Imagining Crisis @ 34th Asolo Art Film Festival (2015.11. 06 @ 21:30/ Eleonora Duse Theatre in Asolo, Italy)

‘Imagining Crisis’

The International Creative Video Exhibition

 

Curatorial Concept

Air crash, gas explosion, international conflicts are still vivid in our mind; global warming exposes the potential crisis of human living condition gradually. These catastrophic images are not movie scenes, but our reality lurked with ubiquitous crises. We thought we could control and prevent crises by means of technology; in fact, such dangerous daily reality is the outcome of which human beings always pursue the advanced technology and neglect the negative effects. The more civilized the world is, the more complicated the human soul becomes. What the progress of technology and the richness of material life create is not necessary a life full of happiness. Driven by the ‘Death Instinct’, human beings confront all kind of crisis and threats, imagining the death subconsciously. This imagination is an expression of creativity for an artist, as well as a contemporary memento mori. It deconstructs the given aesthetics. This video exhibition departs from the anxieties of the artists about the artistic creation and the art world, our society twisting the essence of an individual very much through all kinds of mass media (including religion), and the nature pouncing on human beings for their long-term destruction. From the concrete perceptible crisis to the invisible, metaphysical, imaginative crisis, these creative artists embody the eccentric aesthetics of imagining the death.
 

 

 

About Curator/ Yunnia Yang

Yunnia Yang has received the Master degree in Art History from St. Petersburg State University in Russia in 1997, and Doctor degree in Arts from National Taiwan Normal University with the thesis ‘Study on “the Paranoiac-Criticism” of Salvador Dalí’ in 2009, with which she was awarded S-An Aesthetics Award in 2010. During this period, she managed all kinds of exhibitions, performances, and art events for the institutions of arts, literature and culture in Taiwan. Since 2011, she has launched the long-term curatorial research on “The Postmodern Condition in the contemporary art of Russia and Eastern Europe” in cooperation with the following art institutions: National Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow(Russia), the Executive Committee of “Night of Museum in St. Petersburg”(Russia), Agency for Contemporary Art (ACAX) of Ludwig Museum in Budapest(Hungary), Opekta Ateliers Köln(Germany), contemporary art institutions in Balkan region, Contemporary Art Foundation(Taiwan), National Culture and Arts Foundation(Taiwan) and Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government(Taiwan).This project will be realized in form of thematic exhibitions and monographs. Moreover, Hong Kong World Cultures Festival 2013 has been devoted to the focal theme “Lasting Legacies of Eastern Europe”, and has organized the exhibition “East+Europe: Eastern European Contemporary Art Exhibition”. Yunnia Yang has been invited to its international symposium “Imagination of Eastern Europe” as a guest speaker to share her two-year research and observation on Russia and Eastern Europe. Since 2011, Yunnia Yang has written several articles on the contemporary arts of Russia and Eastern Europe for Taiwanese art journals “Art Investment” and “Art Collection + Design”. The Chinese University of Hong Kong has invited her to write the keynote article “Constructing the National Mythology of Utopia: Development of the Russian Art in the Twentieth Century” for the University’s Bimonthly Review “Twentieth-First Century” of February 2014.

Besides the curatorial project “ The Apocalyptic Sensibility: The New Media Art from Taiwan” (WRO Media Art Biennale 2013, Taipei Fine Art Museum in 2015) introspecting our technologized civilization, Yunnia Yang concerns particularly about the influences of the contemporary visual culture and curates various creative video exhibitions. In 2014, she curated the International Creative Video Exhibition “Imagining Crisis” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. This video project has toured around the contemporary art centers in Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria and Colombia. In 2015, Yunnia Yang is invited by the 34th Asolo Art Film Festival to curate the two video projects “ Imagining Crisis” and “ TAIWAN VIDEA: the Taiwanese Avant-garde Video Exhibition”.

 

 

1.     The Contemporary Art Festival

Albert Merino｜Spain｜2011｜20 min. 20 sec.

                           

This video is a fiction about the development of a hypothetical Art Festival which is conceived through the concept ‘The crisis of reception’ in the artistically context. Using techniques belonging to the mass media, the festival is organized with the scale of a large popular event. Some agents who works outside of the creative process; Gallerists, Curators, Collectors, and Employers will analyze the different contributions of the participants which constitute at once a proposal of daydreams and utopias.

 

2.     The Curator
Shahar Marcus｜Israel｜2011｜4 min. 35 sec.

Structured like a Hollywood trailer with rhythmical editing and multiple effects, Shahar Marcus's video piece depicts a curator's "rise to power" with a measure of grotesqueness, sketching a map of the art world, with the curator reigning supreme. Mapping external signs and cultural codes, Marcus traces the activity of the curator and his multiple functions, ponders over the skills required for this coveted position, and analyzes the mechanism of self-glorification which makes the conductor of art's orchestra tick. In passing, he also criticizes the superficiality and pretense in the art world, the "celeb" culture which crowns objects of admiration and imitation, and the yearning of patrons—powerful tycoons—to establish their high status by means of art works and artists.

