italy

Since it is granted an essential body centre (the heartbeat) which allows an unconscious, unintentional biological life, can we think of a similar place allowing the existence as human being, as ‘persona’ and identity, as awareness and conscious relationship with the outer world and the others?

The videos suggested lead us towards a different place, where Art goes deep down and into the core of the anthropological question just before becoming ‘communication’, ‘celebration’, ‘marketing’, ‘rhetorical power’, ‘narration’, ‘style’ and so on.

Our choice has fallen upon videos which ask questions, open perspectives but offer no solutions: they leave us alone to rebuild possible interpretations. They take us to the root of ‘laity’, when love, the need for happiness, dread of violence, reciprocity, society, community, neither openly turn into politics, ethics, sociology, religion, ideology, nor coincide with cultural abstractions, languages, analytical processes but remain ‘humanitas’ shared values instead.

videoart by:

Barbara Agreste
Khosro Khorsavi/Farid Jafari
Emanuela Barbi/Gianluca Stuard
Tarin Gartner
Mandra Cerrone
Liuba
Paolo Dell’Elce
Gino Sabatini Odoardi
Franco Fiorillo

Curated by Antonio Zimarino

Opening 15 october 6.30 pm

Unbroken Beat Of Soul pdf

]]> http://www.repticula.net/BarbaraAgreste/unbroken-beat-of-soul/feed/ 0 http://www.repticula.net/BarbaraAgreste/reptilica/ http://www.repticula.net/BarbaraAgreste/reptilica/#comments Sun, 10 Oct 2010 12:53:06 +0000 Barbara Agreste http://www.repticula.net/BarbaraAgreste/?p=140 …

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Reptilica is partly animation  and partly a film where real people perform. It Starts with a doll which is animated with the stop motion technique, she is searching through the many dry leaves that rest on the floor, something she has seen or felt passing by, but she can’t seem to find it.

Other scenes in the movie introduce small pink worms falling on a group of ivy leaves, these are the disturbing presence that bother the doll as they sneak under the leaves, never letting themselves to be seen. These worms might be imaginary creatures belonging to the same fragmented body of the doll/woman.

The doll’s actions alternate with those of a real woman, which is also searching through the leaves, and her movements at some stage of the film become frenetic: she tries to cover her body with the plants as if to operate an impossible symbiosis with nature.

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PIXILERATIONS [v.7]
New Media Fringe Festival @ FirstWorks.

video art screening

270 Westminster Street Providence,
Rhode Island – USA
September 30-October 10, 2010
in Providence, Rhode Island

PIXILERATIONS [v.7] is a new media showcase in Providence, Rhode Island that investigates the state of new media arts through installations, concert performances and film/video screenings. It is part of the larger FirstWorks Festival (www.first-works.org), a multidimensional performing arts festival held in Providence each fall.
Pixilerations is produced by FirstWorks in collaboration with the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, and the City of Providence’s Department of Art, Culture + Tourism.

Now in its seventh year, Pixilerations showcases groundbreaking work in digital music and art. Local, national and international artists, selected from over 350 applicants, investigate issues ranging from the controversy around surveillance technologies to private space as commodity to the richness of digital technology as an artistic tool.

This year’s fringe festival sweeps to the far reaches of the global frontier with provocative installations by Taiwanese artist Dar-Kuen Wu, Rhode Island’s Megan and Murray McMillan, and REDUX (Mark Cetilia and Joe Cantrell). Pixilerations extends its reach to new venues with performances at Firehouse 13 (Providence’s West Side), and Machines With Magnets (Pawtucket).

PIXILERATED VIDEO ART SCREENINGS:
Tuesday October 5 – 9:30pm
Cable Car Cinema, 204 South Main Street, 9:30p
Hosted by Magic Lantern Cinema
Join us for a line-up of new video art, animation, and experimental film from around the world.

