13.8. – 20.8.2022
Vernissage: Fr., 12.8.2022 from 18.00
Exhibition: 13.8. bis 20.8.2022
More than 30 video artists from all over the world perform at the first international Art Video Festival “No-Mad” – Rooted in becoming.
Curator Alessandro Rolandi has chosen the topic of nomadism as a guiding principle, on which the artists make their statements in video form.
More about this at the end of the page.
The Artists:
Adel Andalibi (Iran)
Adel has been a resident scholar at QianYuan Daoist temple in past couple years and he conducts research at Here & Now ethnography & somatics institute where he explores the border between visual ethnography, design thinking, somatics and community intervention. He has done field work in Iran, Kyrgyzstan and China and has being based in China since 2010. Adel is fascinated by exploring the narratives and metaphors embedded in human body and narratives embedded in the space/city as the body of society. Stories in the human body drives him to the discipline of somatic psychology and FengShui where he explores how bodily narrative defines a person’s life experience and how these personal narratives are socially/physically constructed in an anthropological perspective. Space narratives lead him to the realm of landscape/ecology architecture and social innovation, where the collective story finds its body in social products. Some video extracts from previous work could be found at https://vimeo.com/user15292220
www.herespace.com
Exhibited video work ; RAW
Quote “ Nomadism may include abandoning names. A name is a temporary house we build for a meaning. Yet meanings have always been nomadic”
Torsten Zenas Burns (USA)
Torsten is an artist and media arts educator currently living in Helsinki, Finland. He received his BFA in video and computer arts in 1990 from the New York State College of Art & Design at Alfred University, and his MFA in New Genres: video and performance art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993. He creates video, photographs, sculptural installations and electronic publishing projects exploring speculative content including re-imagined educational practices, experimental space programs, ecological fictions, zombie / afterlife relationships and post-human stories. Other long term art projects include video collaborations with Darrin Martin, Monika Czyzyk and Anthony Discenza (Halflifers). https://www.torstenzenasburns.com/
Exhibited video work: MONSTERSWEET (Single Channel 23:30 version)
Umberto Cavenago (Italy)
His research merges the passion for artistic culture and the culture of design; his interventions, always related to both the architectural and natural space, establish a formal and destabilizing dialogue in an anticelebrative and never definitive relationship. He works with the most diverse materials with the use of current digital technologies. The construction methods adopted by Umberto Cavenago do not come from artistic practice, but from the industrial world: feasibility study, design, choice of materials, estimate, implementation. An approach system that seems to unite Cavenago to the industrial designer, but which contains a trap: he does not design a prototype for mass production, nor does he introduce it into the production cycle.
https://cavenago.ch/?r=1
Ambra Corinti (Italy)
Sinologist / film-maker/ producer/curator/experimental musician. Italian-born, she has been living and working in Beijing since 2005, where she worked for several galleries and institutions before founding ZaJia Lab, one of the most well-known Beijing independent venues for experimental music, independent films, documentary and conceptual and performance art. She is married with the Chinese film-maker Arong (Rong Guang Rong) and together they have made over 10 films and documentaries, among which some were exhibited internationally in various film festivals and received awards in Rotterdam and Locarno.
https://mubi.com/cast/ambra-corinti https://absofrockinlutely.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-zajia-laboratory-in-beijing.html
Exhibited video work: DON’T BELIEVE IT
Monika Czyzyk (Poland)
Monika Czyżyk (b.1989, Kielce, Poland) is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. She received her MFA in Painting from the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 2014, and a BFA / MFA in Time and Space Arts from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2017. She primarily works with moving image in the context of experimental documentaries and socially engaged projects. Currently, she is researching reimagined gardening and collecting locally sourced clay for DIY kiln firings. She has shown in exhibitions including Hippolyte Gallery, Helsinki, Finland, 2022, Bilsart, Istanbul, Turkey, 2022, Myymälä2 Gallery, Helsinki, Finland, 2020, Stroboskop Art Space, Warsaw, Poland, 2020, C5 Art Space, Beijing, China, 2019, African Artist Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria, 2018. Her videos have been screened at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Michigan, USA 2021, Zachęta National Gallery, Warsaw, Poland, 2019, New Media Society, Tehran, Iran, 2019, WRO Biennale, Wrocław, Poland, 2017, UnionDocs, New York, USA, 2017. She is a grant recipient of Arts Promotion Centre 2022, Kone Foundation 2020. She was a resident at Amant Foundation Siena, Italy, 2021, and Institute for Provocation, Beijing, China, 2019.
