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'Covid Messages' is a video work in six parts, based around broadcasts of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 press conferences. The work focusses on the British government’s attempts to eliminate the virus through the use of magic spells and rituals. While the pandemic spreads and the death toll rises, the Prime Minister makes repeated errors of judgement. Exasperated by his many mistakes, the spirits of the dead rise up and intervene.

John Smith was born in Walthamstow, London in 1952 and studied at the Royal College of Art, after which he became an active member of the London Filmmakers' Co-op. Inspired in his formative years by conceptual art and structural film, but also fascinated by the immersive power of narrative and the spoken word, he is renowned for a diverse body of work that subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation and abstraction, playfully exploring and exposing the language of cinema. Since 1972 he has made over sixty film, video and installation works that have been shown in museums, galleries and independent cinemas around the world. Smith’s solo exhibitions include Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig; Centre d'Art Contemporain de Noisy-le-Sec, Paris; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Weserburg Museum for Modern Art, Bremen; Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden and Royal College of Art Galleries, London. His work is held in public collections that include Tate Gallery; Arts Council England; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; FRAC Île de France, Paris and Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, Magdeburg.

Les Films du monde constituent une série inédite de 70 cinétracts, qui sont, à l’origine, des films de banc-titre réalisés à la prise de vue à partir de documents photographiques de l’actualité nationale, une initiative lancée en mai 1968 par Chris Marker. L’ensemble renoue avec cette expérience cinématographique, tant poétique que politique, en se concentrant sur les failles du monde contemporain. Selon leur protocole, les cinétracts devaient « contester-proposer-choquer-informer-interroger-affirmer-convaincre-penser-crier-rire-cultiver » afin de « susciter la discussion et l’action ». « Utilisant les moyens facilités d’appropriation qu’offrent les médias contemporains, les Cinétracts de Frank Smith sont autant de messages d’urgence, de réflexions sur le devenir d’un monde, celui de notre début de 21e siècle, devenu violent et chaotique. Il s’agit ici d’estampiller un devenir global, planétaire, « un état du monde » où une situation de tension politique au Venezuela, au fin fond du Texas ou sur la Méditerranée, est « un coup de couteau dans notre destin », comme l’aurait formulé le Sartre de Qu’est-ce que la littérature ? Portés par une réflexion profonde mêlant considérations politiques, humanistes, philosophiques et esthétiques, ces quelques 70 addenda rajoutés par Frank Smith au jet original de 1968 continuent le combat, dans un esprit de synthèse complexe — une complexité à la mesure de ce que l’on appelait naguère, au temps où l’on entendait encore changer l’Histoire, la « représentation du monde », à ce jour fuyante, démultipliée et multipolaire. » Paul Ardenne

Né en 1968, Frank Smith est écrivain et poète, vidéaste et réalisateur. Il vit à Paris et Los Angeles. Il est représenté par la Galerie Analix Forever (Genève). Frank Smith est le créateur du Bureau d'Investigations Poétiques depuis lequel il explore les jonctions/disjonctions actuelles s’exerçant entre Poésie, Politique et Image au moyen de livres, de films, d’installations, d’expositions et de performances. Sont ainsi délivrés « des protocoles d’expérimentation qui interrogent la possibilité, l’efficience, la performativité de la littérature et du film. Prolongeant le Pour en finir avec le jugement d’Artaud dans un "Pour en finir avec le régime de la représentation et de la narration", Frank Smith pose des dispositifs mettant en scène la question de l’émergence de la parole ou de l’image. » (Véronique Bergen, art press, déc. 2017). Frank Smith a publié à ce jour une vingtaine de livres et dans le prolongement de ces publications, il réalise des films et des installations vidéo à partir desquels est notamment mis en pratique le non-rapport entre Voir et Parler et sont développés les arcanes d’un nouveau « cinéma de poésie ». Tous ses films ont notamment fait l'objet d'une présentation au Centre Pompidou-Paris.

