Comunicato stampa -time code

THE TIME CODE SHOW
curated by Fabiola Naldi and Alessandra Pioselli
3rd July – 17th August 2008
Opening: Thursday, July 3rd 2008, 6.30 p.m.
The inauguration of THE TIME CODE SHOW – curated by Fabiola Naldi and Alessandra Piosel i, and conceived as a “choral” moment which retraces the stages of the TIME CODE project – wil be held on July 3, at MAMbo – the Museum of Modern Art of Bologna. The sixteen videos selected for the eight events held between November 2007 and June 2008, wil simultaneously “occupy” the spaces within the museum until August 17, 2008. The visitors wil be able to have an overal view of the works of the artists involved – artists who have dwel ed upon the analysis and re-elaboration of various temporal codes.
THE TIME CODE SHOW will house the various video-graphic interpretations of time produced by: Knut Asdam, Riccardo Benassi, Pavel Braila, Loulou Cherinet, Pierre Coulibeuf, Simonetta Fadda, Shona Il ingworth, Tel ervo Kal einen and Oliver Kochta Kal einen, Almagul Menlibayeva, Ottonel a Mocel in and Nicola Pel egrini, Moser & Schwinger, Roberta Piccioni, Sara Rossi, Martin Sastre, Kjersti Sundland, Alejandro Vidal. The documentary-exhibition wil shed a new light on the videos presented at MAMbo over the past few months by rearranging the fragments of the mosaic of an overal picture. The TIME CODE project was conceived with the intent to highlight and analyze the many temporal structures which are characteristic of the video, and the successive processes that create, perceive, and interpret them. Four time-decoding categories were identified and suggested as main interpretation tools: Representation, Documentation, Presentation, and Quotation – four conceptual pretexts to read and use the real fact made different by the artist’s intention and by the use of a variety of technical aids. TIME CODE has set itself out to be a new way of drawing the public towards enjoying videos. The series of open meetings attended by the artists and the curators was highly successful in terms of number of participants, whose attendance was consistent. The two videos presented at each event remained on display until the fol owing conference in unusual, interstitial spaces inside MAMbo to create dialogue with the architectural structure of the museum. The project includes further exhibition stages for the selected material. TIME CODE has been invited - from September 11 to 14, 2008 - to take part in the third Video Art Fair, which wil be held on the island of San San Servolo in Venice, to coincide with the opening of the Biennale Architecture 11th International THE TIME CODE VIDEOS AND ARTISTS
Knut Asdam Finally, video, 18 min., 2006
Presented both as a 35 mm film and as a video installation on DVD, Finally is a complex work that
portrays three young people in the process of doing things against the backdrop of an historical
urban context. Shot in Salzburg (Austria), Finally highlights the relationship between the
architectural space and the language of the protagonists. The three young people often struggle
violently among themselves for no apparent reason and with nothing provided by the narration to
justify it. The violence has more the semblance of a sudden uncontrollable reaction to the context.
Finally develops around a non-linear narration and meditates on issues that touch on violence and
history. In this film, too, Knut Asdam explores the limits between the narrative film and the
modalities of constructing space inherent in contemporary art.
Knut Asdam was born in 1968 in Trondheim Norway, and he lives and works in Oslo. He works with the politics of space and the boundaries of subjectivity using sound, video, photography and architecture. These ideas are often linked to issues of dissidence and the analysis of space in terms of desire, usage and history. Asdam is interested in architecture, places and social dynamics not as an exercise in form but rather as aspects of everyday life.
His videos and films have been featured in many international festivals including Locarno and Rotterdam. In 2008 he expects to complete a new production commissioned by the British Film Institute of London and is one of the artists who have been invited to take part in Manifesta 7. Riccardo Benassi, Die Zeitmaschine (Forno del Pane), site specific installation, animation
Flash 24-hours synchronized with the local time, 2008
Riccardo Benassi’s work was carried out specifically for TIME CODE and for the spaces at MAMbo,
beginning with the history of the museum – the former Forno del Pane. It consists in the projection
of a 1916 industrial clock on the wall in the entry hall where there is a round bas relief. The clock is
fast by 20 minutes. Each hour is signaled by a sound. 1916 is the inauguration date of the Forno
del Pane. Through the stored research and a detailed digital reconstruction, the “machine” that
dictated the law of time in that period comes back to life in a sort of temporal digital reconstruction.
