Last week saw the end of the 9th edition of the Ibrida Festival, an event that brings experimental audiovisuals to Forlì every year, including multimedia installations and other types of ‘hybrid’ productions. Every year the festival reconfirms new features, the programme and the locations involved. The festival headquarters this year returned to the Fabrica delle Candele, which had hosted the first edition. The care with which the festival directors, Francesca Leoni and Davide Mastrangelo, and the jury select the works they receive, each year more numerous, through an open call, is reconfirmed.
A series of video festivals, workshops and meetings are this year dedicated to the theme artificial reality. There is no shortage of live performances enlivening each evening of the Festival, including: Gianfranco Brebbia’s films with live soundtracks by Enrico Malatesta, Attila Faravelli and Nicola Ratti, a project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Milano. In visible light by Gianmarco Donaggio, between cinema and live arts, the Cyclope, an audio-visual performance by Carlos Casas, the explosive GO!YA!, a project born from the encounter between N.A.I.P. and drummer Julie Ant (Giulia Formica). On the final evening Luca Maria Baldini and Igor Imhoff presented Siderea, an interactive journey (produced by Vertov in collaboration with the Trieste
As always, the festival is extended to various locations in the city of Forlì and a variety of collateral activities, such as the beautiful workshop on video and artificial intelligence held by Mateusz Mirowslaw Lis, a researcher at SoPhia, a laboratory of Artificial Intelligence applied to audiovisuals, and the series of meetings where artists were invited to talk about their work and discuss issues related to artificial reality, the theme of this edition.
The centrality of video again this year extended to installation with SVCCY’s Posthuman Regeneration cycle, Ozge Samanci’s You Are the Ocean, virtual reality work with Lino Strangis’ The Eternal Diving and the intervention of Kika Nikolela with works from her NFT collection.
The festival concluded with the awarding of the prestigious prizes by an international jury, composed of Kika Nicolela, Hernando Urrutia and Veronica D’Auria, who decreed the winning works of the International Forlì Hybrid Festival Prize and the Italian Video Art Prize, which will be acquired by the prestigious international collection of Brazilian patron Alfredo Hertzog.
The International Forlì Hybrid Prize was awarded to Metamorphose by the Japanese Yoshihisa Kitamura, the Italian Video Art Prize to the video Binary Blues by Francesca Fini, and the Fabrica Prize, which offers an artist under 25 the opportunity to participate in a six-month artistic residency programme at the Benetton group’s communication research centre in Treviso, was awarded to Alessandra Breviario for È incidente.
The three jurors also awarded as many special mentions: Kika Nicolela to Cyclepaths by Anton Cla, Hernando Urrutia to Self-Portrait by Valentin Sismann and Veronica D’Auria to The view from the plane by Daniele Grosso.
While the Festival has closed its doors and work is already beginning on the next edition, there remains the exhibition on Francesca Fini that served as a prologue to the project, which opened on 2 September and can now be visited until 13 October at the Fondazione Dino Zoli, curated by Bruno di Marino.
“Body (S)cul(p)ture”, the title of the exhibition, says a lot about the intermedial nature of the exhibition and of the artist who in all her work moves in interstitial spaces, of languages, gender and genres, chaos and control. At the centre is the body and its interface between image and technology. The hybrid spirit of the artist and the exhibition is also the perfect emanation of the festival and the two directors, who are now busy with their artistic productions (which they always carefully set aside during the festival to give space to guests) and the edition to come.
FRANCESCA FINI. BODY (S)CUL(P)TURE, curated by Bruno di Marino, Dino Zoli Foundation, Forlì (Italy) 02.09 – 13.10.2024
images: (cover 1) Francesca Fini, «Binary Blues», 2003, still from video, (2) Ibrida Festival, central stage at Fabrica delle Candele, ph: George Matei (3-4) Award Cerimony, Ibrida Festival 2024, ph: George Matei (5) Francesca-Fini, «Typo-3», performance-2016
