Forlì hosts the ninth edition of Ibrida, a festival directed by Davide Mastrangelo and Francesca Leoni, a duo of video artists who set aside their work every year to give space to colleagues, researchers, multimedia artists and the public, invited in a lively context, a network that becomes richer every year and an event that constantly grows with new projects and realities involved. Even during the pandemic period, they have managed not to stop the sector most affected by the global downturn. This year, the Festival returns once again enriched. We talk about it with Davide Mastrangelo and Francesca Leoni in person, while waiting to reach Forlì on 2 September for the opening of Francesca Fini’s exhibition, curated by Bruno di Marino at the Fondazione Bruno Zoli, and from 20 to 22 for the three very intense days dedicated to the festival, including installations, video projections and meetings.
Elena Giulia Rossi: Ibrida Festival is now in its ninth edition. Each year, the festival has grown in every direction, in the variety of events as well as in the number of participants, international and local collaborations. You managed to do this even during the most difficult period for the performing arts, the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. What’s new this year?
Francesca Leoni and Davide Mastrangelo: The theme of this ninth edition is Artificial Reality. We have gradually grown over the years by adding something significant and important to each edition, which has allowed us to move forward without facing major stumbling blocks. Organizing a festival during Covid was challenging, but we must say that even that edition taught us a lot.
Last year, we became a proper festival, launching the Ibrida Video Art Prize. The big news this year is that there are now two awards: one for international video art and one exclusively for Italian video art. These two awards are unique due to the acquisition of the works, which will become part of the international Alfredo Hertzog collection in a country—Italy—where video art is still not widely sold.
We’re happy to return, after many years, to the place that hosted our first editions: Fabbrica delle Candele in Forlì. This inviting space, which embraces the public thanks to its unique structure, will host two screening rooms for video art, interactive installations, and live performances. This year’s programme is especially rich, allowing the public to freely enjoy it as they explore the various festival spaces. Finally, we’ll also be present at other locations in the city, such as Capostrino for talks and the Dino Zoli Foundation with an exhibition.
The festival grew out of your passion for video art and moving images to include video art and cinema. However, you’ve always extended this interest to hybrid languages. In an interview of ours published on Arshake in 2020, you told us how the expression “hybrid languages” was rarely used when you founded the festival in 2015 and how it was just starting to enter the artistic discourse during those years. Today, do you feel you can add anything else to the changing meaning of this term?
The festival grew out of our passion for video art, both as spectators and as video artists. We created several works that participated in national and international festivals, but, to ensure fairness, we never included these in our own festival. As artists, we felt the need to raise awareness of video art and digital art culture. Being intermediary artists ourselves, it was natural to head in this direction. The concept of “intermediality” refers to the integration and combination of several art forms and media within a single work, thus creating a dialogue between different expressive languages. This approach has evolved over time and today we frequently speak of hybridisation of languages. When we started, this expression was still uncommon; now, everything seems to have been hybridised. Our current focus is to offer new hybrids that emerge each year with the advent of new tools and technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence.
We’re not a festival that looks back to the past, though we know and respect it. Instead, we focus mainly on the present. Our aim is to explore and promote new forms of expression emerging at the intersection of art and technology. This makes our festival a place of discovery and innovation, where new artistic trends are given a space to be explored.
What choices did you make regarding the installation works that are being added this year to the video art works?
Since 2022, we have introduced an installation section, which has been very successful with the public. Our choice has always been to include works where video is the central element, in line with the festival’s philosophy, but also that involved the viewer in some way. We have interactive and virtual reality installations. Last year, Igor Imhoff presented Nova Reflexa, a modular Artificial Intelligence-based installation that takes a photo and processes it using a custom-designed algorithm, transforming it into a work of art. This work was then displayed again, in collaboration with the Municipality of Forlì, in the city centre throughout the month of December, with a new concept: “Become a work of art,” this time recalling the aesthetics of the 20th century.
This year, the installations will be diverse and technologically advanced. We have an installation of NFT works curated by Kika Nicolela, Reformed A.I. no.13 (The Eternal Diving of Human Condition), (VR) by Lino Strangis and Posthuman Regeneration by SVVCY. You Are The Ocean by Ozge Samanci is a new interactive installation featured in this edition. The work enables participants to control a digitally simulated ocean using only their brain waves. Participants wear an EEG (electroencephalography) headset that measures levels of attention through brain waves. This affects turbulence: with greater levels of concentration, waves rise and clouds thicken. By calming down, participants can create a calm ocean.
This year there is a significant expansion in your network. How are these collaborations affecting the evolution of the Ibrida identity?
Collaborating with other institutions, foundations and festivals has always been a fundamental element of our journey, not only as an opportunity for enrichment, but also as a means of circulating and enhancing works. This year, we are particularly excited to have established several collaborations with both national and international festivals.
These include Over The Real, a video art festival in Lucca, curated by Maurizio Marco Tozzi, Lino Strangis and Veronica D’Auria. This exchange involves not only works but also juries. Veronica D’Auria will be part of our jury, while one of us will be a member of their prize jury. This type of collaboration demonstrates the importance of sharing different skills and perspectives, which is crucial for the mutual enrichment of festivals.