Time set ahead on the present timeline based on erroneous information. A clock that allows you to
gain time is a dream that allows you to extend your days. The out-of-phase sound and the clock’s
projected digital image – a ghost-like presence in the environment – create a sort of collective
hallucination in a determined space.
Riccardo Benassi was born in Cremona (Italy) in 1982. He lives between Italy and Berlin. He is an author of videos, installations, performances, as well as live media with the OLYVETTY group. His work focuses on the interaction between sound and objects. He uses household appliances and electric tools which are made to “perform” and interact with each other. Taken out of their daily context, the objects are manipulated and forced to take on new functions and meanings, thus acquiring a different identity through sound. In 2007 Riccardo Benassi was awarded the Furla Prize; in 2008 he was invited to take part in Netmage (Bologna).
Pavel Braila, Undressing the bride, video, 18’, 2006
This video was filmed during a wedding in Moldova and shows the “undressing of the bride”, the
ritual which concludes every traditional marriage ceremony. This is when the young couple receive
their gifts, and by taking off her veil the bride takes on her new role of housewife.
The video camera is still. At the centre of the scene, the bridegroom takes the bride on his lap, and
in turn all those present offer their gifts: perfume, clothes, blankets, cushions, kitchenware, etc. The
gifts are opened in front of the couple, who are literally dressed with the objects they have just
received which will bring them good luck. Relatives and guests repeat the same gestures, and, gift
after gift, the couple are buried under a heap of presents: this ritual action becomes a real
performance and the newly-wedded are transformed into a “living sculpture”.
Pavel Braila was born in Chisinau (Republic of Moldova) in 1971. He lives and works in
Berlin.
Through deep reflection on the expressive potential of videos as well as on their limits,
Braila looks into the social reality of his home country in the post-soviet era, by documenting
small daily events and the incongruity of a transition context.
In 2002 he took part in Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany). Among his most important solo
exhibitions, in 2007 he exhibited his works at the Neuen Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
Loulou Cherinet, Minor Field Study, video, 2006
Minor Field Study is a double video projection based on footage shot by the anthropologist
Billy Marius on the border between Congo and Cameroon. Loulou Cherinet selected and re-
edited part of the material filming the same scenes in Orminge, a suburb outside Stockholm.
The two locations are set side by side to highlight the many differences not only in terms of
temporal space but also of cultural geography.
Minor Field Study has been exhibited for the first time in Italy.
Loulou Cherinet was born in Gothenburg in 1970. She lives and works in Sweden and Ethiopia. In her photography and videos, replete with references to cinema and documentary, she touches on the issue of identity and the relationship between the private and public-social dimension of living.
Among the principal collective shows in 2007 she took part in the Venice Biennial (African Pavilion) and in the itinerant show Africa Remix (Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa).
Pierre Coulibeuf, Lost Paradise 2 (Tribute to Jean-Marc Bustamante), 2002/2006, video
installation (film 35 mm. on DVD, 15’, and videostill from film in loop).
The video installation by Pierre Coulibeuf is drawn from the film Lost Paradise, inspired by La
Maison Close (2001) by Jean-Marc Bustamante – the sculpture-architecture realized by the French
artist and photographer and located in a public space in Orléans. This work is transformed by a
vision, materialised here in an installation composed of two moving images. Solitary people wander
around Bustamante’s “house”; the city is deserted; the action seems to repeat itself without leading
to anything. Lost Paradise invites the viewer to reflect on the loss of a center and of limits, which
finds a solution in a feeling of an unbridgeable distance between oneself and the world.
Lost Paradise was first presented at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2002.
Pierre Coulibeuf was born in Elbeuf (France) in 1949. He lives in Paris. Film-maker and artist, Pierre Coulibeuf considers the cinema as a place for experimenting productive methods and various artistic practices, thus mixing literature and visual arts, genres (fiction, documentary) and means (installation, film, photography). Since 1987 he has realized films based on authors and artists such as Pierre Klossowski, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marina Abramovic, Michel Butor, Jan Fabre, and Jean Marc Bustamante, and conceived as extensions of the imagination of the work’s subjects. His films have been presented in numerous international festivals and are part of important public collections, among which the one at Pompidou Center in Paris.
