Der Dokumentarfilm erzählt von einer demenzkranken Bewohnerin und ihrer Betreuerin im Chagrin Valley Elderly Home, einem Indoor-Dorf, welches das Amerika der 1950er-Jahre nachbildet. Die Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner können dort der realen, von Verwirrung und Schmerz geprägten Welt entfliehen, indem sie sich in eine Simulation von vertrauten Szenen ihrer Jugend zurückziehen.
In einem Lagerhaus am Stadtrand von Cleveland leben die demenzkranken Bewohner eines Altenheims in der kristallisierten Vergangenheit des Amerikas der 1950er Jahre. Die Heimbewohner und ihre Betreuer teilen ihren Lebenskampf und träumen von einer besseren Zukunft oder einer Rückkehr in eine sehr vertraute Vergangenheit. Chagrin Valley enthüllt die rückläufige Amnesie und die kollektiven Fiktionen, die die Fassade des modernen Amerikas ausmachen, sowie unsere kollektive Nachlässigkeit gegenüber den Pflegebedürftigen - ob dement oder nicht.
«Changing Matters» erkundet, wie eine Kamera als Inputgerät neue Mechaniken und Interaktionen hervorbringen kann. Der:die Spieler:in taucht in eine abstrakte, aber farbenfrohe Welt ein, in der sich der Avatar ausschliesslich durch die eigenen Körperbewegungen steuern lässt. Die Spieler:innen gehen in die Hocke, laufen umher oder hüpfen, um mit der Umgebung zu verschmelzen – und bewirken so ständige Veränderung.
FILM
2022
Aftere (Kurzspielfilm) | Rolle: Ida | Yeron Stocker, Felix Scherer
Zurich Film Festival Daily Trailer | Rolle: Kinobesucherin
2020 - 2021: Meisner Workshop mit Peter Geisberg, Berlin
2019: Schauspielintensivkurs, actorfactory, Berlin
GEARBEITETE ROLLEN (Auswahl)
— Tschick | Tschick | Wolfgang Herrndorf
— Maria Stuart | Maria Stuart | Schiller
— Heiner | Todesanzeige | Heiner Müller
— Zweiter Mann (Freundschaft) | Die Wiedervereinigung der beiden Koreas | Joël Pommerat
— Julia | Romeo und Julia | Shakespeare
— Desiree | Krankheit der Jugend | Nuran David Calis
— Sonntag | Sternstunden der Bedeutungslosigkeit | Rocko Schamoni
WEITERES
2022
Sessellift-Performance für Livia Rita
ZKB Züri-Reihe | Fotos: Maurice Haas
Dramaturgie von «Schiller.Type.Beat.» beim TiaR-Festival
Mit «Check den Kontext» zeigen Studierende von Cast / Audiovisual Media ihre Sicht auf die No-Billag-Debatte. Sie wollen wissen, wie sehr die Schweizer Musikindustrie, Filmszene und der Journalismus von der SRG und somit von Gebühren abhängig sind und was die Folgen wären, wenn die Gelder ausbleiben würden.
In der 7-teilige Webserie kommen prominente Vertreter aus der Medienbranche, Kulturindustrie sowie der Politik zu Wort. Bis zur Abstimmung am 4. März 2018 werden weitere Inhalte auf sozialen Medien erscheinen.
Dieses Projekt ist im Rahmen des Crossmedia Moduls im 5. Semester entstanden unter der Leitung von Marc Lepetit (Dozent bei Cast / Audiovisual Media) und Eric Andreae (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter bei Cast / Audiovisual Media).
Mit dem rasanten Fortschritt der künstlichen Intelligenz wächst deren Einfluss auf das Leben und die Denkprozesse des Menschen. Aktuelle Smart-Technologien verfolgen unsere Aktionen und setzen diese in Computeralgorithmen um, so dass eine hybride Entität zwischen Mensch und Technologie entsteht.