Image Play (Portugal), with whom we have developed an exchange of works and presentations, is another key partnership. Their artistic director, Hernando Hurrutia, will visit Forlì to present his festival, and we’ll have the opportunity to introduce Ibrida Festival at their event in November. This kind of international collaboration is crucial for expanding the reach and influence of video art globally, facilitating interaction between different cultures.
In addition, we’re proud of our collaboration with The Next Generation Short Film Festival in Bari, with whom we continue to exchange works. This year, our cooperation also extends to Timeline Belo Horizonte (Brazil), which will present two video selections. We’re building an international network of festivals to promote and support innovation in video art.
Finally, the collaboration with the Dino Zoli Foundation over the last two years has represented a significant expansion at a local level. This journey began last year with the exhibition Animagia by Virgilio Villoresi curated by Bruno Di Marino and continues this year with the exhibition BODY (S)CUL(P)TURE by Francesca Fini. The collaboration with the Foundation allows us to delve deeper into the work of artists connected to our festival and to broaden the public’s engagement with these works. The exhibition will open on 2 September and run until 13 October, coinciding with the Contemporary Day promoted by AMACI.
In an interview with Michele Pascarella for Gagarin magazine, you shared your thoughts on the 500 works submitted in response to your open call. You noted how Belgium and Brazil stood out as the countries most interested in video art, attributing this to good funding practices (Belgium) and a culture that is always attentive to video art as a means of political expression (Brazil), respectively. What do you think is still missing in Italy to increase the attention to new contemporary languages, including video, and support for their creators?
What is truly lacking is not artists, but substantial financial contributions. Even in a virtuous region such as Emilia-Romagna, there are several grants for the production of film works but, unfortunately, not for video art. This lack of economic support highlights a crucial challenge: the public and institutions need to become more accustomed to this type of artistic language. Video art has immense potential to tell contemporary stories and encourage deep reflection, exploiting the potential of new technologies.
There are, however, exceptions that prove the rule. Some institutions in Italy are making significant progress in this field. A great example is the work carried out by the MEET Digital Culture Centre in Milan, led by Maria Grazia Mattei. The MEET is dedicated to promoting digital culture and video art through a programme that includes exhibitions, lectures and workshops, with the aim of bringing the public closer to new forms of digital expression. The Centre has become a focal point for artists and enthusiasts, offering a space to explore the intersections of art, science and technology.
Another important institution is the MAST in Bologna, which recently dedicated an entire exhibition to video art: Vertigo – Video Scenarios of Rapid Changes. MAST is known for its commitment to promoting the visual arts, particularly photography and the moving image, and in its latest exhibition helped make video art more accessible to a broader audience. These initiatives are crucial not only because they aim to educate the public regarding new artistic languages, but also because they attract funding and collectors, which are essential for the growth and support of this art form.
Finally, it is important to stress that Italian artists are talented, managing to create unique and competitive works despite the lack of investment. This demonstrates unique creativity and craftsmanship. If only they received the economic support that is offered in other countries, such as Belgium, where video art is supported by public and private funds, they could emerge internationally with much greater impact.
What other surprises did you encounter from the proposals received through the open call?
The biggest surprise, besides the very high quality of the works, was the remarkable participation of very young artists (under 30). Last year, thanks to the mediation of Carlos Casas, we awarded a six-month artistic residency in Fabrica (Treviso) to an artist under 25. One aspect that we anticipated, but which still surprised us in terms of quality, was the use of Artificial Intelligence and the many high-standard 3D animations.
This year’s Festival will be preceded, in the form of a prologue, by Francesca Fini’s exhibition, a wonderful collaboration that has developed over time and which has also grown within the Festival. Can you tell us more about this project, which now merges with the exhibition curated by Bruno di Marino?
After exploring Virgilio Villoresi’s fascinating pre-cinema machines last year, this year we delve into the cybernetic bodies and interactive performances created by Francesca Fini, an outstanding intermediary artist. Once again, we were able to rely on the expertise of Bruno Di Marino, who has followed and supported Francesca’s career for a long time and therefore has unparalleled knowledge of every work and production.
The exhibition will offer a comprehensive experience, enriched by interactive installations and videos that will allow the public the opportunity to fully explore Francesca Fini’s artistic and aesthetic complexity. Running for over a month, this exhibition marks a significant step in our efforts to reach a broader audience, bringing them closer to intermediary arts and their remarkable potential for innovation.
Francesca Fini. BODY (S)CUL(P)TURE, 02.09.2024 (prologo di Ibrida Festival)
intermedial exhibition, curated by Bruno di Marino, Dino Zoli Foundantion, Forlì
Ibrida Festival, Forlì, 20-21-22.09.2024
images: (cover) Ibrida Festival 2024, invitation (2) Davide Mastrangelo and Francesca Leoni, courtesy of Vertov Project, ph Consuelo Canducci (3) Anna Hog, «The Archive Is On Fire», 2023, still from video (4) Igor Imhoff, «Boy», VR installation, Ibrida Festival 2019 (5) Francesca Fini, «Typo #3», performance, 2016 (6) Francesca Fini, «Five actions with red gloves», 2013 (7 -8) Ibrida Festival, arena (9) Lorenzo Picarazzi, «Il resto come sempre», still from video, 2023
