Piazza del Popolo in Rome has been chosen as a perfect example of imperfect symmetry and as a pedestrian junction of employees, clerks, tourists, and priests. In this naturally elliptic set the camera, as if it were a watch, completes a 360° round in 60 minutes. This video tries to find an extra-ordinary flux of time: the shootings have been compressed 20 times to obtain a length of 24 minutes. Among unaware passer-bys, the camera discovers little by little strange narcoleptic beings who live, watch, and sleep in the architecture and launch encoded signals. Performers act in a parallel temporal landscape in the condition of permanence. This flux is filled by visions and forewarnings: others possible lives appear.
“The idea of these panoramas does not only derive from the creative exigency of finding an ideal connection with five centuries of artistic representations, and to translate into images the urban and historical landscape of some Italian cities. There is also a will to dramatize this landscape, to liven it with a number of actions, micro-events, movements and possible plots. For this purpose ZimmerFrei has created a special cinematic device that allows a camera mounted on it to rotate 360° in exactly an hour. The circular panoramas in these videos were filmed in different Italian squares (Piazza del Popolo in Rome, Piazza Maggiore in Bologna) and record a series of actions filmed in the space of a few hours and sped up in editing to last a few minute only. On the one hand there are weather and light changes, days shifting into nights and nights into days, passers-by walking in front of the lens. On the other are staged actions, performed slowly enough to be fully recorded by the camera. Rather than actions they are proper happenings, to which the artists take part, as well as other performers and the unaware audience. The time alteration, the gap between two dimensions that come into conflict - namely the natural flow of time and the artificial time of the many small events and narrations created by the actions of the performers – is in fact a common feature of ZimmerFrei’s aesthetics. In those experiments different expressive modes come together and become one whole: from painting...to cinema (besides landscape painting, it is also mainly experimental films’ technique of time lapse), from theatre to dance (a stylized narration of gestures and movements) till contemporary music (sounds, words and noises form an additional narrative level).”
Bruno di Marino
concept ZimmerFrei
direction ZimmerFrei
production Monitor Video&Contemporary art
courtesy Monitor Video&Contemporary art
screenplay Anna Rispoli
photography Francesco Raganato
editing Anna de Manincor
sound Massimo Carozzi
music
analog synthesizers, turntable, electronics Massimo Carozzi
piano and vibes Nicola Zonca
double bass, electric guitars, effects Stefano Pilia
voice and foley Anna de Manincor Anna Rispoli Massimo Carozzi
cast
Angela Baraldi Cristina Baruffa Fiamma Benvignati Valerio Benvignati Bollea Valentina Bernabei Marco Berti Valerio Bindi Francesco Cabras Silvia Calderoni Paola Capata Pietro Cappelletti Francesca Caprini Massimo Carozzi Marco Carrara Anna de Manincor Peppe De Santis Federica Di Giacomo Ida Esposto Morgan Mainardi Barbara Mattei Emanuela Meschini Allegra Mori Ubaldino Silvia Oliva Francesca Passi Anna Piacentini Emanuele Ponturo Alessandro Procoli Anna Rispoli Alessandro Rossetto Davide Savorani Marinella Senatore Antonia Tomassini Fabio Torchetti Marta Valente Andrea Zanecchia Francesca Zerbetto
format MiniDV PAL and DVD PAL 4:3
audio stereo/ 5.1
running time 24 min
country Italy
year 2004
solo exhibitions
25 october – 4 december 2004
MONITOR video&arte contemporanea, Roma
screenings and group exhibitions
12/1/2005
Videodecoder
Laboratorio Buridda, Genova
1-28/2/205
Videotheka
Ursula Blickle Lounge at the Kunsthalle, Wien
13/3/2005
Neanche/Videomemoria del Teatro
Museo della Ceramica, Faenza
9-10/3/2006
PLATEAUX - Neue Positionen darstellender Kunst
Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm - Frankfurt/M
12/10/2006
Trampoline Night
Hau2, Berlin (D)
1/9/2006
The Wormhole Saloon IV
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
curated by Lucia Farinati
1/9/2006
FRAME. a selection of Italian artists
Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, Australia
curated by Chiara Agnello and Roberta Tenconi
26/11 - 20/12 2006
BAC! 07
MAACBA, Barcelona (S)
6/3/2007
Hallucination
Mass Gallery, Media Arts in Seoul, Korea
curated by T-Yong Chung and Joonsung Yoon
22 october 2008
Istituto Italiano di Cultura Pechino - Beijing - China
curated by Bruno Di Marino and offiCina Beijing
November 7-10 2008
Open Studios
International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP)
Brooklyn, NY
November 23 2008
mana art gallery - Bruxelles
January 15th - 25th, 2009
AGM 09 under_ctrl
QUAD, Derby, and Broadway Media Centre, Nottingham (UK)
28 May - 15 November, 2009
IVAM (Instituto Valencia de Arte Moderna), Valencia (ES)
Wrinkles in Time
Curated by Robert Storr
fair
20-23/4 2007
Art Brussels-Contemporary Art Fair