Month: September 2016

Axel Straschnoy’s new short film will be screened at KUMU Art Film Festival, Tallinn, to be held from September 29 through October 2.

The Kumu Art Film Festival (KuFF) is the first and only cultural event in Estonia to focus on the relationship between film and the visual arts. During the four days of KuFF, documentary, staged and experimental art and artist films will be screened in the Kumu auditorium. The film-makers are all connected to the visual arts in one way or another, and they reveal this relationship in their films. This means focusing on the pictorial language of film and its dislocation, documenting the internal life of the art world, combining film and video art strategies, and much more.

This year, the festival will have familiar formats and thematic blocks (e.g. a focus on one author or archive) but also introduce, more consciously and directly, the relationship between art and film by exchanging the exhibition environment for the screen surface.

KuFF will also continue cooperation with the Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Fundacja ARTon and is glad to present this year two programmes from “Moving Pictures: Artists’ Films from the Film London Jarman Award” curated by the British Council and Film London.

The festival begins on Thursday, 29 September, with the opening and the first screening, and continues from Friday to Sunday.

In addition to films, the festival includes artist talks.

Straschnoy’s work will be screened on Saturday, October 1, at 18:45 in the Museum auditorium.

For more information on Axel Straschnoy please click here.

For more information on KUMU Art Film Festival please click here.

Nel contesto della mostra Naturalia et artificialia, ECCENTRIC Art & Research è lieta di ospitare:

Martedì 18 ottobre, ore 18.30
Tavola rotonda:
La scienza: istruzioni per l’uso

in occasione dell’uscita del volume Mondi altri: Processi di soggettivazione nell’era postumana a partire del pensiero di Antonio Caronia, a cura di Amos Bianchi e Giovanni Leghissa (Milano: Mimesis).

“Avevano seguito i loro istinti più nobili e fondato le loro vite sul principio che il denaro non poteva comprare la felicità, scoprendo solo pian piano le molte tipologie di infelicità che avrebbe potuto tenere alla larga. Russell era solito dividere l’umanità, soprattutto dopo qualche bicchiere, in due squadre contrapposte: Arte e Amore contro Potere e Denaro. Un po’ trito, ma lei era orgogliosa del fatto che ci credesse davvero, e della sua fedeltà alla propria squadra. Nel bene o nel male, era anche la sua.”

(J. McInerney, La luce dei giorni, trad. it. di A. Silvestri, Milano 2016)

Ai partecipanti alla tavola rotonda viene chiesto di rispondere alle domande: esistono queste due squadre? e se esistono, in quale squadra si colloca la scienza?

Introduzione: Gabriela Galati, direttrice di ECCENTRIC e docente di Teoria e metodo dei mass media presso NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano,
Intervengono:
Amos Bianchi, docente di Estetica e Storia del Cinema presso NABA,
Giovanni Leghissa, Professore associato presso il Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze dell’educazione dell’Università di Torino,
Maresa Lippolis, course leader del Triennio accademico di Media Design e Arti Multimediali presso NABA.

ECCENTRIC Art & Research
presso MyOwnGallery|Superstudio Più
via Tortona, 27 Milano
E: info@ec-centric.eu
W: ec-centric.eu
12-21 ottobre
lun-ven, ore 13-20, sabato ore 15-21, o su appuntamento.

Immagine: Sarah Ciracì, Click (2016). Digital print, 33 x 60 cm.

ECCENTRIC Art & Research presents Minority Report, a new section dedicated to showcasing young, talented and promising artists. Artists who despite of being at the very beginning of their careers already evidence great potential: A glimpse of, and a bet on the future.

The first selected artist for Minority Report is Carlo Gambirasio (Verona 1994), and his work will be featured at Naturalia et artificialia.

For more information on Minority Report and Carlo Gambirasio please click here.

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ITALIANO

ECCENTRIC Art & Research annuncia il primo artista selezionato per la sezione Minority Report: Carlo Gambirasio.

ECCENTRIC Art & Research presenta Minority Report, una nuova sezione dedicata a promuovere artisti giovani, talentuosi e promettenti. Artisti che nonostante siano all’inizio della loro carriera dimostrano già di avere un grande potenziale: uno sguardo e una scommessa sul futuro.

Il primo artista selezionato per Minority Report è Carlo Gambirasio (Verona 1994), e il suo lavoro sarà parte della mostra Naturalia et artificialia.

Per maggiori informazioni su Minority Report e Carlo Gambirasio si prega di cliccare qui.

Image captions: Carlo Gambirasio, L’ancestrale (2016). Steel, clock mechanism, sensors, software; 10 cm x 32 cm Ø.

Axel Straschnoy’s Neomylodon Listai Anneghino will be exhibited at Inter Arts Center, Lund University, Malmö, opening on October 14th, 2016.

Starting in 1895 with the finding in a cave in southern Chilean Patagonia of a peculiar skin, the world was soon to face a sensationalist chase for an animal that was thought long since extinct. It was a very large mammal, weighing around 1.000 kg, which had both external fur and a protective armor embedded into the skin, which was surprisingly well preserved.

Two Argentinian palaentologists played out a drama of scientific rivalry. Dr. Florentino Ameghino was first to write about the beast and named it Neomylodon Listai Ameghino, declaring it still alive and roaming the plains of Patagonia. Dr. F. P. Moreno responded by pronouncing it extinct since thousands of years. A number of European scientists arrived at the spot or had material sent to their museums for closer scrutiny, creating an intense scientific debate about the animal. This way, some of the material found in the cave ended up in Sweden, other parts in London and Berlin. Some findings made their way much later also to Helsinki.

While scientists were soon doubtful about the existence of the living Neomylodon, the popular press was all the more enthusiastic. A price was promised to the one who could hunt down a specimen, and the Daily Express in London sent off a hunting team. Over the years the interest faded, as of course no-one could find and shoot an animal that had been extinct since more than 10.000 years. The Neomylodon proved to be a result more of wishful thinking than of science.

Axel Straschnoy’s exhibition Neomylodon Listai Ameghino approaches this footnote in the history of science critically and from a multitude of angles. The four vitrines are designed to host the complete findings now spread to different museums in Argentina, Chile, England, Germany, Sweden and Finland, plus the originals of the essential texts published on the animal during the years around 1900. But while the texts remain the same each time the work is displayed on its tour across the world, two of the vitrines will be mostly empty and only show what is available in the local collections.

Thus mirrored, the story of the Neomylodon becomes less a story about science than about the construction of myths as well as of truths. It is also a study of colonialism at work. It quite clearly displays the ironic truth that barely any findings ended up in the country where they were excavated.

Not the least, Neomylodon Listai Ameghino addresses the cultures of display, as well as the roles of the spectator in science and art. By moving between different ways of seeing and of showing artifacts, the vitrines themselves become witnesses of how authority and “truth” is transferred through the methodologies of display.

Pontus Kyander

For more information and updates on the project, please click here.

For more information on Axel Straschnoy, please click here.