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How to create the catalogue of an exhibition composed of video installations

by the Editorial Team

The catalogue for the "Nebula" exhibition, staged in Venice at Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, is published by Marsilio Arte. We asked Bianca Stoppani, Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi, editors of the book, to guide us through its pages and through the video works that make up the exhibition organized by Fondazione In Between Art Film

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Fog as a metaphor for multiple forms of disorientation: that is the starting point and the theme that inspired the Nebula exhibition, staged in Venice, at Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, until 24 November 2024. But how are the eight video installations commissioned by Fondazione In Between Art Film from Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Saodat Ismailova, Basir Mahmood, Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado, Diego Marcon, Ari Benjamin Meyers and Christian Nyampeta “translated” onto paper? We asked the editors of the catalogue published by Marsilio Arte ‒ Bianca Stoppani, Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi (the latter also curators of the exhibition). The book was launched during the interdisciplinary symposium Thick Atmospheres, curated by Bianca Stoppani and organized in collaboration with the Pinault Collection in Venice at the Teatrino of Palazzo Grassi from 17 to 18 October 2024.

The catalogue of the Nebula exhibition takes on the challenge of committing to paper the experience of the site-specific video installations staged in the Venetian spaces of Complesso dell’Ospedaletto. How did you structure the volume and what choices did you make in response to such a challenge?
Bianca Stoppani: The challenge is intrinsic to the transition, or rather the attempted translation, from the medium of moving images to that of a book: while the classic space of the cinematic experience is delineated by the dynamic relationship between projector, screen and projected image, the classic space of the book is delineated by the static relationship between text, image and page.
Aware of these limitations, we asked ourselves what choices could, on the one hand, document the video installations, both individually and in relation to the space, and on the other, convey the aesthetic experience, when we find ourselves immersed in the ambiance of the narration of the work and the exhibition. It’s an editorial way of thinking that, beginning with the catalogue from the previous exhibition at Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Penumbra, of which this catalogue is a continuation and a further exploration, I have carried forward with the co-editors Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi, respectively artistic director and curator of Fondazione In Between Art Film. The Nebula catalogue therefore tries to interweave these multiple dimensions: each of the eight artists has a dedicated section of the book, which includes a chronological selection of stills from the work, a synopsis and the production credits – the latter in particular underscores the collaborative aspect inherent in the medium. This is followed by an essay specifically commissioned to reflect on the work and contextualize it within the artist’s broader practice. The essay is accompanied by a visual tool that highlights, for each one, an aspect (often not well-known) of the workmanship or research that led to the creation of the work. The middle of the book contains wide-ranging photographic documentation of the works on display and of the exhibition design, acting as a diaphragm that separates the works on the ground floor from those on the first floor of Complesso dell’Ospedaletto. Finally, the essays by Rabottini and Bigazzi, curators of the exhibition, and by 2050+, the studio that created the exhibition design, reflect on the curatorial and staging choices and on the dialogue that was established between the works and the space.

The exhibition takes its cue from fog as a phenomenon that pushes us to rely more on the other senses to compensate for the visual deficit, triggering a series of reflections related not just to the perceptive sphere. How did the artists of Nebula work on this theme and translate it into the language of video?
Alessandro Rabottini: The exhibition uses the image of fog as a metaphor for multiple forms of disorientation, as a phenomenon that begins as atmospheric but becomes internalized and collective, a fog that pervades both the visual field and an entire era. The works touch on themes that are different in nature: the possibility of getting lost in the landscape or finding salvation in it, is at the heart of the reflection on the theme of migration in the work by Basir Mahmood; architecture is a space of memory in the works of Ari Benjamin Meyers and Giorgio Andreotta Calò; music and voice as tools of reaffirmation are central in the environmental work by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Other works explore further forms of fragmentation: the reverberation of history in individual existences is present in the films of Christian Nyampeta and Saodat Ismailova, the tension between being and disappearing makes another appearance in Diego Marcon’s installation just as the impact of economic and political forces on the environment and on people’s lives is at the centre of the double projection by Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado.