Detailed artist and work information:

Sara Sun
Blue / Single channel video / 3 min. / 2006 / Brooklyn, NY A dance segment from the 1936 Swing Time, a Depression Era musical, recaptured from DVD screen. Blue uses color, animation techniques and juxtaposes an independent audio mix with reedited video. Sara Sun lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is predominantly video/installation, digital image and drawing.

Barbara Agreste
Lo Specchio (the Mirror) / 16mm stop animation / 2 min. / 2010 / Italy and England This film, the 3rd part of the Le Torre trilogy, examines themes of loss of control and hysteria. Originally shot in16mm as a stop-action animation the piece was then digitally mastered. Barbara Agreste was born in 1971 in Pescara where she first studied art at the Art Lyceum, followed by scenography in Milan and finally video and film at Central St. Martins College of Art & Design in London. Her projects have exhibited internationally. She lives and works in London.

Audrey Ellis Fox
I’m Like / Digital Video / 2010 / 2:52 min. / Providence, RI I’m like is an elliptical sound, video, and text collage that resists facile answers. Audrey Ellis Fox is concentrating in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She is from Los Angeles.

Anders Weberg
For Sore Eyes / Digital Video / 2:17 min. / 2006 / Sweden For Sore Eyes is an exploration of the ambivalence of the male gaze and gendered (dis)order. It is a suggestive reflection of life in the sanatorium of consumer freedom. But really what is freedom? Anders Weberg (b.1968) is an artist and filmmaker. The human body lies at the root of his projects that formally and conceptually map identity and its construction as a preamble to broaching matters of violence, genders, memory and loss.

Lucky Leone
Saddest Green House / Digital Video / 11 min. / 2010 / Providence, RI A house, abandoned for many years, held the possessions of a family long gone. The mother we are told lived there until she died. After her death her daughters wanted nothing to do with the house. It was at this time that Lucky Leone was able to look through the house, and ultimately, to find a cardboard box emptied of its contents, her ashes.

Lucky Leone is a professional artist whose work ranges from sculpture to painting, electronics to video. Leone has a BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from San Diego State University.

Dave Fischer
Ylla’s World / digital video / 5 minutes / 2010 / Providence, RI Ylla’s World is a five-minute experiment in animated textures, based on algorithmic manipulations of photographs of Mars’ surface from a NASA probe. It was inspired by Albert Lamorisse’s Le vent des amoureux, and his portrayal of the desert regions of Iran. Dave Fischer lives and works in Providence.

David Dvorin and Douglas Crockwell
Glen Falls Sequence / Animation / 8:16 min. / 2010 / USA In the late 1930s experimental animator Douglass Crockwell created a series of short abstract animated silent films titled Glen Falls Sequence. Now, David Dvorin has created an entirely new surround-sound electroacoustic composition that would complement the surreal and abstract visualizations of the animations.

An Emmy-nominated composer, author, and educator, David Dvorin’s music has been performed in numerous new music festivals around the United States. He has worked with such composers as Terry Riley and performers as the Kronos Quartet. Currently he is Professor of Music Composition and Electronic Music at California State University at Chico, and the artistic director of the annual New Music Symposium.

Jacopo Jenna
The Visible Man IV / Video / 2:43 min. / 2010 / Italy A plastic model The Visible Man is a full-scale reproduction of the human body. The skin of the model is completely transparent revealing the bones and the inner organs. The video explores the concept of visibility through six chapters, in which fuzzy anonymous bodies pass through different places as reality merges with the surreal.

Jacopo Jenna is a visual artist and professional dancer. He approached dance only as an adult when he studied in Holland in Codarts-Rotterdam Dance Academy. He has worked in dance companies and on projects across Europe.

Melanie Beisswenger
Follow Me / Digital Video / 1:30 seconds / 2010 / Germany and Australia In Follow Me images and sounds flow together, as if fleeting thoughts shooting through the mind.