In the dead of winter, the gas flares and spectral sounds of an oil boom awaken the long-abandoned prairies and ghost towns of North Dakota.

Adam James Smith is a British filmmaker based in New York. His filmmaking practice spans rural and urban environments across China, Japan, and the United States. His first feature film, The Land of Many Palaces, on the Chinese "ghost city" of Ordos, participated in the Sundance Institute workshop and premiered at the 2015 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The film then went on to screen at festivals and on television around the world, picking up awards in Moscow, Rome, and Kyoto. His follow-up film, Americaville, on the Chinese replica of Jackson Hole, Wyoming was sponsored by the Whicker's Foundation and the Asian Cinema Fund. The film was released in 2020 and has since been screened around the world at festivals and universities. Adam is currently completing a series of films documenting the diversity of the rural experience throughout the American heartland, including the country’s oldest Black rodeo in Okmulgee Invitational, the oil boom awakening the abandoned homesteads of North Dakota in Frontier Phantom, and Native American cowboys in Arapaho Pasture. Adam was educated in film at Stanford and anthropology at Cambridge, the latter of which he is currently an Affiliated Filmmaker at the university’s Visual Anthropology Lab.

Au fil d’une nuit fantastique, un personnage arpente sans fin des avenues froides et nues, des institutions désertes, des non-lieux inhabités, en marche, en quête, solitaire - guettant les apparitions de fantômes venant se glisser dans son sillage. Suspendu aux télé-technologies (téléphone, puce électronique) de l’intime, il semble se nourrir de l’absence d’un être aimé, ailleurs, loin, intouchable, dont l’absence hante sa déambulation.

Dorothee Smith est une photographe née au milieu des années 80, c’est une enfant de la chute du mur de Berlin, cet évènement qui marque la fin d’une ère, celui de la guerre froide du capitalisme républicain contre le communisme soviétique, et le début d’une autre, celui de la guerre informelle entre l’occident judéo-chrétien et les extrémistes islamiques (Palestine, Irak, Iran, Afghanistan). C’est aussi l’enfant du mouvement queer, avec ses identités fleurissantes et sa nouvelle philosophie du corps. C’est encore et enfin l’enfant de la catastrophe de Tchernobyl, d’une planète maltraitée car trop polluée, d’une terre nucléaire menacée de destruction. C’est un peu ce court morceau d’histoire, qui a un peu plus de vingt ans maintenant, que l’on retrouve dans le sampling visuel de la photographe plasticienne.

Indeterminate epoch and country. At 21, Yevgueni is a young astronaut-technician. If he dreams of traveling in space, his employment consists of working at the heart of a launching base for space travel, as a spacecraft launching operator. At the particularly critical launch of an inhabited Soyouz shuttle, Yevgueni abruptly loses consciousness, which causes loss of contact with the team in orbit and the explosion of the spacecraft. Haunted by this catastrophe, Yevgueni progressively loses grip with reality and becomes contaminated by the trauma.

Paris - temps incertain, temps de la fin. Une cycliste, cavalière d'une possible apocalypse, erre autour de la ville éteinte, déserte, muette - guettant d'hypothétiques survivances. La Samaritaine, cube blanc, désaffecté, semble s’offrir comme un refuge ; mais elle se révèle le théâtre d’univers parallèles où se décide, avec les quatre derniers vivants, le sens de l'effondrement en cours. Les personnages qui y vivent sont en “arrêt de mort”, suspendus entre deux états, traversant les possibles, pris dans une fin du monde sans cesse imminente, et pourtant sans cesse différée, et encore sans cesse recommencée. C’est le bâtiment même qui va incarner de manière vivante cet interstice travaillant toutes les apparitions qui semblent traverser le lieu. Ce sont les modalités fluctuantes de cet espace de la Samaritaine qui vont se déployer, amenant d’oracles SM en chansons nihilistes, de danses de séduction désespérées en rituels de mutation, la révélation claire qu’il n’y aura pas de révélation. Les fins du mondes et les croyances sont défaites. Il n'est plus question de fin du monde, mais de commencements d'autres mondes - par la métamorphose. Apocalypse nous-autres.