Chimaera erforscht im Rahmen einer zweiteiligen künstlerischen Performance und mithilfe von zeitverzögerten Feedbacksystemen jene Elemente, die dazu beitragen, dass eine hybride Entität als autonom wahrgenommen werden kann, wie sie in Interaktion mit Menschen tritt und wie sie Menschen inspiriert und beeinflusst.
Der erste Teil von Chimaera besteht aus der audiovisuellen Komposition Mreža und der zweite Teil aus der Tanzperformance Schatten. Beide Setups haben ihren individuellen Interaktionscharakter, die zur Entstehung einer hybriden Entität beitragen. Im ersten Teil der Aufführung wird die Interaktion eines Performers mit einem speziell für diesen Zweck entwickelten Instrument namens Pauk beobachtet. Im zweiten Teil wird die Interaktion einer Performerin und ihres Avatars beobachtet.
YGRG16X: Death by Landscape is an ambitious and extended serial project that started in Autumn 2019. It stems from the ongoing YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (YGRG) research taking from it a serial and fragmented form and collective reading as narrative trigger. This new work is a sensual architecture of bodies, spaces, images, light, sound and objects that serves as a base structure for a poetic essay extended through time, location and media. YGRG16X: Death by Landscape will take many forms — from experimental video, to cinematographic performances; teleplay recorded in front of a live audience and within the exhibition setting; disparate sculptural objects, props and costume exhibited independently or in empty sets - all contributing to a fragmented and dispersed work that will be on display until Autumn 2020.
According to Donna Haraway, embodiment is not about fixed location in a reified body, but about nodes in fields, inflections in orientations, and responsibility for difference in material-semiotic fields of meaning. YGRG16X: Death by Landscape will be looking deeply into embodiment, place, sexuality, temporality, integrity and breakdown - the topics that are continuously explore by YGRG. This project contextualises the instability of boundaries that renders the reading and performing body and its surroundings as the site of an active and ongoing set of relations, positing the interdependence of the text, the body, the movement, the environment and the technology.
Fragmented in its form, YGRG16X: Death by Landscape is a hybrid project resisting an integrity expected of an artwork, striving for a fragmentariness rather than holism. Aesthetically, it is rooted in the low budget b-horror and experimental film from Eastern Europe, and explores the format of a teleplay horror-mocumentary superimposed onto the gallery space. Conceptually the project explores the horror that is attributed to being outside (of norm, society, etc.), which is inherently part of queer experience. Beginning with the Gothic novel, horror allowed the writer to express her desires under the guise of fiction, yet riddled with anxiety of being separated from society. Developing the ideas for this project the artists have been influenced by such writers as U. K. Le Guin, A. Richter, D. Haraway, O. Tokarczuk, O.Butler, J. Kristeva, M. Mendes and T. Morton, and their non-binary understanding of the world. In view of the contemporary ecological anxiety, Gaweda and Kulbokaitė strongly believe that thinking through the queer experience can offer ways to renegotiate our complex relationshipto ‘Nature’, which has historically been defined as separate to ourselves - as outside.
With YGRG16X: Death by Landscape the artists are interested in evoking the eerie which itself is a haunting presence of a monstrosity that doesn’t amount to a single identifiable moment of fear or source of horror, but rather is a prolonged experience of dread.
The production of the film was initiated in January 2019 during a residency at NKDale in Norway, including the preliminary writing of the script and planning of the storyboard. A significant portion of the video material was also collected there - including shots of the winter landscape, forrest scenes, both shots of detail and atmospheric scenes - all using a 360° camera.
In its presentation at the OnCurating project space in Zurich in May and June 2020, YGRG16X: Death by Landscape will take shape of a choreographic performance and a four week exhibition. The performance will be executed by dancers and will be created in collaboration with a choreographer. This will add yet another layer to the multi-facetted work of YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP emphasising movement of the mind and the body and facilitating the idea of reding through movement and dance. This opening performance will take place in an installation of probs and costumes previously used for the videos of YGRG16X: Death by Landscape. The performance will be filmed and the performance video will be on display over the course of the exhibition. This way the artists emphasise the dichotomy between presence and absence.