https://contemporarylynx.co.uk/portfolio-monika-czyzyk
Exhibited video work: MONSTERSWEET (Single Channel 23:30 version)
Deng Dafei (China)
Multimedia Artist/Educator based in Beijing where he created a school and an alternative art education methodology based on multiple references from eastern and western tradition. His artworks often uses dark-humor and corrosive fictional realism to discuss society’s issues in a provocative and defying way. Together with He Dai, he founded Utopia Group, among the most relevant experimental art group in Chinese contemporary art. https://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2009/09/22/publish/2348908630.html
Exhibited video work: SUDDEN BREAK IN
Martin Derbyshire (UK)
Martin is a British-born artist, who has resided in China since 1995. He is a practitioner, educator, and independent researcher. Having lectured at the Central Academy of Arts and Tsinghua University’s Academy of Arts, he currently combines studio practice with teaching in Western Academy of Beijing’s Faculty of Arts and its Theory of Knowledge department. His most recent publication, “Odette and I Are Dreaming: A Work in Two Parts” was presented at Tsinghua University’s Art, Science, and Technology Symposium in 2019. “My work is iterative, with each piece providing a starting point for the next. My intention it is to mirror a state of being in which contradiction is transcended and resolved: not by a denial of particularity, but through its situation with a context of interactive coexistence: in which the discovery of underlying commonalities of purpose can be made. All distinctions, within such a matrix, demonstrate their capacity to not only reflect each other, but also broader and deeper structures, systems and processes which transcend their respective contingencies.
https://www.martinderbyshire.com/installation
Exhibited video work: BREATHING
Jose Drummond (Portugal)
He is a Portuguese artist, curator and researcher currently based in Shanghai. His research-driven practice is an enigmatic, elliptical, and poetic investigation of the space in-between cultures and in-between mediums. He has an MFA in Creative Practice from the University of Plymouth (UK) and the Transart Institute in New York (USA). 1986/1994 At. Re – Atelier Livre with professor Pedro Morais (Portugal). 1987/1990 Foundation courses in Painting and Drawing in Ar.Co and SNBA (Portugal) – not completed. 1989 Scenography in IFICT (Portugal). 1999 Management of the Arts in IEEM (Macau). 2016 Sovereign Asian Art Award finalist. 2011 Asia Pacific Photography Prize finalist. https://www.josedrummond.art/
He is the founder of the online platform zizhi https://www.zizhi.art/about
Exhibited video work: LOVE IS THE SCARIEST THING
Michael C. Eddy (Canada)
Michael Eddy is an artist and writer based in Montreal. His work, at once conceptual and handmade, explores aspects of representation and history in art and popular culture through various mediums, including printmaking, drawing, sculpture, video and text. Eddy holds a Meisterschüler from the Städelschule in Frankfurt (2008) and a B.F.A from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax (2005). He participated in residencies in Canada, Italy, China and Japan. He has often worked in collaboration with others, most saliently the group Knowles Eddy Knowles (since 2004) and he co-organized the HomeShop space and collaborative group in Beijing (2010-2013). His texts were published in many catalogues and magazines, including Esse arts+opinions and Peripheral Review. Michael Eddy is a beneficiary of Fonderie Darling’s 2019-2023 Montreal Studios Program.
http://www.conceptualyouthhostel.net/
http://www.conceptualyouthhostel.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/michael-eddy_CV-2021.pdf
Exhibited video work: INFINITE CRUELTY
Peter Friess (Belgium)
Peter is an artist based in Brussels with a sound background in self-organizing complex social systems. As independentartist and researcher he has a wide array of interests such as artificial intelligence, nano- and biotechnologies, system theory, humanities, transhumanism, space exploration and ecology. His approach is based on collaboration and mutual exchange for learning, sharing and co-creation. Besides his own solo creations or group realisations, he supports musicians and dancers for augmented performances. He also intervenes through performances, talks, workshops and writing on art, science and technology, and runs the event space YIAP in Brussels for experimental and transversal art.