SMITH ?http://www.fillesducalvaire.com/artiste/smith/ Le travail de SMITH s’appréhende comme une observation des mues de l’identité humaine. La photographie y côtoie le cinéma, la vidéo, la chorégraphie, le bio-art, la sculpture et l’utilisation des nouvelles technologies, dans une exploration des combinaisons des approches scientifique et philosophique, ouvertes sur les potentiels de la fiction. Après l’obtention d’un Master de Philosophie à la Sorbonne, du diplôme de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Photographie d’Arles, et du Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains, SMITH engage l’écriture d’une thèse de doctorat, à l’UQAM (Montréal). Ses travaux furent présentés sous la forme d’expositions personnelles aux Rencontres internationales de la photographie d’Arles, à la galerie les Filles du Calvaire et au Palais de Toyko à Paris, au musée de la Photographie d’Helsinki en Finlande, mais aussi dans de nombreux pays d’Europe (Suisse, Suède, Autriche, Luxembourg, Allemagne, Espagne, Italie...), d’Asie (Chine, Cambodge, Corée du Sud) et d’Amérique Latine (Mexique, Chili, Uruguay) et aux USA. Sa première monographie, «Löyly», est parue aux éditions Filigranes en 2013, suivie de « Saturnium » aux éditions Actes Sud en 2017, et d’un livre d’entretien avec l’historienne de l’art Christine Ollier en 2017 aux éditions André Frère. Paraissent en 2018 puis 2019 deux autres livres de photographie : "Astroblème" (Filigranes) et "Valparaiso" (André Frère). Son premier et son second moyen-métrages, "Spectrographies" et "TRAUM", furent diffusés en festivals et cinémas en Europe. Ses performances artistiques et chorégraphiques furent présentées au Centre Pompidou, au Théâtre de la Cité Internationale avec le soutien de la Fondation Hermès – New Settings, au CND (Pantin), au Musée de la Danse (Rennes) et au CCN de Montpellier. SMITH travaille actuellement à l’élaboration de son nouveau projet-monde "Désidération", avec la Cellule Cosmiel (Lucien Raphmaj, Jean-Philippe Uzan, SMITH) et le studio DIPLOMATES, qui explore les liens entre l’humanité contemporaine et son cosmos originaire : http://www.desideration.space ** Lucien Raphmaj https://lucienraphmaj.wordpress.com/ Lucien Raphmaj, écrivain né d’une œuvre élaborée avec SMITH, a écrit avec lui le scénario de ses films, depuis "Spectrographies" (2015) jusqu’aux "Apocalyptiques" (2019) en passant par leurs projets multidisciplinaires tels que "TRAUM" (film, exposition, textes, vidéos, spectacle de danse). C’est cette écriture à mille voix, fruit d’un travail personnel, mais aussi expérience d’une spectralisation de l’écriture qui se laisse traverser par d’autres voix, qui est celle qu’il mène encore à travers l’univers des « Apocalyptiques ». Il participe, en tant que critique, à la revue culturelle en ligne Diacritik et tient un blog sur la latérature. Son premier ouvrage, "Blandine Volochot", paraît aux éditions Abrüpt en Janvier 2020.

Synopsis ? Love, jealousy and wanting to be in two places at once Like a nighthawk at the diner, a young man recounts his story of love gone wrong. His marriage has been quietly growing lifeless, when his wife proposes that they attempt to rekindle their passion through, the dance which first brought them together, the tango. But not any old tango, rather a more risqué partner swapping form of the dance, with different partners in separate venues.