Simonetta Fadda, Fashion Victims, 8’ 24”, PAL – minidv, 2008
A woman’s body is a bold symbol that persists because it is consistently used in fashion,
information, advertising, religion, but which most of all acts, every day, on the life of the living
bodies of those who were born as women. Fashion Victims is a walk through the streets of cities
and towns, while our glance is lost amidst female figures which primarily appear as symbolic figures
that are simultaneously ancient and very close to us. The video is a constellation of portraits born
from – as the artist tells us – mixed feelings of admiration and annoyance, pity and solidarity,
pursued to win the impression of defeat.
Simonetta Fadda was born in Savona (Italy) in1962. With her videocamera, Simonetta Fadda investigates individual and collective behavior, rituals and ways of using the urban territory, which are generally marginal or not very visible, but which are the expression of values and social heirarchies, by using low definition to reflect upon the role of the mass media and the relationship between truth and reality. Simonetta Fadda has lived and worked in France and Germany. She has been involved in didactic projects for children and youths. In 1999, her work Definizione zero. Origini della videoarte tra politica e comunicazione, was published by Costa & Nolan (Genoa). Among the exhibitions, in 2007 she displayed her works at the Kunst Haus Glogauer and at Mach mit! Museum für Kinder in Berlin, and in 2008 at the Art Museum of Nuoro (MAN).
Shona Illingworth, Karlag, video, 20’, 2007
Realized in north-east Kazakhstan, in an expansive Steppe area which was occupied for many
years by a vast Soviet prison camp, the video evokes the impact that the presence of the Gulag –
now closed – has on the landscape and its inhabitants – ex-prisoners or their descendants, and ex-
guards who still live side by side in the former prison camp area. The ex-Gulag, with its open cast
mines, is an unsettling presence in the heart of this desert landscape and lives in the memory of
the people there. Through the voice of witnesses and images that seem to stand still in time,
Shona Illingworth highlights the traumas inscribed in the memory of the people and the places.
Shona Illingworth was born in Ørsted (Denmark) in 1966. She lives in London and works with photography, video and sound. In her complex installations the artist causes the visual and sound dimensions interact, so as to test the public’s modes of perception. Her works often focus on architecture and reclusion and investigate the psychological relationship between subject and space by dealing with themes of isolation, of memory, and the formation of identity in situations of conflict, social tension and confinement. Shona Illingworth has often worked with architects and scientists and has shown her work in Europe, Canada, and Central Asia. She has received many public commissions and prizes, including a SciArt and an Arts Award from the Wellcome Trust for experimenting with new technologies, and currently for the Balnakiel project which sets out to explore individual and collective memory as it evolves across social and cultural difference through the diverse inhabitants of a remote militarised area in the north of Scotland.
Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen, Complaints Choir, video, 2005-2007
A group of citizens is singing in chorus. The tune is that of a lively folksong, but the words are mournful. Complaints Choir is a project resulting from an invitation by the artists to the people of a number of cities to give public expression to what they consider reasons for being downhearted, and to get together and sing them. This invitation is open to all, and recruitment is effected by means of leaflets and posters. There is a Finnish word, “Valituskuoro”, which means “complaining in unison”, or “lamenting together”. Complaints Choir sets out ironically to channel the energies of people into a public form of communication, putting shared complaints in the place of those that don’t work at the individual, local or global level. Complaint Choir is a work in progress begun in 2005. Until now it has happened in Birmingham, Helsinki, Hamburg, St Petersburg, Budapest and in many other towns in Europe, USA, Canada and Australia. The choruses are recorded on video. A selection of them has been presented for TIME CODE at MAMbo.
Tellervo Kalleinen was born at Lohja (Finland) in 1975. She lives and works in Helsinki. She works with video, performance and the production of projects often based on notions of collaboration and participation.
Oliver Kochta Kalleinen was born in Dresden (Germany) in 1971. He lives and works in Helsinki. He works with video, performance and the creation of projects which frequently investigate the theme of the creation of utopian communities. Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta Kalleinen have been working in collaboration since 1993.