www.petermfriess.com
Exhibited video work: SECRET GARDEN
GeoCinema (Solveig Suess, Asia Bazdyrieva,) (Switzerland/Ukraine)
Geocinema (Solveig Qu Suess, Asia Bazdyrieva) is a collective that explores the possibilities of a ‘planetary’ notion of cinema. Their practice has been concerned with the understanding and sensing of the Earth while being on the ground, enmeshed within vastly distributed processes of image and meaning making. Their work has been shown internationally, including the solo show “Making of Earths” (Kunsthall Trondheim, 2020) and group shows such as “Critical Zones” (ZKM Karlsruhe, 2020-21) and “Re-thinking Collectivity” (Guangzhou Image Triennale 2021). In 2020 they were nominated for the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research. https://geocinema.network/#about
Exhibited video work: MAKING OF EARTHS
Frank Gerlitzki (Germany/Luxembourg)
Artist, curator and humanist with a long time experience in social practice, relational aesthetics and multidisciplinary approach. After having founded the gallery Espace ApArt in Luxembourg, a physical space for dialogue and cultural exchange that brought together artists of different countries for several years, he went travelling for a while in search of a “different space” and stopped in China.Beijing seemed already too fast and structured, so he moved to Guangzhou and found in the village of Xiao Zhou Cun an “island” to wander around and get lost. Since then he has worked from there in collaboration with the independant space Sabaki, OCT Shenzhen, the Guangzhou Art Academy and mostly with various artists and the “local people” he is so fond of since his arrival. https://frankgerlitzki.com/
Exhibited video work: MANIFESTO
Nan Hao (China)
Artists/educator/scholar/activist. Beijing-born, he studied in USA and in the Netherland and now is a professor at the Art Faculty of Shantou Normal University. His work ranges from individual to collective interventions, performances and installations with a strong focus on socio/political dynamics.His research is informed by the post-structuralist and new materialism theoretic frame and by the post-colonial studies. https://www.jialigallery.com/tag/nan-hao/
Exhibited video work: CHI 3 / BLACK SQUARE TOPOLOGY
Matt Hope (UK)
A British artist who lives and works in Caochangdi, an arts district in Beijing, China. He is known for elaborate kinetic art and sound art constructions made in large-scale fabrication factories in Mainland China. He is currently based in Guangzhou. In his work he combines a modernist-inspired interest and accuracy for materials, technological procedures, building and assemblage techniques with a contemporary nomadic curiosity towards the contemporary experimental fields at the intersection of art and science, while constantly re-formulating the importance of the physicality of art and its spatial relationships with the urban landscape and its infrastructures.
http://matthope.org/
Exhibited video work: DRIFTING BOX
Kristiina Koskentola (Finland/Netherland)
Her recent work evolves around (speculative) modes of knowledge production, polyvocal subjectivity and the agency of multiple co-actors (human and nonhuman), often through “peripheral” or spiritual ecologies. Her multi-disciplinary practice spans across various media including video, installation, interactive performative (cooking) projects, publications, and lectures. Her work is closely connected to posthuman/postanthropocentric discourse. Monistic perspectives, across temporalities, and interconnectedness of beings, entities and environments are at the core of her practice.
http://kristiinakoskentola.com/
Exhibited video work: OUR BODIES HAVE TURNED INTO GOLD
Doug Lewis (Canada)
Doug Lewis is from, and resides in Winnipeg, Canada. He attained his MA from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2006 (London, UK) with an interdisciplinary focus that merged his art and curatorial practices that he refers to as “3rd Practice” which explores possibilities between his roles as artist and curator. He is a multi-disciplinary artist, and works in a wide array of mediums that include performance, sculpture, installation, video and audio. He lived in Beijing, China from 2008 to 2020, where he worked as an independent curator, artist and art educator. Lewis has curated and/or exhibited across Canada, in China, Croatia, USA, UK, in South Korea.
https://www.douglewis.com/
Exhibited video work: CRUSH!
