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Thick Atmospheres
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Thick Atmospheres
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Looking at our times through the prism of the moving image.

 

At Fondazione In Between Art Film, we foster dialogues between video, cinema, and performance, supporting artists and institutions whose visions cross the boundaries between creative disciplines.

NEWS

The monographic screening program dedicated to the works of Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (29 November–1 December) continues with the video “Only the beloved keeps our secrets” (2016). It is part of NEBULA EXPANDED, a moving image program at @museomaxxi’s videogallery curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi

With a background in electronic music, experimental cinema, and poetry, Abbas and Abou-Rahme create audiovisual installations in which the juxtaposition of sounds, images, and words brings to the fore certain facts of history and of the present day that have been subject to removal

The images accumulate densely in every sequence of this video, and flow like visual stratifications in motion. Every new image that is transferred onto the previous image seems to absorb it before eliminating it. The content of the video is the result of five years of research and compilation of material––mostly in Palestine––that includes samples of online recordings of rituals and everyday performances, landscapes, and trees growing in abandoned complexes. The screenplay is built around the surveillance video of a 14-year-old Palestinian, Yusuf Shawamreh, who on 19 March 2014, was killed by the Israeli army for having crossed the West Bank barrier near Hebron. The boy was on his way to collect Gundelia, a plant that blooms only for a short period of time and which is widely used in Palestinian cuisine. After a court injunction, the military surveillance film was released and disseminated online. Abbas and Abou-Rahme reflect on the circulation and the value of images, on the subtle relationship that exists between the destruction of bodies and the deletion of images. The duo’s approach to moving images is based on rewriting contexts in which bodies violated––by other people or by the web––can reappear, and the ways in which they do so. (Text edited by @elekitri)

Free entry

Image credit: Still from Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Only the beloved keeps our secrets, 2016. Courtesy of the artists
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Today begins the monographic screening program dedicated to the works of Diego Marcon (26–28 November). It is part of NEBULA EXPANDED, a moving image program at @museomaxxi’s videogallery curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi.

Research into the conventions of cinema shapes the practice of Diego Marcon: his work in the field of moving images interweaves his reflection on the inherent aspects of popular entertainment and fiction with a tension towards a form of empathy that embraces universal sentiments.

She Loves You, 2008
Claudia, the protagonist of the work, is shown in her house as she shares with the video camera the story of her torments, her voice breaking and her gaze disillusioned. With great awareness, she addresses the theme of pain after a loss, the inability to share this suffering with others, and the discomfort of being surrounded by people to exorcize the grief. The woman rediscovers self-awareness in her solitude and in her boundless passion for the Beatles, of whom she owns an extensive collection of records, photographs, books, and merchandise. “She Loves You,” which takes its title from one of the band’s well-known songs, is a reflection on loss and on emotional ties, as well as on desire and memory. Claudia’s story alternates with moments of listening to other songs by the Beatles and moments of reading books on the band, in a continual overlapping of her emotions with those of entire generations who have mourned the death of John Lennon. Claudia talks about Lennon as the one who helped her to overcome the emotional impasse she faced in the wake of the trauma she lived through and to free herself from her expectations vis-à-vis any all-encompassing serenity as one half of a couple. Together, Claudia’s vulnerability, her knowledge of living with her own pain, and her capacity to overcome social conditioning, are emblematic of an emotional complexity that the artist explores through the power of the moving image. (Text edited by @elekitri)

Free entry

Image credit: Still from Diego Marcon, She Loves You, 2008 ©️ Diego Marcon. Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London
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Today is the last day to catch the monographic screening program dedicated to the works of Giorgio Andreotta Calò (22–24 November). It is part of NEBULA EXPANDED, a moving image program at @museomaxxi’s videogallery curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi.

Giorgio Andreotta Calò’s practice is an expansive exploration into the condition of the fragment, into the places and architectures that undergo the vulnerability of living matter, being reconfigured as sculptures, installations and videos in which the formal choices are the result of an ongoing negotiation between chronological and emotional time.

Icarus, 2021
In December 2020 in Emmen, Andreotta Calò intervened on the so-called butterfly pavilion, an architecture once dedicated to lepidopterans and part of a larger zoological complex that had been disused for years. Thanks to the collaboration of Enzo Moretto, an expert entomologist, and Bart Coppens, a young self-taught entomologist, a colony of moths is reestablished inside the building, in a final symbolic act that precedes its demolition. In a landscape dominated by the emptiness imposed by the pandemic, the pavilion, in a reverse movement, returns to being animated by thousands of moths. The metamorphosis of the insects, documented through video footage, triggers a parallel change in the environment and the characters who occupy it. The moths, motionless during daylight hours, reactivate as the sun sets—it is in this liminal space, at the threshold of the oneiric, that myth can manifest itself and coincide with reality. The figure of the expert entomologist versed in the secrets of science recalls that of Daedalus, while the apprentice, fascinated by the former’s ability to direct nature, evokes Icarus. Their contingent acts create a parallel with the myth, and the film, from a documentation of a biological transformation, embraces the language of myth where reality and fiction coincide.

Free entry

Image credit: Still from Giorgio Andreotta Calò, ΊΚΑΡΟΣ (Icarus), 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Galleria ZERO…, Milan
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The monographic screening program dedicated to the works of Giorgio Andreotta Calò (22–24 November) continues with the video “In girum imus nocte” (2015). It is part of NEBULA EXPANDED, a moving image program at @museomaxxi’s videogallery curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi

Giorgio Andreotta Calò’s practice is an expansive exploration into the condition of the fragment, into the places and architectures that undergo the vulnerability of living matter, being reconfigured as sculptures, installations and videos in which the formal choices are the result of an ongoing negotiation between chronological and emotional time.

On December 4, 2014, together with a group of miners, the artist walked from Carbosulcis—then the last working coal mine in the Sulcis Iglesiente area of south-western Sardinia—all the way to the island of Sant’Antioco. The action, carried out from dusk through to dawn, was recorded, giving rise to the 16 mm silent film of the same name. The title refers to the Latin palindrome “In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni,” which means “We go round and round in the night and are consumed by fire.” The lights of the miners’ head torches, initially sporadic and then increasingly blinding, are the only light sources in the film, together with the flames of a fire. The miners advance in single file from the Carbosulcis mine to Punta Trettu, before continuing towards Sant’Antioco’s beach of Stagno Cirdu, where a wooden boat burns until it is charred. The overwhelming darkness makes it impossible to see where they have come from, all we can discern is the subdued atmosphere. The film begins and ends with the flames produced by the boat on fire, highlighting what is a key element for the artist: the circularity of time. The overnight procession, carried out following the decision to close the business in 2014, effectively becomes a symbol of the worthlessness of a mine that has lost its raison d’être, modifying forever the relationship between place and productivity. (Text edited by @elekitri)

Free entry

Image credit: Still from Giorgio Andreotta Calò, in girum imus nocte, 2015. Courtesy the artist and Galleria ZERO…, Milan
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