Monday April 13 – Thursday April 16, 7:30pm
Marco Scozzaro
Italian Tendenza
Live Broadcast Performance
Q&A with the artist via live chat
Microscope is very pleased to present “Italian Tendenza,” a live performance by artist Marco Scozzaro broadcast from his Brooklyn studio on Monday April 13, 7:30pm ET and tackling “stereotypes and rhetorics of televisual languages” to explore ideas of cultural displacement, among others.
Scozzaro is not new to performing before a camera while mixing video and sound. A few years back, the artist conceived and performed The Digital Deli Sciò, a misspelled parody blending Italian talk show, radio broadcast, nonsensical art talk, and VJing, with the artist manufacturing his own applause by playing sampled sound bits of cheering audiences.
“Italian Tendenza” builds and expands upon that experience, this time taking on Dante’s Inferno from La Divina Commedia. Informed by Scozzaro’s 1980s upbringing split between study of the classics and fascination for American pop culture, “Italian Tendenza” — tendenza meaning both “inclination” and “trend” — finds the artist switching between two characters while editing, processing, and mixing video and music live.
Scozzaro says about the origins of the performance: “The idea for the piece comes from a 1995 VHS. I was then a teenager who had to memorize a passage from Dante’s Inferno for a class assignment. Borrowing my cousin’s camcorder during a family reunion and overdubbing some of her footage, I decided to sarcastically perform my homework in front of the camera.”
The artist’s reciting of the first Canto exasperating Italian communication clichés makes Scozzaro’s a multi-layered performance and a self-ironic video opera possible through the distance provided by his long time immersion in a different culture.
The program also includes a pre-recorded video introduction by Microscope co-directors Elle Burchill and Andrea Monti and a live Q&A with the artist after the performance.
TO WATCH:
A “WATCH NOW” link will become available on this page at 7:30pm on Monday April 13th.
Passes for viewing can be purchased then, giving full access to video introduction, performance, and live Q&A.
A recording of the full performance and Q&A will be posted asap thereafter and remain on view until Thursday April 16, 7:30pm PT.
General admission $7 (Valid through April 16, 7:30pm PST)Member admission $5 (Valid through April 16, 7:30pm PST)
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Marco Scozzaro is an Italian multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. He earned his MA in Psychology with a concentration in Visual Perception from the University of Parma, Italy, and a certificate in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, NY. He has had solo shows at Baxter St, NY, and Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy; and two-person shows at Ed Varie, NY; and Galerie Villa des Tourelles, Paris. Group shows and screenings include BRIC, Brooklyn, NY; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Aperture Foundation, NY; and Lishui Photography Festival, China. Scozzaro is a recipient of the NYSCA Experimental Media and Film grant from the Institute of Electronic Arts at Alfred University, NY; a Media Art Fellowship from BRIC, Brooklyn, NY; an artist residency from Signal Culture, Owego, NY; a Workspace Residency from the Camera Club of New York, NY; and an AIM fellowship from the Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY. He is an adjunct faculty member at SVA, NY, and has been visiting artist at Parsons, NY, guest critic at Cooper Union, NY, and mentor for the Immigrant Artist Program at the New York Foundation for the Arts, Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared in Artnet, Der Greif, GUP, Osmos, The New York Times, and Wallpaper, among others.
Microscope Gallery Event Series 2020 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).