Monika Lin (USA)
She was raised bicoastally in the United States in New Jersey and the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a BFA from Mills College in Oakland, an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and an MA in Interactive Media Arts from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her work deals primarily with social-political themes emphasising cultural constructs and economics; the social relevance of art through dialogue, collaboration and relational experience; and questions of myth and materiality. Ms. Lin has lived in Shanghai since 2006. She has attended residencies in Madrid, Vermont, Jingdezhen, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. She is currently an Assistant Arts Professor of Visual Arts at New York University Shanghai. http://monikalin.com/
Exhibited sound installation: COLONIAL CUPS:CONVERSATIONS ABOUT OBJECTS AND INCIDENTS (with contributions from Jamesetta Bunn, Duane Corpis, Marcela Godoy, Nefertiti Jones, Heather Lee, Marianne Petit)
Li Xin Lu (Lulu Li) (China)
“I use text, context, spells, symbols, sentences, syntax, objects, time, space, bodies, gestures, fables, lores, parodies, both tangible and intangible matters, as tools and means to manifest those not yet manifested. I do believe one has to cultivate certain level of sensitivity of attentive listening in order to bring potentials which lay in latency in personal and collective psyche to perceivable phenomenons. In other words, me being artist is to be capable conduit and story teller.”
Lulu Li is an active practitioner in fields of design, art, interaction design, research, curatorial practice, and entrepreneurship. Both her personal works and studio works has won numerous awards from TOCA ME, Gilbert de Botton UAL awards, Red Dot, IF award, to the Best app 2014 and 2015 in app store. Her personal renowned design work series “the lightning babe” has won her reputation in Chinese design scene 2007. https://lululi.co/
Exhibited video work: PANSPERMIA
Ma Yongfeng (China)
Artist, Curator & Context Provider, Ma Yongfeng was born in China in 1976 and now lives in Berlin. Ma’s works are more attached to the practices of participatory social interventions, installations, situations and events, with the objective of launching a series of self-organized projects to seek the artistic practices directly related to society. Currently, the ongoing project Forget Art contains flexible and changeable characteristics, including exhibitions, guerrilla interventions, social media and application of street politics, etc. The tactic Ma employs is to input new concepts and methods by subtly becoming involved in the mechanisms, applying them to his social practices and resistances.
http://www.mayongfeng.com/
Exhibited video work: EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE
Andrea Nacciarriti (Italy)
Andrea Nacciarriti (1976, Italy) is a visual artist based in Senigallia, Italy
His practice explores the close relationship, and the resulting paradoxes, between architectural and environmental contexts with social realities, historical contexts and current events. As an interdisciplinary practice, Nacciarriti’s work results in site-specific installations, improvised and responsive actions, performances, sculptures, drawings, and photography.In 2005, he attended the Advanced Course in Visual Arts with Alfredo Jaar at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como. Andrea has attended residency programs in China, Finland, Morocco and USA. he won the Terna Prize 03 and New York Prize XII. His work is part of private and public collections including the Foundation Antoine de Galbert in Paris, and La Gaia Collection, Italy. He has exhibited and participated in projects in public and private spaces, including Historic Essex Street Market building (New York), Ducal Palace (Urbino), Pescheria Foundation Visual Arts Center (Pesaro), CAB (Grenoble), Pro Artibus Foundation (Ekenäs), Franco Soffiantino Gallery (Torino), MACRO (Rome), La Maison Rouge (Paris), PAC (Milan) Villa Croce Museum (Genoa), Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains (Tourcoing Cedex in France), MAMM (Moscow). Among the special projects: “you might get breath less”, ISCP in New York; “less than air” Showroom Elica, Milan, on the occasion of the 49th edition Salone Internazionale del Mobile, “sculpture park” Reagent’s Park, London, in occasion of Frieze Art Fair.