Gregg Smith: biography Gregg Smith is an artist from Cape Town, South Africa. He completed his studies at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 1991 and since then has been active in a range of contemporary art and theatre projects in South Africa and abroad. With origins in painting, performance, and art in public space, his present work incorporates aspects of all these practices in the development of video installations. Until 2000, he lived in Cape Town, where he was active as an artist and also a professor of painting at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. In 2001-02, Gregg was a participant at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, and following this moved to France where he studied film-making at Le Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains (2002-04). His work is equally accepted in contemporary art and film festival circuits; recent projects have been shown at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Le Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), La Biennale de Dakar (Senegal) and Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna, Austria). He is at present based in Paris, France and is a professor in the Master of Arts in public sphere program (MAPS) at ECAV.

A young man (Hubert Brown) arrives in a quiet rural location in order to present his candidature for job there. As the interview procedures are to take place over several days, he has traveled together with his wife (Christine), so that they might both benefit from a few days in the countryside. Though he has little working experience as yet, he has been recommended for the post by the wife of an acquaintance, who seems to have some influence. The project involves the redevelopment of a piece of land previously used as a nature reserve. As the day unfolds a precarious web of power relations becomes evident as various individuals struggle to find a firm footing in a scheme which at this stage remains highly speculative. It becomes evident that there are several forces already at play in this seemingly empty landscape. For one thing, it is inhabited by residents who have a strong bond with the land, and are resistant to the development plans. The area seems also to physically affect all those who move through it, animating their gestures with sporadic dancelike movements. These movements are never noticed or remarked upon. The film takes the dance-musical form as a point of departure, but eliminates the element of music. The issue of land is remains a charged and unresolved issue in South Africa. In the video project Underexposed, notions of ownership and empowerment are taken a level further. The film questions the dynamics at play in daily exchanges which determine who has the means to exploit their own resources : their body, their ideas and beliefs. The loose fiction follows the redevelopment of a large piece of seemingly vacant land. A precarious web of power relations becomes evident as various individuals struggle to find a firm footing in a scheme which at this stage remains highly speculative. It becomes evident that there are several forces already at play. For one thing, it is inhabited by residents who have a strong bond with the land, and are resistant to the development plans. The area seems also to physically affect all those who move through it, animating their gestures with sporadic dancelike movements. These movements are never noticed or remarked upon.

Gregg Smith is an artist of South African origin, born in Cape Town and currently living and working in Paris, France. with origins in the traditions of painting and performance his video works experiment with the narrative form as means to question the relation between personal perceptions and social interactions. His work is equally traverses the realms of cinema of contemporary art traditions Recent exhibitions and screenings include : Fondation Espace Ecureuil (Toulouse), Rotterdam International Film Festival, FIDMarseille International Documentary Film Festival, Galeria dels Angels - Carmelitas Gallery, LOOP `07 (Barcelona), Fundació Joan Miró, (Barcelona), Le Plateau, Espace Experimantal (Paris) et Musé du Jeu de Paume (Paris).

The loose narrrative follows the progress of a young man who has arrived in a small provincial town in order to present his candidature for job there. The job at hand entails the overseeing of the redevelopment of a piece of land. As agriculture has declined in the area, there are those who would like to see the land used more profitably, through the construction of a dormitary suburb for a nearby city. In order to expediate such a project however, there would need to be someone put in charge of its management who would tolerate some fairly unorthodox procedures. The young man is seen to be suitable for this post. It soon becomes evident that there are other forces at play in this territory. The area seems to physically affect all those who move through it, with various forms of movement. It seems that the body of those affected becomes charged by a rhythmic force, moving them to sporadic and involuntary dance, during everyday activities. These movements are never noticed or remarked upon.