Almagul Menlibayeva, As the oil burns, video, 2007
The video shows a rite being carried by a shaman and two women alongside a tarred road, against
a background of a landscape in flames. Shot in Kazakhstan, it documents the real-life fire of a oil
pipeline in the steppe. In this video, too, the artist, who was born in Kazakhstan in Central Asian,
narrates stories and situations of her origins and of shamanism in particular, the power of the
female body, rituals linked to nature and the impact of man on the environment.
Almagul Menlibayeva was born in 1969 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In her video-performances which often focus on representations of the female identity she adopts a poetic language that blends the symbolic power of the shamanic practices of her native land with the more socio-cultural imaginary of today’s globalisation. Her perspective oriented towards an innocent, non-stereotyped femininity is in continual equilibrium between tradition and modernity and it reconstructs a rituality of life in which women are the bearers of new values.
In 2007 she exhibited in the Central Asia Pavilion of the Venice Biennial.
Ottonella Mocellin and Nicola Pellegrini, The denied city, 2006
The video tells the story of Santo and Peppino, two friends who have been blind from birth.
Accompanying the two artists on a journey through the darkness to discover their city, Palermo,
Santo and Peppino weave their stories telling their life histories, their own ways of dreaming and of
perceiving the world. Shot in the Botanical Garden of Palermo, a magical place suspended in
reality, the video develops as a two-fold narrative. Santo and Peppino unveil a city outwith
preconceived ideas, experiencing the everyday with personal recollections and public facts. Their
lack of sight is compensated by a wealth of stimuli and codes through which to comprehend reality
by other means.
Santo and Peppino don’t tell their story in person but instead the two artists, Ottonella and Nicola,
give voice to the two protagonists. Adopting a long-standing approach that highlights sound, the
video is built around following the voice, reducing the visual language to the essential. The images
show a Palermo out of focus and slowed down. The denied city is part of a project of the two artists
based on their reflections on interpersonal relationships and their desire to tell other peoples’
stories in their own voice with their own body. The artists’ objective is to create an area of exchange for sharing linked to emotions in which art and narration can be reciprocal gifts. Ottonella Mocellin and Nicola Pellegrini were born in Milan in 1966 and 1962 respectively.
They work both on their own and as a duo. The markedly narrative, cinematographic installations, photographs and performances develop as detailed stories of images and words around the complex sphere of emotional relationships and emotional instability and precariousness. Typical of their work is the accent on listening, the recollection of experiences lived through and fragments of their own daily life and that of others which are presented to the spectator through a process of self-identification.
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger, Time flies, video, 2006
A well-dressed woman walks alone through the emptiness of a theatre followed by a video-camera.
She confesses, telling of her life and, having been the guest of a television talk show, having
designed a line of handbags, having looked for God and having held the genitals of the President of
the United States in her hands wonders if she will ever be able to marry just anybody. Amanda
Cook, the woman, is Monica Lewinsky. Her enticing monologue is aimed at the videocamera in a
last attempt at seduction.
Monica Lewinsky has already been the centre of an earlier video by Moser & Schwinger,
Unexpected Rules, of 2004, based on the infamous affair that hit the Clinton administration, laying
bare the relationship between power, sex and the media. In Time flies Amanda / Monica continues
her recital confession, now without an audience, allowing herself be pulled by the awareness of her
media role but also by her human and disarmingly moving ingenuity.
Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger were born in Saint-Imier in Switzerland in 1966 and 1961 respectively. They presently live and work in Berlin. Bringing together theatre, video and installation, the Swiss duo reflect on how the media puts over what it represents, using the alienating and seductive power of images, texts and mises-en-scene. Their work has been presented at many international events including the Locarno and Rotterdam festivals. In 2004 they represented Switzerland at the 26th International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Sao Paulo (Brazil).