https://www.andreanacciarriti.net/
Exhibited video work: UNTITLED ( OUR TRIBUNES OUR RULES)
Giancarlo Norese (Italy)
Born in Novi Sad in 1963, since the 1980s he has dedicated himself to collaborative practices with other artists and institutions, the realization of publishing projects, public actions, independent educational experiments. He was one of the initiators of the Oreste Project and the editor of its publications. He has exhibited and participated in projects in public and private spaces, including Villa Medici (Rome), Galleria Neon (Bologna), 42nd and 48th Venice Biennale, P.S.1 (New York), Galerija Škuc (Ljubljana), Galleria Continua (San Gimignano), Triennale di Milano, Performa07 (New York), Tent (Rotterdam), Red Gate (Beijing), MAMM (Moscow), ASU Art Museum (Phoenix), Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich). He has held courses, workshops and lectures in some academies and universities. He slept under a table for six months.
www.norese.tk
Exhibited video work: MISTAKEN LANDSCAPE
Serge Onnen (France/Netherland)
Artist, film and animation maker, performance artist, educator, researcher. He lives and works in Brussels, trained at the Rijksakademie there and participated in several group exhibitions at home and abroad.He brings drawing, animation, film and shadows together around a central theme and puts the art of drawing in a wider perpective by initiating all kinds of projects.In his opinion drawing is almost universal, everybody has made a drawing at one time.He has been studying and working for several years the traditional Chinese Shadow Puppets and has made many puppets together with Chinese craftmen, that come to life in movies & performances
http://www.sergeonnen.com/
Exhibited video work: .CLOACINAE
in coopreration with Sverre Fredricksen
Qiao Xingyue (China)
Film & documentary director/conceptual artist/ . Born in Shangqiu, he has been living and working in Beijing for over 15 years and then moved to U.S where he was chosen for an international scholarship for young film-makers in USC. He worked for Ai Wei Wei studio for over 5 years and was part of the film crew who filmed and edited some of the most well-known documentaries of Mr. Ai. He is currently working at his first fiction movie while pursuing his higher education in NY. https://www.firstfilm.org.cn/en/annual/financing-forum/finalist-projects/finalist-projects-2018/
Exhibited video work: HOME / IMPRESSIONS OF HEADING BACK
Video info
Home: video
The construction worker is standing in his home where the place is their temporary living home, but every “temporary moment” has constructed their life in China.
IMPRESSIONS OF HEADING BACK
The Aini (爱伲族）national minority lives in the board between China and Myanmar, one day after filmed the story of a brave young girl who defeated the enemies with menstrual blood and water of rivers to save her tribe, everybody was singing their old song. That’s the IMPRESSION of them.
Ren Bo (China)
Artist/Photographer/Video-maker. Studied in Moscow and in Beijing. Her multimedia works explore and witnesses intangible sensibilities at the intersection between moving and still images, objects and installation trying to combine elements of Chinese traditional aesthetics and western ones through digital and post-digital mediums and contemporary sculpture. She is indirectly interrogating the notions of cultural identity through a visual language which poetically merges heterogeneous elements conveying a silent aura of suspension.
https://www.ododobobo.com/aboutrenbo
Exhibited video work: INFINITE WHITE IN LIFE
Silvano Repetto (Switzerland)
Silvano is an artist who loves to play with art, he himself defines his performances as useless, moments of everyday life overturned, with a hint of madness and poetry. His performances often arise from sudden inspiration and are immortalized by the artist through makeshift means. With his works, Repetto aspires to create amazement in the viewer, bringing him back to the innocence of childhood for a moment. As part of the pop-up projects, Repetto has created compositions of images and videos, in which some of his performances will be presented. https://www.masilugano.ch/en/1080/silvano-repetto
Megumi Shimizu (Japan)
Megumi works mainly in performance and drawing of actions. She moved to Miyako island from Osaka in 1999 – Hangzhou in 2001 – Beijing, and Tokyo since 2016. She had to use body language for communication in abroad, and encountered physicality of Chinese calligraphy then started to make performance works in China, and joined performance events and exhibitions mainly in mainland China. Megumi has given short classes at the Goethe-Institute Beijing and the Art Institute of Guangdong Shantou University, and has also given lectures on “Interpretation to Freedom_ Chinese Art in the 20th and 21st Centuries” (2017-2018 / Anata no Kosaten, Tokyo), screened the documentary film “Chinese Action” (directed by Wen Pulin). She has also participated in Hadano Art festival (2021). Saitama international art festival (2020), “The Power of the People” (2016 / Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, China), “AQUA2017” (Rome), group exhibition (2016 / Sanyuan Museum of Contemporary Art, Tianjin), “Asian Panic! ” (2012/Guanzhu city museum /Korea). She is co-organizing an open-based improvisation performance group “Koui izen” from 2019. (“Koui izen” refers to a group that performs improvised performances spontaneously in an open environment without specifying the members, or the project itself.