PROGRAM:
Saturday 19 October, 15:00 – 18:30
PERFORMANCE | Abissi (Abysses) by Virginia Zanetti
Saturday 19 October, 18:30
VISIT AND ARTISTS TALK | with Filippo Berta and Virginia Zanetti
Video projection: Legarsi alla montagna (1981) by Maria Lai
At the KUNSTRAUM (5. K12), ZHdK Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, TONI-AREAL,
Zürich, Entrance Förrlibuckstrasse, 5th floor
A project of: IIC – Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Zurich for 15 Giornata del Contemporaneo IT.
In collaboration with: Migration Museum – Zurich (CH), Traffic Gallery – Bergamo (IT), Nomas Foundation – Rome (IT), Illisso Casa Editrice – Nuoro (IT), OnCurating Space – Zurich (CH).
Chi avrà più filo tesserà reflects on the subject of participation in art through the performative practices of three Italian artists of different generations: Virginia Zanetti (1981) and Filippo Berta (1977) together with Maria Lai (1919 – 2013), one of the most significant artistic personalities in the Italian recent past.
The event’s prime focuses are artistic practices that weave historical and social context with traditions and new rituals. In such circumstances, Virginia Zanetti will present her participative performance Abissi (Abysses). Filippo Berta, with the help of the images, will narrate to the public the story behind One by One, an art project which was selected as the winner of the last edition (2019) of the Italian Council Award (MIBAC – Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali). Both artists will discuss their works alongside with the screening of the video Legarsi alla Montagna (1981), which documents the homonymous performance staged by Maria Lai with the residents of Ulassai (Sardinia – IT).
The selected works share the common intent to generate acts which imply participation as means of self-definition. They entail public activation as a necessary condition for exploitation of new meanings and interpretations of the complexity of human relationships.
Virginia Zanetti’s performance, Abysses, will take place on October 19th from 15:00 to 19:00. This will involve residents and migrants living in Zurich, in the attempt to create a collective work by means of an embroidery practice on an ultramarine blue fabric.
This color symbolizes the sea, the ecosystem from which living beings originate, a trajectory often used by individuals to move from one place to another on our planet.
In the course of performative action, the artist invites participants to embroider a star with a precious golden thread. This star’s shape looks like those already painted by Giotto in the vault of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (IT) at the beginning of the 14th century.
Embroidery gives opportunity to share and collect memories related to the sea. This practice becomes a projection of desires and memories. It composes constellations made of today’s dreams.
At the end of the performance the fabric becomes the subject of a symbolic action: raised towards the sky, the blue abyss becomes sky itself. A sky full of new meanings in a delicate balance between space and time.
Filippo Berta’s ongoing project, One by One, will be discussed for the first time. The artist himself will narrate the impossible attempt to count all the thorns of the metal wire fences which still create geopolitical and cultural divisions as well as polarizations in different countries around the world: Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Turkey, Korea, Mexico and United States. Recently built or still under construction, barbed wire walls stand as analogical presences within the society of digital control, revealing the conceptual contradictions of culturally fragile and socially divisive political choices.
In One by One, the artist involves the communities living close to such borders: each resident becomes a performer invited to count aloud, in his own language, each single thorn. The simple gesture of counting unmasks the social disharmonies induced by the logic of confinement, where ideological frontiers that prevent the natural human sociality exist.
The video document Legare Collegare by Tonino Casula, is the only video documentation testifying Maria Lai’s performance Legarsi alla Montagna (1981), a relational experiment dedicated to Ulassai, the artist’s birthplace in the mountains in Sardinia (IT).
Starting from the reinterpretation of an ancient, almost forgotten local legend – it narrates of a little girl found and rescued after a landslide in a cave where she took shelter during a thunderstorm while she tried to chase a light blue ribbon that appeared from nowhere – Maria Lai conceived a performative action reinterpreting the symbolic significance of the story. She involved women, men, children, young, and elderly people from Ulassai by provoking the action of tying houses, doors, balconies to one another. Each of them was asked to use for the purpose a different knot, according to their relationship: friendship, love, or conflict. A collective act based on the concept of union and transformation, in a region which already suffered from a progressive deurbanization.