3.     The Holy Beauty Project Volume III

Rossina Bossio｜Colombia ｜2012 ｜6 min. 26 sec.

                             

The Holy Beauty Project Volume 3 is the final installment in a series of videos that examine the seductive power of images and the representation of women as a means to communicate and consolidate social norms as well as ideals of beauty and morality. The artist portrays eight different characters that represent various aspects of feminine identity. Set against an epic musical score, the characters dance in the middle of a rain forest and in a studio, wearing costumes inspired by catholic iconography, Latin American indigenous attire and contemporary feminine icons. The choreography alternates stereotypical movements of feminine sexuality, such as those found in advertisements, music videos and fashion, with hieratic, violent and animalistic movements. The Holy Beauty Project is a satire of seduction and the arbitrariness of societal behaviors and values among women. It aims examine the constant need for idols and deities and the need to make sense of life’s apparent absurdity.

4. Efímero Festín

Ernesto Pombo &Chimene Costa｜Argentina｜2013｜8 min. 20 sec.

This dance video was conceived to be done in Antarctica. It is part of the Culture program of the National Directorate of Antarctica in Argentine. The artists intend to raise awareness about the danger of the destruction of nature and to expose human selfishness at the same time. EFIMERO FESTIN is the story of the self destruction of a livening being - a surrealistic women trying to possess the environment where she belongs to.

5. Ant

Kimmo Alakunnas ｜Finland｜2010｜24 min.

An Ant is a short contemporary dance film which tells the story of a workaholic Man whose sense of reality begins to fail. Because of his actions, his coworker falls into imaginary worlds from which it is almost impossible to escape. What is real and what is fantasy? And what, exactly, is the enigmatic Ant which keeps disturbing the main characters? The film deals with the disability to give and receive love, and the way we give it doesn’t feel right. If we don’t understand right from wrong, we take what we want by force.

 

6. The Death of an Insect

Hannes Vartiainen& Pekka Veikkolainen｜Finland｜2010｜7 min.
 

In a lifeless urban landscape where time itself has stopped its crawl, a mad ballet is commencing and a newly hatched butterfly is about to die. This tragic story was constructed using dead insects gathered from forgotten attics and tool sheds, between window panels and cobwebs. It combines a number of animation techniques from classic stop-motion animation to animated 3D models of x-ray CT-scanned insects.

 

7. Glucose

Mihai Grecu &Thibault Gleize｜Romania &France｜2012｜7 min.

There is a place where fish and food are stuck in an indeterminate quantum state. This film is a reflection on our familiar surrounding space. Based on the “quantum indeterminacy” principle of the quantum mechanics, it depicts a place where physical “bugs” happen: some surfaces are unexpectedly penetrable, while the scale of beings and objects is inverted or misplaced...

 

8. Between the Regularity and Irregularity

Masahiro Tsutani｜Japan｜2012｜ 7 min. 50 sec.

 

                                  

Masahiro Tsutani interprets the pleasure born of his brain stimulated by the improvisal music during his appreciation. He perceives strong joyness as he abstracts himself slightly from his psychological time and enjoys himself entirely in the duration of sounds. Sometimes a large amount of informations are transported to the sound module with a buffer so that the machine cannot function well, but the artist still perceives the similar pleasure in this sonal duration. This phenomenon occurs between the regularity and irreguality of the Nature. With the non-linear system of many situdations, we cannot explain such pleasure with concrete words. Tsutani represents his pleasure with his original sound-image aesthetics, inviting the audiencce to his brain universe of musical perception.

 

9. Blood

Oliver Pietsch｜Germany｜2011｜3 min. 20 sec.

In a montage of film scenes accompanied by a score, blood becomes the main protagonist of its own aesthetic drama. It flows, squirts and drips. The red color is mixed with water, is absorbed by textiles and finally conquers the whole room.

 

10. Confusion

PROVMYZA｜Russia｜2009｜22 min.

The film begins with the scene of a shaking crystal chandelier, then a kind of inexplicably strange ambient spreads all over among the party of the young people, recalling some kind of ambiguous, curious, fearful, even confusing perceptions. This mysterious ambient becomes so stronger that the young girls cannot help but fainting. Their vertigo looks like a long performance. As time goes by, the scene remains the same and time freezes human flesh into a sculpture. The boys’ confusion transforms into aggression for being infected by a withered bush. The Confusion focuses on an individualized natural object – the bush – which was originally believed to pose potential threat to the people but fell victim to the feeling of confusion after suffering the unexpected aggressive will of the crowd.

11. From Here to Eternity

Oliver Pietsch｜Germany｜2010｜40 min.

From Here to Eternity explores the theme of death in the history of cinema; the artist addresses with a hint of humour the idea of immortality interpreted by actors through the course of time. Pietsch deconstructs and remystifies. His "encyclopedia" of dying in the cinema shows kitsch and escapism, and the inevitability of death.