https://megumi-shimizu.wixsite.com/works/cv
Exhibited video work: AT THE CROSSROAD BETWEEN LIGHT AND SHADOW / COLLABORATION WITH A BIRD
Ani Schulze (Germany)
Ani Schulzes practice moves seamlessly between film, painting, sculpture and installation. She unfolds visual worlds in which the mutual relationship and porous boundaries between body, technology, fantasy and space are encircled. Recently her works have been shown at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunstverein Siegen, Salzburger Kunstverein, Pavilhão Branco in Lisbon and at I: Project Space in Beijing
https://www.anischulze.net/
Exhibited video work: SUFFUSION OF YELLOW
Miriam Simun
Miriam Simun is a research-based artist investigating the implications of socio-technical and environmental change. Simun is a graduate of the London School of Economics, the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Her work has been the subject of numerous international presentations, including exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the DeutscheBank Kunsthalle, Berlin.
Exhibited video work: IMAGINED LINES AND ALIBIS
Arden Surdam (USA)
Arden Surdam (b.1988 New York, NY) is an American artist working in sculpture and photography. She completed her BA in Environmental Studies and Visual Arts at Oberlin College, USA (2010) and her MFA in Photo & Media at the California Institute of the Arts, USA (2015).
Her work investigates the interconnectivity of photography and marine life. Through research into man-made interference such as chemical spills or invasive species, Surdam argues for an expanded conception of photography – one which highlights the planet’s fragility in light of anthropocentric dominance. She incorporates marine materials like algae, kelp, and oysters to demonstrate these vulnerabilities. By employing science fiction or the surreal in her installations, she creates otherworldly scenarios from present day crises. Through this lens – the imminent collapse of our oceans – is often easier to fathom.
Exhibited video work: ISOLATION IN PROXIMITY TO ANOTHER
Tianji Zhao (China)
Artist/researcher/curator/. Beijing Born, she has been living and studying between USA, the Netherlands and China. Currently based in Beijing. Her work focuses on social practice and performative interventions in the public space, video and photographic documentation and publishing.
She is one of the members of the Social Sensibility Research Institute and the artistic coordinator of the Social Sensibility R&D Department at Bernard Controls industries in Beijing.
https://www.iprovoke.org/zhao-tianji https://socialsensibility.org/page/2/team/
Exhibited video work: SAYIZHENG III
Xiaoshan & Xiong Yunhao (China)
Conceptual artists / film-makers /art critics/educators/curators. Based in Nanchang and recently New York, they have been professors at Nanchang Art University for many years. They have curated several international exhibitions and symposiums where Chinese and international artists have been invited to show works and discuss about socio-political relevant topics in Museums, Universities and independent spaces. Their work and practice analyzes the changes in Chinese society and those in art making and critical thinking using both time and non-time based mediums.
Exhibited video work: NOMADIC LANDSCAPES
NO_MAD / ROOTED IN BECOMING
This exhibition is a proposal to re-imagine and re-contextualize the notion of a decentralized, independent and imaginative nomadic state.
A nomadic attitude beyond the perverted version shaped by the dynamics of advanced neoliberal capitalism and its imposition on global scale of precarity, exploitation and fragmentation of human relationships.
A nomadic stance also beyond the return of authoritarian reactionary forces attempting to re-habilitate the dark narratives of hegemony, imperialism and conflicts about nations, borders and civilizations .