Roberta Piccioni, Storm, video, 3’52” in loop, 2007
Two fencers fight against a black background. The video camera is still and the movement is
internal. The two bodies move in and out of the frame. The audio reproduces the noise of clashing
swords, which is metallic and violent as that of a storm. The title, Storm, shifts the meaning
continuously, charging the obvious image with other meanings. What is being staged is an endless
fight. The bodies are plastic sculptures. They emerge from the dark background in all their
physicality, but their faces are absent, covered with black masks. Slow motion and loop techniques
dilate the perception of time. A simple scene, an event as trivial as a sports confrontation, is
transformed into a powerful, evocative image.
Roberta Piccioni was born in Riccione in 1969. She lives and works in Riccione. In her videos, the triviality of everyday life, the fleeting and evasive details of our existence, are all so focused on that they gain particular evidence, through the processes of image slowing-down or speeding-up, so as to provoke the viewer to recall often buried memories. Among her most important group exhibitions, in 2007 she presented her work inside the Videoart Yearbook (Bologna). In 2002 she was among those artists running for the Premio Furla and in 2001 she was brought to everybody’s notice thanks to the P.S.1 Italian Studio Program.
Sara Rossi, Toupie, 2008
This video is the result of a workshop on the city which was carried out by the artist together with
schoolchildren from the elementary school ‘Clarina’ within an educational project organized by the
Galleria Civica (Civic Museum) in Trento. Toupie (2008) is an animation of silhouettes in a shadow
puppetry as a sort of cartoon consisting of stories made up and drawn by the children: the
discovery of a mysterious time-machine enables the audience to visit mythical scenarios such as
the explosion of the volcanic island of Santorini/Atlantis and travel “on the back of a light ray”
beyond the space/time curve.
Sara Rossi was born in Milan (Italy) in 1970. She lives and works Milan.
She works with photographs, videos and installations. Her work is characterized by an oneiric
dimension and is often charged with references to the History of Art. Sara Rossi weaves stories full
of memories and recollections dominated by a sense of suspension and space-time disorientation.
In 2003 she was selected for Premio Giovane Arte Italiana from MAXXI (Rome) and DARC –
Direzione per l’architettura e l’arte contemporanea / Ministero per i Beni Culturali. Among the
exhibiions, she displayd her work at MAR – Museo della città (Ravenna) and she will present the
special project Tabula Rasa at Manifesta 7 in Bolzano.
Martin Sastre, Videoart. The Iberoamerican Legend, 2002
Videoart. The Iberoamerican Legend (2002) is the first video in a trilogy called The Iberoamerican
Trilogy. As a parodying comment on the Contemporary Art establishment seen through the eyes of
a Latin American artist trying to find a place within the international scene, Videoart begins with the
awakening of a character, the Narrator (played by the artist), who tells the “true story” of Video Art.
Sastre blends together bits from CNN, clips from Hollywood films, cartoons and images from the
media using the languages typical of the news, action cinema and advertising. Sastre unmasks our
contemporary myths of success and fame and the impact on public imagination of models offered
by the media, thus also overturning our historical definitions of “centre” and “periphery”.
Martin Sastre was born in Montevideo (Uruguay) in 1976. He lives and works in Madrid.
In 2003 he founded the “Martin Sastre Foundation for the Super Poor Art” with the slogan “Adopt a
Latin-American Artist” to support artists from peripheral areas. As the author of ironical and
parodying videos, Sastre explores the impact of North American culture on the formation of a Latin
American identity.
Kjersti Sundland, Enduring Portraits , video, 2007
Enduring Portraits is the portrait of a female face subjected to slow ageing. Biological
evolution takes place over a different time from the natural one. The artist samples the faces
of two women of different ages filmed previously, obtaining a series of 40 variations which
show the gradual passing of time. Using Isadora software, the ageing of a female face is
determined by the running time of the video.
Enduring Portraits was specially created for the TIME CODE project and the MAMbo
exhibition space.
Kjersti Sundland was born in Bergen in 1972. She lives and works in Norway. By sophisticated manipulation of digital imagery her videos explore the relationship between the language of mass media, technology and the formation of identify with particular emphasis on female representation.
In 2007 the live media “Monstrous little women” was selected for the Live Media Festival Netmage (Bologna).