Melanie Beisswenger is a German born director, animator and visual artist. After undergraduate studies in architecture, she received her Masters degree at the Institute of Animation, Filmakademie Baden- Württemberg in Germany. Beisswenger has worked in animation on a number of international feature films and TV commercials. Her animation credits include the Academy Award winning feature film Happy Feet. Currently Melanie Beisswenger is Assistant Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, NTU in Singapore.

Susanne Wiegner
Mixed Reflextion/ Digital Video / 2:40 min. / 2010 / Germany Mixed Reflection uses the mixture of different video and animation techniques, as well as the mixture of the different common media in confronting the artist’s face — the mirror, the screen and the camera. The video is set in the intimacy of a bathroom.

Susanne Wiegner

studied architecture at the Academy of fine Arts in Munich and at Pratt Institute in New York City. She works as an architect and 3D-artist in Munich, Germany. In addition to projects in real space, for several years she has been creating 3D computer animations dealing with literature and with virtual space.

Anton Hecht
Carousel/ Digital Video / 3:42 min. / 2010 / England In Carousel over 40 players filmed separately play five instruments edited together and superimposed to create a loop of music.

Anton Hecht works with communities in the northeast of the UK. He also writes and directs theatre works. Hecht holds a degree and MA in art from Manchester University. Have shown in galleries and non-gallery sites throughout England.

David Montgomery
Pollenating II / 1:52 min. / 2010 / Florida The Pollenating series revisits the often painted and photographed realm of a universal sensuality inherent in the anatomy of flowers. Stigma, stamen and petals from more than 30 blossoms are used to create flowing, pulsing motion, which complements the nature and function of these organs.

David Montgomery, a hybrid naturalist and digital content creator, spent a childhood spent mostly outdoors until at a still very early age an onset of video game addiction may have set the stage for his art.

Andrew Wilson
Virtual Assistance / Digital Video / 4:05 min. / 2010 / Chicago There is a company based in Bangalore, India called ‘Get Friday.’ It typically provides remote executive support, wherein a largely American client base is assigned a ‘virtual’ personal assistant. Wilson is part of that client base. His primary assistant is a 24-year-old male Bangalore resident named Sachin. He engages him in creative collaborative projects and even reversals of the normative outsourcing flow. Much activity has developed from their online and postal interactions. Virtual Assistance is an excerpt from such a collaboration in response to a task in which Wilson was asked to make a video about the best fighter jet in the world.

Andrew Wilson (b. 1983) is an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has recently worked with media theorist Lev Manovich, filmmakers Sam Green, Craig Baldwin, and Micha Peled, as well as with the labor union Unite Here!

James George
Hesitation/ Digital Video / 9:30 min. / 2010 / Brooklyn, NY Choreography by Alice Gosti Performer Anh Nguyen Sound design by Daniel Peterson

Hesitation is a film in which dancers respond to the architecture in a distorted space-time. A metaphor for the formation of a relationship, ‘Hesitation’ depicts two individuals encountering one another in a space where movement is met with disruption. As one attempts to understand the other through uncertain exchanges, they find themselves powerfully connected.

Director James George is a software artist who creates interactive systems. Sound designer Daniel Peterson was born in Honolulu, HI. He received a B.A. in Comparative Literature. Choreographer Alice Gosti was born and raised in Perugia, Italy, where she trained at Dance Gallery with Rita Petrone and Valentina Romito. She graduated in 2008 with a B.A. in Dance from the University of Washington.

Collin McRae
Following the Huron / Animation / 1 min. / 2010 / Michigan Following the Huron is an animated investigation of geographic forms used as graphic and musical notation. Instead of classical black notes as dots suspended on five black stretching lines, the artist superimposes a system of rules where the eye follows a changing shape of the river’s curve and speed, and the sounds respond.

Collin McRae is a violinist and former portrait painter currently working toward a MFA at the University of Michigan. She draws inspiration from semiotics, incorrect maps, graphic notation, her synaesthesia, Ottoman Turkish calligraphy and cracks in cement.