After Penumbra, Complesso dell’Ospedaletto is once again hosting an exhibition by Fondazione In Between Art Film. What are the limits and advantages of the interaction between video installations and a space with such strong character?
Leonardo Bigazzi: The Complesso dell’Ospedaletto is a piece of architecture full of temporal and spatial stratifications, which both we as curators and the artists have always seen as being rich in resources and possibilities. A great deal of work has been done – thanks in part to the collaboration with the interdisciplinary studio 2050+, which was responsible for the installation – in overcoming the logic according to which contemporary art can only exist either within the format of the white cube (the classic white cube of museums and galleries) or in that of the black box (the black box of cinema and projections). Today, artists who work with moving images often go well beyond the mechanism of front projection and Nebula also shows, in part, this fate of fragmentation of audio-visual narration. Even from a formal point of view, each artist has worked on the many implications of fog in a different way: some, like Basir Mahmood, have rendered the theme of the fragmentation of vision in a sculptural way by adopting a screen-cum-room-divider in the Church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, or some, like Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, have rendered it in an environmental way, creating a composition of words, sounds, images and lights that unfolds across six rooms of the former retirement home.

The catalogue was launched during Thick Atmospheres, the symposium held in the Teatrino at Palazzo Grassi in Venice. What was the purpose of the symposium and how did you conceive it?
Bianca Stoppani: Embracing a perspective that weaves together media and environments, Thick Atmospheres explores the main themes evoked by Nebula’s eight video installations and delves into the ideas that informed both the curatorial position of the exhibition and the architectural interventions conceived by 2050+ at Complesso dell’Ospedaletto. Over the course of its two days (17-18 October 2024), Thick Atmospheres observed atmospheres as vectors of images and meteorological events: gaseous substances that surround us, physical spaces where the projected images become tangible, and the metaphorical agents that imbricate human and more-than-human realities. Here atmospheres are defined as “thick” because they unite the planetary and the existential, as well as the elementary, the medial and the relational. The conversations, roundtables and projections of Thick Atmospheres investigated broader questions that relate to the act of seeing and the sensorial experience of moving images, from their exhibition context to the relationship between architecture and the projection of lights and sounds, to the spatial distribution of screens and the mobile aspect of spectatorship. At the same time, the programme focused on the pervasiveness of images and media content, on the bodily relationships that are conditioned and created by them, and on the continuing consequences of the Capitalocene and of complex phenomena on a planetary scale, in the sense of loss and on the possibility of finding meaning in the realities we are mixed up in. Participants included: 2050+/Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, Maria Alicata, Mara Ambrožič Verderber, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Karimah Ashadu, Lucia Aspesi, Cristina Baldacci, Erika Balsom, Leonardo Bigazzi, Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Nav Haq, Sharon Hecker, Fatima Hellberg, Eleni Ikoniadou, Chrissie Iles, Saodat Ismailova, Amal Khalaf, Helena Kritis, Basir Mahmood, Diego Marcon, Lorenzo Mason, Studio Ari Benjamin Meyers, Matteo Pasquinelli, Alessandro Rabottini, Mark Rappolt, Giulia Rispoli, Francesco Spampinato, Mike Sperlinger, Carla Subrizi, Paola Ugolini, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Valentine Umansky and Isobel Whitelegg.

Interview by Arianna Testino

BIO
Bianca Stoppani is a researcher based in London and Turin. As editor at Fondazione In Between Art Film (2020-), Stoppani co-edited the catalogues Ali Cherri: Dreams of Dreamless Nights (2024) and Penumbra (2023); and the public programme Vanishing Points. Stoppani also edited the monograph Cleo Fariselli: Your Storm Our Dew (2023) and has written for catalogues and magazines.

Alessandro Rabottini is an art critic and curator based in London. He is the artistic director of Fondazione In Between Art Film (2020-). In this role he co-curated the exhibitions Nebula (2024); Ali Cherri: Dreamless Night (2023-24); and Penumbra (2022). He has also curated exhibitions in museums and institutions, contributed to museum catalogues and edited books and catalogues.

Leonardo Bigazzi is curator at Fondazione In Between Art Film (2020-). In this role he co-curated the exhibitions Nebula (2024); Ali Cherri: Dreamless Night (2023-24); and Penumbra (2022). He is also the curator of Lo Schermo dell’Arte (2008-); and is the founder and curator of VISIO (2012-). He has curated exhibitions and film programmes and has commissioned and/or produced more than thirty artists films.

INFO
Nebula
until 24 November 2024
COMPLESSO DELL’OSPEDALETTO
Barbaria de le Tole 6691, Venice
https://inbetweenartfilm.com/

Cover photo: Basir Mahmood, Brown Bodies in an Open Landscape are Often Migrating, 2024 in Nebula, Fondazione In Between Art Film at Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, Venice, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Fondazione In Between Art Film. Photo Lorenzo Palmieri

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