Alessandra Bergamaschi
Cossyra
Skånes Konstförening
18/1 - 10/2 2013
http://cargocollective.com/alessandrabergamaschi/cv
Alessandra Bergamaschi's language is metaphorical but full of twists which leaves you, never reading the work straight through the metaphor.
The work balances between different narratives and sometimes, the works talk concretely about the balance between different forces - The artist learns to walk on stilts. A balloon strives upwards, but is dragged down by the weight of a feather. The utopian vision balances towards a dystopical reality. An objective registration crashes with the subjective gaze. The harmony necessary when two swings cross each others paths, and risks ending in a painful crash.
The exhibition is largely built around two works: Aterro do Flamengo and Cossyra. These two works draws in different directions but both describes a place and a situation that bears a form of testimony of civilization and its decay. Both works problematizes film-media's ability to registrate space and time.
Aterro do Flamengo
One morning when Alessandra woke up and looked out of her window, she saw a man lying dead in an outdoor gym. Her reaction was to start filming the situation. The film is approximately forty minutes long, showing what was happening around the dead man.
The most evident in this film is the indifference. People come and go. One man notices that the man is dead and starts doing sit-ups a few feet from the corpse.
The indifference is just as apparent in the artist herself in her cold registration of the situation. Even our role as viewers, we who emerges into the drama and gets fascinated by this indifference.
The location of this whole spectacle is the park Brigadeiro Eduardo Gomes Park in Rio, popularly known as Aterro do Flamengo. A park designed by the great Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, a man who had great utopian visions with his modernist architecture.
The reaction to Alessandra's film, Aterro do Flamengo and the interpretation of it, depends largely on the relationship you have with death and this is largely a cultural issue. Despite cultural differences the film has been awarded in both Brazil and Europe.
Cossyra
A trip to the island of Pantelleria in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea is the starting point of this film. But how to capture an island with thousands of years of history? An island which every visitor develops their own relationship to? This is the starting point for this highly fragmented work.
The film Cossyra includes visual fragments from Salvatore Gabriele's photojournalism, Floreana Prato's tourist images, Mario Valenza's archival images, images from internet and Alessandra's own videos . These images are linked with audio fragments from three of Michelangelo Antonioni movies – films concerning problems in communication.
The island of Pantelleria is located in the Mediterranean Ocean. Its history is the framework of this film, but is not the main story. This isolated and barren volcanic island located midway between Africa and Europe can denote as a “nothing” - a negation. At the same time it is also the opposite "everything", an island where people live their whole lives. The island lies approximately in the middle of the world, but is also isolated - a hub and at the same time a periphery. It was on this island that the legend told Odysseus was imprisoned for six years. Today another kind of stranded people there, as this is often the final destination of shipwrecked refugees from Africa.
Alessandra Bergamaschi is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
/Per Brunskog
Cossyra
Skånes Konstförening
18/1 - 10/2 2013
http://cargocollective.com/alessandrabergamaschi/cv
Alessandra Bergamaschi's language is metaphorical but full of twists which leaves you, never reading the work straight through the metaphor.
The work balances between different narratives and sometimes, the works talk concretely about the balance between different forces - The artist learns to walk on stilts. A balloon strives upwards, but is dragged down by the weight of a feather. The utopian vision balances towards a dystopical reality. An objective registration crashes with the subjective gaze. The harmony necessary when two swings cross each others paths, and risks ending in a painful crash.
The exhibition is largely built around two works: Aterro do Flamengo and Cossyra. These two works draws in different directions but both describes a place and a situation that bears a form of testimony of civilization and its decay. Both works problematizes film-media's ability to registrate space and time.
Aterro do Flamengo
One morning when Alessandra woke up and looked out of her window, she saw a man lying dead in an outdoor gym. Her reaction was to start filming the situation. The film is approximately forty minutes long, showing what was happening around the dead man.
The most evident in this film is the indifference. People come and go. One man notices that the man is dead and starts doing sit-ups a few feet from the corpse.
The indifference is just as apparent in the artist herself in her cold registration of the situation. Even our role as viewers, we who emerges into the drama and gets fascinated by this indifference.
The location of this whole spectacle is the park Brigadeiro Eduardo Gomes Park in Rio, popularly known as Aterro do Flamengo. A park designed by the great Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, a man who had great utopian visions with his modernist architecture.
The reaction to Alessandra's film, Aterro do Flamengo and the interpretation of it, depends largely on the relationship you have with death and this is largely a cultural issue. Despite cultural differences the film has been awarded in both Brazil and Europe.
Cossyra
A trip to the island of Pantelleria in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea is the starting point of this film. But how to capture an island with thousands of years of history? An island which every visitor develops their own relationship to? This is the starting point for this highly fragmented work.
The film Cossyra includes visual fragments from Salvatore Gabriele's photojournalism, Floreana Prato's tourist images, Mario Valenza's archival images, images from internet and Alessandra's own videos . These images are linked with audio fragments from three of Michelangelo Antonioni movies – films concerning problems in communication.
The island of Pantelleria is located in the Mediterranean Ocean. Its history is the framework of this film, but is not the main story. This isolated and barren volcanic island located midway between Africa and Europe can denote as a “nothing” - a negation. At the same time it is also the opposite "everything", an island where people live their whole lives. The island lies approximately in the middle of the world, but is also isolated - a hub and at the same time a periphery. It was on this island that the legend told Odysseus was imprisoned for six years. Today another kind of stranded people there, as this is often the final destination of shipwrecked refugees from Africa.
Alessandra Bergamaschi is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
/Per Brunskog