SPINE
Reframed / Digital Video / 13:35 min. / 2009 / Brooklyn, NY This work was commissioned by and premiered at the Berkshire Fringe Festival 2009 and made with the support of Dancenow/NYC. Like watching an episode of ‘Friends’ with decidedly disturbing undertones, Reframed takes the familiar plight of 20-something romantic confusion in an unexpectedly sinister direction.

SPINE is an artist-led production company dedicated to the exploration of movement, language, and technology. SPINE was formed in 1999 and presented extensively throughout Europe and the USA. Reframed was conceived, written, performed, filmed by Paul Coffey, Brent Felker, Cory Nakasue, and Kristen Revier. Directed and edited by Brent Felker. Score by Peter Wise link:

www.pixilerations.org

Red: The Gendered Color in Frames

14 May – 11 June 2010
Photon Gallery, Ljubljana
Opening view on 14 May 2010 at 8 p.m.
We kindly invite you to attend the curator’s talk on Tuesday, 25 May 2010 at 5 p.m. The talk will be in English language.

Curated by: Evelin Stermitz

Participating artists: Barbara Agreste (IT/UK), Ana Grobler (SLO), Michelle Handelman (USA), Kika Nicolela (BR/USA), Suzy Okamoto (BR/USA), Duba Sambolec (SLO/NOR), Iris Selke (DE), Evelin Stermitz (A/SLO)

Ecstasy Poem by Kika Nicolela
Kika Nicolela, Ecstasy Poem, video still

Red, as a superior color, has gained various meanings in its symbolism during history, culture and religion. In general red is associated with a duality of meanings between life and death, as destructive and dangerous the color is related to aggression but also to vitality and power, to fire as well as to blood and love, and in contrast to this to agony, also associated with devil and hell, prostitution and sexuality. Red can appear as offensive and intrusive, a color of rage and love. Basically red symbolizes strong emotions of profound urges and impulses. In relation to women, this powerful and ingenious color is gendered in various contexts. Aspects of female connotations and narrations of the color red are symbolized in the selected video works.

The woman in a red dress is foregrounded in the work Flux by Kika Nicolela and Suzy Okamoto as well as in Ophelia by Iris Selke, with flowing connotations of sexuality, female power and doom. In Airport Revisited by Duba Sambolec, red is used in a textual structure to centre the self of a woman and of any other group that is underrepresented, oppressed and neglected in social structures and language. Blood is the symbol in the work Rain by Barbara Agreste in context of life and death and in Ana Grobler’s video Superultra, where the theme of menstruation is articulated in a critical perception. In the work Ecstasy Poem by Kika Nicolela, the artist compares two faces of the same woman (actress Liv Ullman) looking at the camera in slow motion. Whereby in one portrait the portrayed woman is young and at the peak of her beauty, in the opposite frame she is already aged. Michelle Handelman visualizes in Folly & Error a performance of two women related together with a red pant as a singular corpus, moving through a landscape of nature in an obscure choreography. The video work Red Velvet by Evelin Stermitz symbolizes abstract connotations of the color red in context of the media itself and its use/abuse of power and sexuality.

more info:
Red The gendered color in frames

Curatorial text by Evelin Stermitz:

This video art exhibition points out the biased inscriptions of the color red toward female issues and women’s images in a society formed by its gender aspects. Reflections and thoughts on red as a gendered color are discussed here to broaden the context of the exhibited video works.

From Pink to Red

To begin with the reflections of red as a genderd color, the history of the biased colors pink and blue may be illustrated, because in Western culture the practice of assigning pink as a variant color of red to an individual gender began in the 1920s.[1] Until the 1940s, pink was considered appropriate for boys because being related to red it was the more masculine and decided color, while blue was considered appropriate for girls because it was the more delicate and dainty color, or related to the Virgin Mary. “When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split.”[2] Since the 1940s, the societal norm was inverted; pink became considered appropriate for girls and blue appropriate for boys, a practice that has continued into the 21st century.[3] Though the color pink has sometimes been associated with negative gender stereotypes, some feminists have sought to ‘reclaim’ it. For example, the Swedish radical feminist party ‘Feminist Initiative’ and the American activist women’s group ‘Code Pink: Women for Peace’ use pink as their color. The pink ribbon is the international symbol of breast cancer awareness.