Gregg Smith is originally from Cape Town. He obtained a degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town, and after having studied at the National Studio of Contemporary Arts in Fresnoy, he has since, put on art projects and theatre in South Africa and abroad, blending performance, painting and art in public space. His work has recently been shown in different places: Biennale of Dakar, Musée de Jeu de Paume, the Rotterdam Film Festival, etc. Among other remarkable projects in the domain of art in public places, we have "The Lovephones" (Cape Town, 2000) and "The Lovephones in London" (London, é//&), "The Long Street Baths Mural Project (Cape Town, 1994-98), and his project coming to Cape Town "very Real Time". Recently , the Contemporary Art Space of Castille in Spain commissioned a new work for the exhibition "Our Hospitality" directed by Rodrigo Alonso.

The End (duration: 14 minutes, DVD from HDV) video installation with digital prints and other elements. Two men circulate around an office space, they are engaged in a common project, the purpose of which is unclear. Their work drives them at a constant rate of activity to which they seem to have become so accustomed, that they barely seem conscious of their actions; sorting through papers, filing documents, making small notes, passing documents to one another. To occupy their thoughts they talk of other things, they have clearly known each other for a long time. Operating in such close proximity to each other over an extended period, they have developed a kind of intimacy. They know each others strengths and weaknesses, perhaps as a way to break the monotony they explore this terrain, moving into the vulnerable territories, in a way which is at once tender and manipulative, revealing a personal power struggle which preoccupies their existence. The film is shot on a constructed set and in an abandoned coal mine in Genk, Belgium.

Gregg Smith: biography www.greggsmith.co.za Gregg Smith is an artist from Cape Town, South Africa. He completed his studies at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 1991 and since then has been active in a range of contemporary art and theatre projects in South Africa and abroad. With origins in painting, performance, and art in public space, his present work incorporates aspects of all these practices in the development of video and film projects. In 2001-02, Gregg was a participant at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam, and following this moved to France where he studied film-making at Le Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains (2002-04). His work has recently been exhibited at the Dakar Biennale (Senegal, 2004), Le Musé de Jeu de Paume (Paris), and the Rotterdam Film Festival (Holland), Hidden Rhythms (Nijmegen, NL), Hilchot Schschenim C at the Digital Art Lab (Tel Aviv, Israel), Model Missed Opportunities, Brandenburger Kunstverein, Berlin, Videobrazil, Sao Paulo and the Rotterdam International Film Festival (2004, 2005), Le Plateau, Espace Experimantal, Paris, France, 2006, and Architecture au corps, Galerie Anton Weller, une proposition d?Alexandra Fau, Paris, France. Other notable projects in the field of art in public space include The Lovephones (Cape Town, 2000) and The Lovephones in London (Gasworks Gallery, London, 2001), The Long Street Baths Mural Project (Cape Town, 1994-98), and his ongoing Cape Town based project and discussion series, Very Real Time (www.veryrealtime.co.za). Present projects include the comission of a new work by Espai d`Art Contemporani de Castellon in Castellon, Spain as part of the exhibition, Our Hospitality, curated by Rodrigo Alonso.

A young man is traversing Paris, using his mobile, and talking to himself. He has problems and is looking for shelter for the night. In his mind, he runs through his whole circle of friends, but in reality he does not dare approach any of them. He would like to blame everyone and everything for this uncomfortable and narrow life where all good opportunities seem to have been squandered. From time to time, he stops and is then pulled into another dimension - a dimension where no boundaries and formalities exist and where, very briefly, he makes contact with total strangers. The very simple and functional design of this 'fourth dimension' makes its existence plausible. Everyone could flee to it from time to time. The film is shot in the busy neighbourhoods of Barbès, Château Rouge, and Gouttes d`Or, in Paris, and against a blue screen in Le Fresnoy. With Mireille Abadi, Manon Querelle, Feyçal Bagriche, Gérard Abela, and Gregg Smith.

