Learning outcomes

Formazione curatoriale nell'ambito dell'arte contemporanea

Program

The title of the workshop presented by artists Diego Tonus and Elisa Caldana, How to tell a story and why we should tell it in a certain way? (How to tell a story and why should we tell it in a certain way?) is a recurring question within Topography of Terror, a cycle of work that began in 2017, and currently consists of two episodes, Topography of Terror (19.12.2016) and Never Again. The two films implemented the use of CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) to visualize the never-before-realized building Topographie des Terrors, originally conceived for the city of Berlin by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, and investigate the role and effect of the violent imagery of terrorism spread through news, social media, and non-places on the Internet. Tonus and Caldana intend Topography of Terror as an open-ended cycle. Its conceptual center will produce a series of new works over the years further elaborating on the idea of mental imagery and repetition, taking into consideration the nature and forms of contemporary terrorism that are part of recurring historical processes and an eternal return of violence.

The workshop, which will take place online over the course of two weekends, intends to explore the central themes addressed in the cycle, such as post-truth and journalistic narrative, together with a group of students from the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Verona, with particular attention to the relationship between the real body and the virtual body, personal and collective, in the context of this new semi-dystopian reality in which the Covid19 pandemic has forced the individual during the lockdown, a critical period of reconfiguration of priorities, adaptation and development of new methodologies of thinking. In this particular historical period of social distancing, in which everyone accesses news from the outside world in the isolation of their domestic spaces, the workshop aims to interrogate the aesthetic and political potential of video techniques, which have been used to cope with the limits of social isolation, and their influence on the perception and use of information in everyday life. Specifically, the ways in which moving images can mediate, render, narrate, modify and distort reality.

Through practical exercises and the development of an idea, participants will be invited to work in pairs (an ABAV student with a UNIVR student) to create a project consisting of both the curatorial part (textual development of conceptual aspects) and the production of their own video by actively using techniques that question the use of the medium, such as the creation of a script by modifying or editing existing content on the web; the post-production of images in real time; the delay of calls; the fast-forwarding of videos/films and accelerated times; the use of the webcam as a camera to shoot a film.
The project outcomes of the workshop will be presented during the second week and evaluated by a commission that will assign to the couple that will have created the best project a double training prize to be experienced at Careof Milan and LOOP Barcelona.

Examination Methods

Realization of a project composed of both the curatorial part with textual development of the conceptual aspects (students of the University of Verona) and the production of their own video (students of the Academy of Fine Arts of Verona) actively using techniques that question the use of the medium, such as the creation of a script by modifying or editing existing content on the web; the post-production of images in real time; the delay of calls; the fast-forwarding of video / film and accelerated time; the use of the webcam as a camera to shoot a film.