Pink is chosen partially because it is strongly associated with femininity. This femininity is a sociological construct, formed by society and its practices toward the biased sexual inscriptions on biased sex and gender practices.

A study by Anya Hurlbert at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK,[4] states, that women might prefer pinker shades because – in cultures where pink represents girlishness and femininity – they have learned to identify with it. And she adds that the Chinese women in her study, who grew up without commercial toys such as Barbie that promote pink to girls, showed an even greater liking for pinkish hues than their British female counterparts.[5]

Hence, if the pink color describes the color of the weaker sex and gender, also accomplished through its soft tone, it means an inscription on women and their partially reduction on a lower level, which, of course excludes equality.

However, ‘pink’ did not become assigned as a ‘feminine’ color in Western culture until the late 1940s. Did you ever wonder why Cinderella and Snow White wore blue dresses? It is because blue was considered a more feminine color decades ago. Pink is a variant of red and was considered masculine in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Nazi’s designated homosexual men with the pink triangle in the concentration camps because their orientation towards other men and masculinity (and a more culturally masculine color association made sense). There is nothing ‘innate’ about color preference on the basis of sex; it is entirely culturally assigned. The problem with biology in explaining human behavior is that it often serves to harden current societal norms into something unmoldable and innate. It unfortunately often has served a role in justifying horrendous cultural norms (racism, sexism, homophobia), such as identifying sex on the basis of a color. All it takes is a basic understanding of history to realize that societal association with colors and genders is an extremely new concept.[6]

Red as Indicator for Female Sexual Availability

In this following study ‘red’ serves as an indicator for female sexual availability, illustrated and concluded by Andrew Elliot and Daniela Niesta, psychologists from the University of Rochester. By this color psychology study, but also linked to biological references, red, the color of love, is an aphrodisiac for men, – literally and figuratively – a reply to the age-old question of what attracts men to women. Red makes men feel more amorous toward women and men are unaware of the role the color plays in their attraction. This is a first empirical support for society’s enduring love affair with red and it is the only work to scientifically document the effects of color on behavior in the context of relationships, where much is known about color physics and color physiology, but very little about color psychology. From the red ochre used in ancient rituals to today’s red-light districts and red hearts on Valentine’s Day, the rosy hue has been tied to carnal passions and romantic love across cultures and millennia. Although this aphrodisiacal effect of red may be a product of societal conditioning alone, the authors argue that men’s response to red more likely stems from deeper biological roots. Research has shown that nonhuman male primates are particularly attracted to females displaying red. Female baboons and chimpanzees, for example, redden conspicuously when nearing ovulation, sending a clear sexual signal designed to attract males. “Our research demonstrates a parallel in the way that human and nonhuman male primates respond to red,” concluded the authors; “In doing so, our findings confirm what many women have long suspected and claimed – that men act like animals in the sexual realm. As much as men might like to think that they respond to women in a thoughtful, sophisticated manner, it appears that at least to some degree, their preferences and predilections are, in a word, primitive.” In the study and experiments, the women shown framed by or wearing red were rated significantly more attractive and sexually desirable by men than the exact same women shown with other colors, and when wearing red, the woman was also more likely to score an invitation to the prom and to be treated to a more expensive outing. The red effect extends only to males and only to perceptions of attractiveness. Red did not increase attractiveness ratings for females rating other females and red did not change how men rated the women in the survey’s photographs in terms of likeability, intelligence or kindness. The current findings have clear implications for the dating game, the fashion industry, product design and marketing.[7]

Red in Religion as Prosperity, Fertility and Doom

In religious symbolism, red, as the color of the pomegranate, is a very strong character for love, life and fruitfulness, but also for seduction, power, superiority, blood and death.