Gregg Smith is an artist from Cape Town, South Africa. He completed his studies at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 1991 and since then has been active in a range of contemporary art and theatre projects in South Africa and abroad. With origins in painting, performance, and art in public space, his present work incorporates aspects of all these practices in the development of video and film projects. In 2001-02, Gregg was a participant at the 'Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten' in Amsterdam, and following this moved to France where he studied film-making at Le Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains (2002-04). His work has recently been exhibited at the Dakar Biennial (Senegal, 2004); Le Musée de Jeu de Paume (Paris); the Rotterdam Film Festival (Holland); Hidden Rhythms (Nijmegen, NL); Hilchot Schschenim C at the Digital Art Lab (Tel Aviv, Israel); Model Missed Opportunities, Brandenburger Kunstverein, Berlin; Videobrazil, Sao Paulo; the Rotterdam International Film Festival (2004, 2005); and Le Plateau, Espace Experimantal, Paris, France, 2006. Other notable projects in the field of art in public space include The Lovephones (Cape Town, 2000); The Lovephones in London (Gasworks Gallery, London, 2001); The Long Street Baths Mural Project (Cape Town, 1994-98); and his ongoing Cape Town based project and discussion series, "Very Real Time".

The Centre for Contemporary Art is a place for the creation and documentation of art in all its forms. The Centre achieves its goals through exhibitions, performances, presentations of visual theatre, concerts of contemporary music, the showing of experimental films, video art, shows and creative workshops, as well as various interdisciplinary events. Twelve years have passed since the Centre for Contemporary Art began its systematic and comprehensive activity in the public domain. A unique feature of this process is the way the developing art program is correlated with the reconstruction and organisation of the architectural spaces of the Castle in which the Centre is housed.

WVLNT ("Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time") is a reworking of Michael Snow's ground-breaking 45 minute experimental film Wavelength (1967). One of the most influential works of structuralist film, the original has been literally cut in three, with each section's visual and sound superimposed upon the others, resulting in a shortened yet intense video version.

Michael Snow is considered one of Canada's most important living artists, and one of the world's leading experimental filmmakers. His wide-ranging and multidisciplinary work explores the possibilities inherent in different media and genres, and encompasses film and video, painting, sculpture, photography, writing, and music. Snow's practice comprises a thorough investigation into the nature of perception. While Snow early established himself as a successful painter and musician in his native Toronto, it was his 1962 move to New York City that marked the beginning of his rise to international prominence. He entered into a long-lasting and fruitful dialogue with downtown Manhattan's artistic avant-garde, exchanging ideas with figures such as Yvonne Rainer, Philip Glass, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Foreman, and developing some of his most ambitious and influential works to date. Snow would continue to pursue improvised music, both on his own and in ensembles such as Toronto's CCMC. The generation and reception of sound in the broader sense emerged as one of his main concerns, reflected in performance and tape works that share qualities with contemporaneous experiments by composers like Steve Reich. At the same time, Snow made alliances within the underground film scene centered around Jonas Mekas 'Filmmakers' Cinematheque. He created his most famous experimental film "Wavelength" in 1967, which notoriously includes a 45-minute camera zoom within a fixed frame. Snow's other films of this period, including "Back and Forth" (1969), and "La Région Centrale" (1971), similarly explored the mechanics of filmmaking to simultaneously investigate the functional processes of cinema and of thinking itself. In the 1970s and 1980s Snow, responding to a growing institutional commitment to his work, experimented more with large-scale installations, including public sculptures such as "Flightstop" (1979) and "The Audience" (1988-89). In recent years he has focused on the specific nature and potential of digital media, yielding works like the video-film "Corpus Callosum" (2002). Regardless of artistic genre, Snow consistently engages in an analytical discourse on the nature of consciousness and experience, and language and temporality.

Sheeploop est un plan fixe, un paysage qui évolue lentement. Sheeploop offre un drôle d`instantané bucolique. Regarder des moutons mastiquer graduellement leur passage dans un pâturage, encore et encore, force le spectateur à reconsidérer la beauté de décors aussi idylliques. Typique des stratégies cinématographiques de Snow, cette oeuvre nous sensibilise au regard que nous portons sur un paysage, et sur la nature même de notre perception.