This propitiatory ritual made everyone an interpreter of a new reality, designed to sew places to people and people to each other through infinite threads, by means of which the inseparable link between art and life was clearly expressed.
FILIPPO BERTA (1977)
The social strains generated by the relationship between individuals and the society to which they belong, constitute the subject of Filippo Berta’s artistic research. The boundaries marking this dialectical condition, quite often conflictual and problematic, are subject of analysis in his work. His attention to these social disharmonies translates into pieces which celebrate the daily gestures. The latter are so represented as to unmask their differences, tensions or contradictions. His work develops through collective performances, which are later synthetized in a single iconographic image and minimalistic videos.
Filippo Berta’s works have been exhibited or directly realized in different museums, biennials and cultural institutions all over the world. In 2019 his project, One by One, was selected among the winners of the Italian Council, an international call held by the MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali).
VIRGINIA ZANETTI (1981)
The work of Virginia Zanetti attempts to identify and consequently break down the boundaries that divide the work of art from its fruitors. She obtains results by using simple and already acquired devices. She overcomes the conceptual gaps that lay at the most basic and archetypal level of knowledge, in the relational dynamics or within the codes shared by a community. Her works become an integral part of the environment in which they are conceived and produced; they function as collectors of human dynamics rather than simple objects of contemplation.
Virginia has several works exhibited or performed in Italian museums and abroad. In 2019 she won the photography award at Bologna Arte Fiera.
MARIA LAI (1919-2013)
Maria Lai was the only woman to attend the Sculpture Class at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1943 to 1945, under the guidance of Arturo Martini.
Considered one of the most influential Italian artist of the twentieth century, her work was marked by the unconventional use of techniques and materials stolen from everyday life and related to domestic and typical female work: bread and looms, embroidery and sewn books, ceramics and terracotta. Inspired by fairy tales and traditions of her native island, Sardinia, at the beginning of the 80s she turned her artistic research towards interventions that were directly connected with landscape. One of the most influential works remains the performance act Legarsi alla Montagna (1981). In a strongly symbolical act, all the houses of the small village of Ulassai were tied to the surrounding mountains with a blue ribbon over ten kilometres long.
The village of Ulassai hosts today a contemporary art museum La Stazione dell’Arte, which has collected over 100 works of Maria Lai, thanks to donors worldwide.
Artist: Ekin Bernay
Curated by: Gözde Filinta and Camille Regli
PROGRAM:
Friday 8 November: 19.00 – 22.00 | Vernissage and performance
Saturday 9 November: 14.00 – 16.30 | Participatory work with the artist
In an environment that recalls ‘home,’ an ongoing cacophony of voices resonates in the space. It is the recording of multiple people answering ‘where is home?’ and what it means to them. The question was raised by artist Ekin Bernay when she started questioning the feeling of distance establishing itself between herself and ‘home’. In times of exponential moves and trajectories around the globe, our sense of belonging is redefined; is home what remains physically, or symbolically close to our hearts? The feeling of vulnerability to spaces is explored through intense, yet fragile movements. ‘Where is home?’ is an invitation to explore our inner feelings of ‘home’ and its sensitive position.
The work is a new adaptation of ‘Where is home?’ (2018) by Ekin Bernay, presented in London by Naz Balkaya and co-organized by Performistanbul.
Ekin Bernay (*1987, Ankara, Turkey) is a performance artist, dance & movement psychotherapist and director living in London. She has 19 years of active dance, movement experience, including performances at important stages such as Sadlers Wells, Royal Academy of Arts, Tate Modern. Ekin’s work focuses on the healing qualities of performance and movements, often using the audience as part of her work, for instance by directing the audience through text or sound in order to create choreographing situations. Her work comes from personal experiences as well as existential questions in relation to everything that surrounds us.