In context of women and sexuality it is a symbol for a woman’s failure and doom, either by offering the forbidden fruit and being through this the personified reason of tremendous troubles, or by eating the forbidden fruit as a symbol for forbidden sexuality and being later again the personified reason for tremendous troubles again. The other way around it is associated with women in a very fruitful way, by indicating fertility, giving birth and life.

Jewish tradition teaches that the pomegranate is a symbol for righteousness, fruitfulness, and some Jewish scholars believe that it was the pomegranate that was the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden. The pomegranate is mentioned for example in this quote from Solomon, “Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.” – Song of Solomon 4:3. The pomegranate as a calyx shaped like a crown has been seen in Jewish tradition as the original form for the proper crown.

In Ancient Greece, the myth of Persephone, the chthonic goddess of the Underworld, symbolically uses the pomegranate as a fatal fruit, where Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken off to live in the underworld as his wife. Her mother, Demeter, went into mourning for her lost daughter and thus all green things ceased to grow. Zeus, the highest ranking of the Greek gods, could not leave the Earth to die, so he commanded Hades to return Persephone. It was the rule of the Fates that anyone who consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Persephone had no food, but Hades tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds while she was still his prisoner and so, because of this, she was condemned to spend six months in the Underworld every year. During these six months, when Persephone is sitting on the throne of the Underworld next to her husband Hades, her mother Demeter mourns and no longer gives fertility to the earth.

In some artistic depictions, the pomegranate is found in the hand of Mary, mother of Jesus. The fruit, broken or bursting open, is a symbol of the fullness of Jesus’ suffering and resurrection. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, pomegranate seeds may be used in the dish kolyva, as a symbol of the sweetness of the heavenly kingdom. According to the Islam, pomegranates grow in the garden of paradise. In Hinduism, the pomegranate (Sanskrit: Beejpur, literally: replete with seeds) symbolizes prosperity and fertility, and is associated with both Bhoomidevi (the earth goddess) and Lord Ganesha.

Red as Political Statement

Red as a color of bloody fight, resistance and power of the suppressed class becomes a political color. Traditionally associated with socialism and communism; in Europe and in several Latin American countries, red is associated with parties of social democracy, and often their allies within the Labour movement. A red flag is a symbol of left-wing politics, in particular of Communism. It has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution. Socialists adopted the symbol during the Revolutions of 1848 and it became a symbol of communism as a result of its use by the Paris Commune of 1871. During the same historical periods, in the United States, within the First Wave Feminism (~1848~1960) Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Convention in the year 1848. Her plan was something unheard in the U. S. at that time: “to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.” In this context, women’s political movement can be associated with the color red, in the sense of an emancipatory movement against gender suppression and of women’s liberation ambitions of red sisters.

Walking in Red Shoes

Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?
Vicky: Why do you want to live?
Lermontov: Well, I don’t know exactly why, but… I must.
Vicky: That’s my answer too.

The Red Shoes, initially a symbol of female subjectivity, life and freedom, here inverted to the male suppression of that freedom of a woman’s choice for her own life, and later the reason for her failure.[8]

Link to Curatorial text by Evelin Stermitz

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Toys… What a Pleasure

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“Toys…what a pleasure”

this exhibition will take place on the 3rd to the 24rth of October 2009, with five artists:

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Barbara Agreste

Alessia Cocca

Michele Musera

Marco Minotti

Stefano Teodoli

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A group show with the intent to give to the viewers childish emotions, dreams, lightness, and astonishment.

It will take place in Atelier 777 Contemporary Art Gallery, curated by Angelo Raffaele Villani,

in collaboration with AMACI (ASSOCIAZIONE MUSEI D’ARTE CONTEMPORANEA ITALIANI)

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ATELIER 777
VIA DEAMICIS, 35

PESCARA, Italy
Tel.085/2191095
E-MAIL: gallery@atelier77.eu

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