Alejandro Vidal, One second burns for a billion years, video, 2007
An ambiguous situation. Two young women are dancing alone in a nondescript landscape. They get dressed, put on some make-up, count their money, read something. Aircraft fly overhead. They listen to music, lost in their isolation. There’s a young lad there as well. We have no idea why they are there or what they are waiting for. We don’t know whether something has happened or is going to happen. Vidal puts together a syncopated, fragmentary story, reinforced by the sound track, using codes typical of advertising or video-clips to present us with a youthful, urban world that has its dreams and its mischief, that is both naïve and uninhibited. Above all, Vidal puts the viewer in the position of the voyeur of a scene without any reference points, compelling him to face up to his own fears, prejudices and expectations.
Alejandro Vidal was born at Palma de Mallorca in 1972. He lives and works in Barcellona. He works in video, photography, design and installations. His work is centred on subjects involving violence, social conflict and activism. He studies forms of protest and communication such as punk, rave or cult movies, with a view to showing how marketing, politics and the mass media distort our view of violence and urban life.
THE CURATORS
Fabiola Naldi is an art critic and curator.
She col aborates with the course on the History of Contemporary Art in the
Department of Visual Arts in the Faculty of Arts of Bologna University and with the
course on the History of Exhibition Events of Art and Fashion in the degree course
on the History of Fashion and Custom (Rimini campus) in the Faculty of Arts and
Philosophy of Bologna University.
She teaches Phenomenology of the Image at the Bologna Academy of Fine Arts.
She contributes to Flash Art, Around Photography and Sentire Ascoltare. Com.
She has written:
Arte Africana Contemporanea tra tradizione e nuove tecnologie, in Arte
Africana fra Cultura e Mercato, Guido Candela (ed.), Skira, Milan, 2007.
La mia strada continua e vive oggi più di prima. Il Writing a Bologna dalla
fine Settanta a Oggi, in Atlante dei movimenti culturali contemporanei del ’Emilia
Romagna 1968-2007. Scritture, Arti, Controculture, Clueb, Bologna, 2007
Scrubbing Video, in Vertigo. Il secolo di arte Off – Media dal Futurismo al Web,
Germano Celant and Gianfranco Maraniel o (eds.), Skira, Milan, 2007
The Fair of Freaks. The visual world of Floria Sigismondi & Chris
Cunningham, in Sound and Vision, Luca Beatrice (ed.), Damiani Editori, 2006
Floria Sigismondi. Immaculate Conception, The Bookmakers Ed., Turin, 2005.
Rapport 1957-1977, in P. SORCINELLI (ed.), Gli anni del Rock, Bup, Bologna,
2005.
I’ll be your mirror. Travestimenti fotografici, Cooper & Castelvecchi, Roma,
2003.
Alessandra Pioselli is an art critic and curator.
She teaches History of Contemporary Art at the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts Art
in Bergamo, Contemporary Museum’s strategies at Brera Art Academy in Milan
and Visual Communication at the European Institute of Design in Milan. She
teaches also Public Art a t Master course on Extraordinary Landscapes on Milan
Polytechnic. She writes for Artforum.
She has published:
Milano anni Settanta: arte, politica e territorio, in Milano città d’arte, Università
di Pavia – Gli Ori, Alessandria 2001.
Arte e scena urbana. Modelli di intervento e politiche culturali pubbliche in
Italia tra il 1968 e il 1981, in L’arte pubblica nel o spazio urbano. Artisti,
committenti, fruitori, Bruno Mondadori, Milan 2007.
THE TIME CODE SHOW
Curator:
Exhibition site:
MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna via Don Minzoni 14 – Bologna Dates: 3 July - 24 August 2008
Tuesday – Sunday 10.00 am -6.00 pm Thursday 10.00 am -10.00 pm closed on Monday Ingresso:
Admittance:
Information:
tel. 051 6496611 fax 051 6496600 info@mambo-bologna.org www.mambo-bologna.org Elisa Maria Cerra
Communication Office
tel. +39 051 6496653 / 611
fax + 39 051 6496600
elisamaria.cerra@comune.bologna.it

Source: http://www.mambo-bologna.org/files/documenti/archiviocomunicatiENG/The%20TIME%20CODE%20Show_MAMbo%20july%203%20-%20august%2017,%202008.pdf