ART CITIES:Palermo-MASBEDO
MASBEDO are Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni, they live in Milan and work together since 1999, focusing on video art and installations. They express themselves through the language of video, in different forms such as performance, theater, installation, photography and recently cinema. In Italy they are recognized among the most important video artists and innovators in the field of contemporary art, thanks to their unique feature of re-union of different arts and the multiplicity of languages in a single chorus.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MASTEBO Archive
At the courtyard of Palazzo Costantino, the artistic duo MASBEDO is presenting “Videomobile”, their new multi-channel video installation commissioned by Manifesta12 and produced by Beatrice Bulgari for In Between Art Film. “Videomobile” has been conceived and completely shot in Palermo, involving local citizens, prominent figures and iconic places in the cultural and civil life and history of the city, drawing a multifaceted portrait of the town. MASBEDO transformed an old OM van of the 1970s into a “video wagon” to visit places of the cinema of the past, to investigate Sicilian society and the history of the Palermo area: a moving studio, a laboratory and stage for performances. The project runs through and crosses memory, specifically the memory that emerges from investigative cinema. Before the opening of Manifesta, Videomobile hosted several performances on the open theme of cinema in Palermo. “Videomobile” is a modular and accessible video installation, with cameras, monitors, screens, lights, sound system, etc., allowing film production and video projections: a narrative device, a multi-channel documentary work, whose content is essentially a conceptual and social reinterpretation of still topical cinema themes. The artists have elaborated images that reveal the dynamics of power and the socio-cultural changes hidden in Palermo’s present, paying particular attention to themes such as the sense of belonging or genius loci and faith in utopias. The first phase of their research started interviewing characters who have worked in cinema in an almost anonymous or marginal form, with secondary characters, such as make-up artists, extras or technicians. A second phase replaced the latter with better known and important figures such as directors, intellectuals, producers or politicians. A third and last phase included some of these figures in the realization of performances produced with the “Videomobile” in the streets and squares of Palermo where cinema was and still is a protagonist. “Videomobile” is an ongoing project, a sort of performative tour, a journey through the world of images of Vittorio De Seta, Gianfranco Mingozzi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ugo Gregoretti, Mario Baffico, Francesco Rosi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Letizia Battaglia, Mimmo Cuticchio and many other directors, authors and artists who have succeeded in creating other worlds in the city of Palermo.
Info: Commissioner: Manifesta 12 Palermo, Palazzo Costantino, via Maqueda 215, Palermo, Duration: 15/6-4/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-20:00, http://m12.manifesta.org and http://www.masbedo.org
