img. David Fathi, Untitled, 2016, original image CERN Archive, manipulated by the artist
From May 5 to July 9, 2017, in Reggio Emilia took place FOTOGRAFIA EUROPEA, a festival promoted and organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Magnani together with the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, and entirely devoted to this art form which more than others communicates and interprets the complexity of contemporary society. Exhibitions, conferences, shows, educational events and major happening hosted in the main cultural institutions and exhibition venues of the city will be the ingredients of a rich program animated by protagonists of photography, culture and knowledge to foster a confrontation between different expressions of creativity and thought.
Curated by a scientific committee composed of Diane Dufour (Director Le Bal, Paris), Elio Grazioli (University of Bergamo), Walter Guadagnini (Camera Director, Turin), FOTOGRAFIA EUROPEA 2017 was focused on the theme “Maps of the time. Memory, Archives, Future”. The theme of the edition, as the title indicates and scans the subtitle, is the archive, and how artists have interacted with it over the last few years. Artist use archival materials with a method that is definitely different from that of historians and archivists: more critical and creative rather than strictly documentary. So the idea of history, memory and, consequently, of vision of the present and of the future are questioned with the means and the ways of art.
In particular, Palazzo da Mosto hosted the exhibition projects of Daniel Blaufuks, Alessandro Calabrese, Kurt Caviezel, Edmund Clark and Crofton Black, David Fathi, Agnès Geoffray, Teresa Giannico, each of whom shows his/her way to use “archive” mode to collect, Investigate, expose, mount images. Daniel Blaufuks in his Attempted Exhaustion project, inspired by Georges Perec, describes what appears to be irrelevant in portraying immovable objects. Alessandro Calabrese relates the concept of autoriality in photography with respect to the proliferation of network material in A Failed Entertainment. Kurt Caviezel with his Wallpaper Series collects images from all over the world through open webcams placed in public and private places by turning his computer into a photo device. In Negative Publicity Edmund Clark and Crofton Black assemble photographs and documents that contrast the nature of contemporary conflict and invisible state control mechanisms. In Wolfgang, David Fathi reconstructs the character of Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, the founder of quantum physics, by bringing real data to fictitious elements. Agnès Geoffray reapplies archive images and manipulates them to give them a different nature in Incidental Gestures. Finally, Teresa Giannico makes a study of the shared apartments today in Milan, starting from the actual online listings that she has made for her Lay Out project.
More: http://www.fotografiaeuropea.it/
