Italian Video Art Screening
zajia lab // beijing project space

Opening: November 10th from 4pm to 8pm
Duration: November 11st to November 25th 2012
Every Wednesday from 7pm to 8:30pm – From Friday to Sunday from 5pm to 6pm

Italian Video Art Screening curated by Cecilia Freschini

Artists: Enrico Bressan, Arianna Carossa + Ludiko, Gennaro Cicalese, Federica Cogo, Girolamo Marri, Sebastiano Mortellaro, Sabrina Muzi, Maria Pecchioli, Natalia Saurin, Deborah Vrizzi.

Organized by: Lab-Yit | The Italian Contemporary Art Platform in China
Co-organizer: City of Verona – Cultural Department and Visual Container
Exhibition sponsor:zajia lab // beijing project space

PLAYTIME
Freedom begins with irony

When we consider contemporary art it is probable that, at first sight, we do not think about those aspects centred on playing, jokes, or irony. And yet all of this is not just a very important part of our daily life, but it also is a very precise area of interest that – just as much as the banality of the life of each individual – should be a centre of interest for art events. We are dealing with a social attitude that, efficiently and knowingly, manages to combine both an ironical and a critical spirit.

This whole project is characterized by a heuristic aspect that fascinates us with the artists’ absurd and brilliant intelligence. On show are a series of videos made by ten Italian artists who, with their perceptive ideas, highlight the ambiguity inherent in existence: they force us to face up to intimate and spontaneous thoughts about daily life. Here their irrational and detached tones reveal the consistency of an uncertain and unpredictable present. From this there emerges a sense of precariousness that is sharply separated from all the well-known processes for turning everything into showbiz, a precariousness that affirms its opposition both through the explicit action of satire and through the light-heartedness of humour.

The incongruence of what we see leads to a rhetorical game which highlights some of the most tragic and absurd aspects of contemporary condition. A paradoxical amusement with the aim of demystifying and making a kind of complaint: Snow White kills a dwarf; an outdated prostitute only sells kisses; an Italian tries to lose his own passport; someone plays with a globe; a Mafia informer explains a recipe for rice croquettes; others, instead, vainly seek impossible balances and destabilizing situations.

Irony is an extraordinary cognitive tool that requires full mastery of abstract thought and, with just a few hints, manages to make flexible the boundaries of meaning and to act as a lubricant for social relationships. Like a matryoshka, it is able to reveal new levels of inquiry with regard to the same question. Thanks to a radical reversal of our own implicit and primary point of view we arrive at further meanings, and this happens because of a reconfiguration of the point of departure.

The resources of irony become basic whenever it is necessary to take into consideration the usual cognitive and affective positions that are implicit on the edges of our horizon. Of course, whether this process of putting things into perspective can be undertaken or not cannot be guaranteed in advance. However, our very awareness of disruption, and our acceptance of the incoherence resulting from the lack of adherence to determined expectancies, is a specifically human ability.

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