Monday December 16, 7:30pm
YES: Philip Cartelli & Mariangela Ciccarello / Sonia Leimer
Artists in person
Microscope is very pleased to present as part of our ongoing emerging artist series YES a screening of new and recent collaborative works by Philip Cartelli & Mariangela Ciccarello and a selection of new videos by Sonia Leimer.
Similar concerns inspire works in the program such as the topic of migration, the fragility of cultures, as well as the fantasy of discovering and conquering new territories both on Earth and in space. Other areas of overlap of otherwise distinct and unique bodies of work — by the artists who all in part engage with their Italian origins or descent — are the extensive use of voice-overs and found or original film footage, interspersed within longer sequences in high definition video.
Cartelli and Ciccarello’s video works, situated between fictional narrative and alternative documentary, focus on two islands of the Mediterranean Sea, Lampedusa (in “LAMPEDUSA”) and Malta (in “SUBLUNARY”), known for their multi-cultural history and as destinations of migratory flows. The irreducible strength of these films is in the alignment of the viewer’s perspective as it observes the coastline of these islands onscreen, with those of the millions of immigrants today and in the past who have hoped for the sight of land. Leimer’s work often finds its point of departure in the process of learning about past traditions, and the way in which they grapple with and are redefined by contemporaneity, as seen in her films “Via San Gennaro” and “Pink Lady” described in the program notes below. The ephemerality of cultural heritages on the brink of disappearance — such as the “Apple Crown” ceremony in her birth town Meran (Italy) or master-puppeteer Tony de Nonno’s “Opera dei Pupi” in Little Italy — is somewhat prolonged by her camera.
Cartelli, Ciccarello, and Leimer in attendance and available for Q&A following the screening.
General admission $8
Students & Members $6
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Mariangela Ciccarello (1983, Italy) is an artist working in moving image, installation, and sculpture. Her work has been featured at the Locarno Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, Harvard Art Museum, and Film at Lincoln Center among other venues. She was a participant in the 2018 edition of the Feature Expanded international film production workshop. In 2019-20 she is a participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program – Studio Program.
Philip Cartelli (1984, USA) is a moving-image artist and researcher. His film and video works have been exhibited at the Festival del film Locarno, Edinburgh International Film Festival, FIDMarseille and Art of the Real, among others. He holds a PhD in Media Anthropology from Harvard University, where he was a member of the Sensory Ethnography Lab. He also holds a PhD in Sociology from the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. He is Chair of the Visual Arts Department at Wagner College.
Sonia Leimer (born in Meran, Italy) lives and works in Vienna. She studied Architecture at the Technical University of Vienna and at the Academy of Fine Art Vienna and was a founding member of the architecture office and gallery Nullmaschine (2001–02). Her monthly radio broadcast “Image and the City” was on Radio Orange from 2005 to 2012. 2012 – 2016 Teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. 2017 – 2018 teaching „Installation and Architecture“ at the ETH Zürich, department Architecture and Art. 2019 Project Collaboration with Alessandra Cianchetta, Cooper Union – The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, New York City. She has exhibited her work internationally at Kunsthaus Zürich; artothek, Cologne; Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich; Basis Frankfurt; BAWAG Contemporary, Vienna; Galerie n.chst St. Stephan, Vienna; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Leopold Museum, Vienna; LAMOA Los Angeles Museum of Art; Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; Manifesta 7, Rovereto; Mumok – Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; Museion, Bozen, Italy; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg; Salzburger Kunstverein; the 5th Moscow Biennale, and the 14th Fellbach Triennale.
Program:
LAMPEDUSA
By Philip Cartelli & Mariangela Ciccarello, HD and Super 8mm film, 2015, 14 minutes
In late 1831, a volcanic island suddenly erupted from the sea a few kilometers off the southern coast of Sicily. An international dispute ensued, during which a number of European powers laid claim to this newfound “land.” The island receded below sea level six months later, leaving only a rocky ledge under the sea…
SUBLUNARY
By Philip Cartelli & Mariangela Ciccarello, HD and Super 8mm film, 2019, 21 minutes
A young woman investigates an island’s geologic specificity, discovering hidden strata where history and memory meet barely submerged narratives of individual and collective displacement and imaginaries of possible futures.
Via San Gennaro
By Sonia Leimer, HD single-channel video, 2019, 12 minutes 11 seconds
“The video component is a collaboration with filmmaker and puppeteer Tony de Nonno, who keeps the fading Sicilian Opera dei Pupi (Opera of the Puppets) tradition alive with his heroic medieval knight marionette named “Orlando Furioso.” As the protagonist of Leimer’s video, the puppet’s performance connects stories and histories from Little Italy. In one scene, Orlando embarks into the 3D future of the neighborhood through fictitious architectural landscapes, designed in collaboration with architect Alessandra Cianchetta and her Cooper Union students. The video also includes historical footage from It’s One Family: Knock on Wood, a documentary made by de Nonno in 1982, which depicts the Manteo Family—whom he inherited his puppet from—a much-revered American troupe who performed the Opera dei Pupi throughout most of the twentieth century in Little Italy.” — ISCP
Pink Lady
By Sonia Leimer, HD single-channel video, 2017, 7 minutes 7 seconds
The video offers insight into the annual “Apple Crown” ritual of the city of Merano, during which a wooden crown is decorated with apples. Leimer documents the interaction between work and tradition, and in the subtitles she describes the changes in fruit growing as a result of the monitoring instituted since Italy joined the Economic Union: the reduction and loss of the range of varieties, transformations in the landscape, and the standardization of cultivars. In the video, the artist subverts the primeval character of the ritual by having the varieties of apples traditionally used replaced with the standardized, trademarked “Pink Lady” apple.
Above the crocodiles
By Sonia Leimer, HD single-channel video, 2016, 8 minutes 18 seconds
The video reworks recent film footage of two Russian cosmonauts in the space station ISS: they are observing the Earth’s surface from a great distance with a subjective camera, and commenting on what they see. Leimer intervenes in the shots on a verbal level by introducing the voice of a third, female cosmonaut who links the fascinated, distanced gaze at the world with political changes in the present times.
Neues Land / Nowaja Semlja / New Land
By Sonia Leimer, HD single-channel video, 2014, 7 minutes
Neues Land is based on a journey Leimer took to the atomic icebreaker Lenin in Murmansk, and themes the pioneering Soviet spirit in the 1950s to 1980s that informed the claims to power directed to as-yet unoccupied territories, such as outer space or the Arctic. Like Neues Land, Iwanowo is also an installation that triggers associations with and themes the current political situation via materials from contemporary history. The historical fabric patterns that have been employed for the seat sculptures in Iwanowo point to the political penetration of everyday life in the Soviet Union and form a background layer to the video Above the Crocodiles.
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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2019 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).