Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Using as a starting point parts of archive footage shot by the anthropologist De Martino?s whilst researching the phenomenon of Tarantism, ?The Oyster Effect? develops into a collage of historical references as narrating voices over a visual journey. In the film, the portrayal of women and hysteria is shown as a series of parallels between built environments, architectural spaces, landscape and their narration. The viewer travels through foreign languages and non-descriptive locations, in a journey that challenges linearity and historicity. The attempt to bridge the specific representations of women?s subjectivity as products of their cultural environments, in the north and southern Europe, is persistently negated by the conflicting relation between image and narrating voice.

Valentina Ferrandes is a London based, Italian artist. She studied Disciplines of Art, Music and Drama at Bologna University. She gained a BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, where she graduated in 2009. In 2008 she was selected to take part in a residency programme at China Academy of Art. Since 2008 her work has been shown internationally in galleries and film festivals, including the European Media Art Festival Osnabrueck, Director`s Lounge, Berlin, the Eastern Bloc Centre for New Media & Interdisciplinary Art, Montreal and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, as part of the Biennale du Mediterranee.