The artists involved, through their lives and practice, distance themselves from the romanticized idea of the flaneur and from that of the neo-colonial tourist-collector of exotic experiences to re-propose as cultural appropriation.
With a conscious ethical stance and a spontaneous shift, they suggest to re-think the nomadic state primarily as a state of becoming, a ‘molecular level’ of immanence, a nomadic-becoming-mode, not anthropocentric, not homogeneous and not exclusive.
In their praxis, technical and theoretical knowledge, life-experience, intuition and sensibility organically converge as vehicles to trigger a resonance between trans-cultural subjectivities constantly interacting between themselves in a mutually transformative process.
Their different approaches to the time-based medium of video and photography and their engagement and areas of inquiries, re-affirm the unquestionable necessity to foster a constant proliferation of differences.
What kind of nomadism can we think in a world which presents everyday thousands of migrants running away from wars and poverty….precarious labor forces constantly displaced around the globe as a result of the caprices of global financial powers and of the consequent degradation of the environment because of induced climate change?
Many artists, as critical witnesses, for years, have been raising attention, asking uncomfortable questions and advocating the impelling necessity of change.
Some have tried to push their own individual worlds and visions, while others have come up with a different stance: they do not see themselves as actors who engage in interactive relationships with the purpose of enforce tonly heir individual will.
Instead, they recognize themselves as the expression of a variety of meaningful relations which apply equally to the human and non-human and extend across the complexity of cultures, identities and socio-political systems.
Belonging to different generations and backgrounds, having been raised between cultures and countries, and/or having spent a consistent amount of time in different environments from the ones they were born in, these artists-researchers have consciously chosen to not submit their practices and their journey to rigid paradigms and binary logics, letting this inherent dislocation to re-shape their perceptions and experience of the world.
Understanding their quest and their own lives as states of nomadic-becoming, they explore and sustain these connections in an open, empirical and experimental way, where forms and praxis are both collective and individual.
The nature of the single works, articulated in a non-hierarchic interaction can show to what extent a nomadic-in-becoming socio-political order can emerge as a democratical process, through the self-organized coordination of multiplicity.
Echoing recent anthropological and archeological discoveries about the degree of flexibility and invention of pre-historic societies (like those recorded and explained in D.Graeber and D. Wengrow’s book “A new history of humanity” ) they convey a highly relevant message for our current situation: no imposed shared values or leading culture are necessary, as a new social-imagination can develop through the cooperation of highly diverse actors, mutate when the interaction dissolve and being re-invented in the next one.
Following a path traced by Spinoza’s monism and further re-elaborated through recent critical theoretical frames including post-humanism, new materialism, affect, identity and post-colonial theory and eco-politics these artists-researchers, working in an interdisciplinary and transcultural mode, tackle the current disturbances and contradictions of life and culture in a fluctuant relational interaction, as heterogeneous elements of a mutual necessary nourishment to activate anti-hegemonic and de-territorializing processes and dynamics.
The primarily instinctive and then strategically and tactically elaborated challenge is to undermine and destabilize the dogmatic power structures and infra-structures through the contagious organic energy of their nomadic-in-becoming interventions, actions, inquiries, and storytelling.
To underline the curatorial stance of defining a constellation of autonomous possibilities, all the different works displayed are introduced through the words and statements of the artists themselves.
Alessandro Rolandi,
Bern 2022
Curator Alessandro Rolandi (Italy)
Studied Chemistry in the universities of Pavia and Siena
Experimental Theatre and film-making with Dominic Defazio,
History of Art at Christie’s Education, Paris.
He has been living and working in Beijing since 2003, as a multimedia and performance artist, director, curator, researcher, author and educator. His work focuses on social intervention and relational dynamics to expand the notion of art practice beyond existing structures, spaces and hierarchies and engage directly with reality in multiple ways.
He is the founder, in 2011, and director of the Social Sensibility Research & Development Department at Bernard Controls in Beijing and Paris andone of the founding partner of the Social Sensibility Research Institute (SoSense).
https://www.alessandrorolandi.org/
https://socialsensibility.org/
Umberto Cavenago
The Italian artist Umberto Cavenago has a very special place on this occasion with his project “Sweet Home”.
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