Videocittà comes to Rome, with five days in the company of artists, creators, makers and digital leaders – imagined as a real ‘citadel of contemporary audiovisuals’, located in the peculiar venues of Gazometro’s industrial areas.
For the fifth edition of the Vision Festival, Videocittà is dedicated to Transition, both digital and ecological, a process that leads in a concrete way to necessary innovations and a new, more radical way of interpreting the relationship between human beings and the environment, all achieved through strategic vision, pragmatism, shared and participatory choices. The alliance between new environmentalist thinking and technological development is a prerequisite for establishing the foundations of a new, smarter, more open, inclusive and sustainable world.
The choice of a place like the former Gazometro area is, therefore, deeply symbolic: an iconic site in perpetual transition where Eni is working on the recovery of industrial structures and reclamation works with the aim of transforming it into a large open technological district. Ready to become a site for technology, transforming the Capitoline skyline by changing its shape, the great Gazometro will be the protagonist of a site-specific installation produced for Videocittà 2022 by Eni and created by fuse*, a multidisciplinary studio that explores the expressive possibilities provided by the creative use of digital technologies to interpret the complexity of human and natural phenomena. For five days, the industrial architecture of the Gazometro will host a 20m-diametre sphere suspended inside and freely visible – from every angle – from a large part of the urban setting, capturing people’s attention from vantage points all over the city.
Videocittà will also give the public an authentic immersive experience inside the metal lattice, completely transformed thanks to a spatialised audio sound that makes the work into a highly emotional journey. The installation, entitled Luna Somnium, is inspired by what is considered to be the first literary work of science fiction: a story written by Kepler in which the reader, together with the protagonist, finds himself on the Moon and looks at the Earth with different eyes, thanks to a new perspective on the Universe. In collaboration with Anica and curated by Manuela Cacciamani, President of the Union of Digital Publishers and Creators, Luna Somnium will be presented on the opening night, 20 July, dedicated to digital transition.
International artists include: the award-winning American filmmaker and audiovisual artist Wu Tsang, in Rome for the first time; Meriem Bennani, an emerging Moroccan artist on the international art world scene; the German artist Extraweg; the Canadian Scorpion Dagger with visions inspired by Renaissance paintings; the Parisian collective of designers and illustrators Parallel Studio with their emotional creations; Jan Hakon Erichsen, known as ‘the Balloon Destroyer’, from Norway with his kinetic installations; and Skygolpe with his iconic faceless portraits. There is also an exhibition in collaboration with Reasoned Art, the first Italian startup and gallery dedicated to crypto art, and presented as part of the Festival focus on the NFT world, a meeting curated by Valentino Catricalà, scholar, curator and contemporary art critic, now curator of MODAL Gallery at the SODA-School of Digital Art in Manchester.
The programme is really reach with exhibitions, performances including an evening event with Erratic Weather by Maotik, Dissonant Imaginary, a creation by Japanese multimedia artist and university lecturer Daito Manabe together with Yukiyasu Kamitani, the Mimesi, Max Cooper, Franz Rosati – these are just some of the guests.
The Videoart event, curated by Damiana Leoni and Rä di Martino, has been renewed. Special attention will be given to the works of the award-winning American filmmaker and audiovisual artist Wu Tsang, who will also present a selection of her videoworks on 21 July.
For the Talksection, the festival will also be an opportunity to support generational transition, the central theme of Generations from A to Z, a format curated by Nicolas Ballario, and Electronic Transmutations, another series of meetings, this time curated by art historian, critic, curator and university lecturer Caterina Tomeo, dedicated to the evolution of sound and moving images through advanced technological experimentation. The meeting entitled Anthropocene and the transition of thought: the role of knowledge, will give space and attention to the relationship between man and nature. This is an in-depth study curated by Andrea Moccia, populariser and founder of Geopop, who will retrace the historical dynamics that led to the advent of the Anthropocene, the era in which human action has significantly and dramatically altered the natural environment.
Curated by Explora – the Children’s Museum of Rome, the Kids Section, once again focusing on the next generation, is dedicated to its youngest members. The interactive installation Feed my emotions by the artists Ultravioletto and Michael Zemel – the result of the Libertyproject co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union – can be found inside the workshop area for children. This represents a game, but is also a challenge that invites us to reflect on the relationship between us and machines, examining emotions, a unique characteristic of human beings.
Videocittà aimed at reducing the impact of the festival’s production, thanks to a process developed in collaboration with the Ecosistemi Foundation and its membership of the Ossigeno programme of the Lazio Region since 2021. For the 2022 edition, Videocittà has increased its commitment to sustainability, relying on the consulting services of Rebrain Consulting, a business which helps companies pursue environmental and social sustainability through best practice for the correct recycling and reuse of disposable products within the Festival.
VIDEOCITTA’. Il Festival della VIsione, Rome, July 20 – 25, 2022
You can buy here the tickets and download the complete and updated calendar of events
images: (cover 1) Poster (2) Universal Everything, «FutureYou», Prototype (3) fuse*, installazione immerisiva, Videocittà 2022 (4) WuTsang_V_21_00 (5) Maotik, Erratic Weather, 2022 (6) Max Cooper. ph.Alex Kozobolis