Michael Snow (né en 1929 à Toronto) est considéré comme l`un des plus importants artistes canadiens. En mars 2000, il recevait pour l`ensemble de son oeuvre cinématographique l`une des plus hautes distinctions au Canada, le Prix du Gouverneur général en arts visuels et arts médiatiques. Artiste multidisciplinaire, il est peintre, photographe, cinéaste et musicien. En 1956, il réalisait son premier film. Son film Wavelength (1967) le consacre comme l`un des cinéastes importants de « l`avant-garde américaine » (sic). À la fin des années 1960, pour la réalisation de son film La Région Centrale (1971), il collabore avec un ingénieur canadien à la conception et à la réalisation d`un bras mécanique qui permet à la caméra de tourner dans tous les sens et à des vitesses de rotation contrôlées par l`artiste. Au cours des dix dernières années, Snow a participé à toutes les expositions importantes ayant trait aux images dans le monde contemporain : Passages de l`image, réalisée par le Centre Pompidou; Projections, les transports de l`image, d`abord présenté au studio national des arts contemporains, Le Fresnoy; La Biennale d`art contemporain de Lyon, qui célébrait en 1995 les cent ans du cinéma, intégrait Snow à l`exposition. Enfin, le Musée des beaux-arts de l`Ontario et le Power Plant lui consacraient conjointement une grande rétrospective, Michael Snow Project. Encore récemment, on présentait en Europe une grande rétrospective de ses travaux filmiques et photographiques intitulée Panoramique : oeuvres photographiques et films=Photographic Works and Films : 1962-1999 et la Arnolfini Gallery de Bristol en Angleterre présentait en 2001 une exposition intitulée Michael Snow: almost Cover to Cover. Il est membre de l`Ordre du Canada et Chevalier de l`Ordre des arts et des lettres (France).

Based on a concert Michael Snow performed with his improvisatory ensemble CCMC at Kunst-Werke in 2002, Reverberlin is the first work for which Snow, both an esteemed filmmaker and musician, co-composed both sound and image. Using digital video images of CCMC playing all over the world, Snow creates counterpoints and juxtapositions to the unedited live recording (only sound) of 2002.

WVLNT ("Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have the Time") is a reworking of Michael Snow's ground-breaking 45 minute experimental film Wavelength (1967). One of the most influential works of structuralist film, the original has been literally cut in three, with each section's visual and sound superimposed upon the others, resulting in a shortened yet intense video version.

Michael Snow is considered one of Canada's most important living artists, and one of the world's leading experimental filmmakers. His wide-ranging and multidisciplinary work explores the possibilities inherent in different media and genres, and encompasses film and video, painting, sculpture, photography, writing, and music. Snow's practice comprises a thorough investigation into the nature of perception. While Snow early established himself as a successful painter and musician in his native Toronto, it was his 1962 move to New York City that marked the beginning of his rise to international prominence. He entered into a long-lasting and fruitful dialogue with downtown Manhattan's artistic avant-garde, exchanging ideas with figures such as Yvonne Rainer, Philip Glass, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Foreman, and developing some of his most ambitious and influential works to date. Snow would continue to pursue improvised music, both on his own and in ensembles such as Toronto's CCMC. The generation and reception of sound in the broader sense emerged as one of his main concerns, reflected in performance and tape works that share qualities with contemporaneous experiments by composers like Steve Reich. At the same time, Snow made alliances within the underground film scene centered around Jonas Mekas 'Filmmakers' Cinematheque. He created his most famous experimental film "Wavelength" in 1967, which notoriously includes a 45-minute camera zoom within a fixed frame. Snow's other films of this period, including "Back and Forth" (1969), and "La Région Centrale" (1971), similarly explored the mechanics of filmmaking to simultaneously investigate the functional processes of cinema and of thinking itself. In the 1970s and 1980s Snow, responding to a growing institutional commitment to his work, experimented more with large-scale installations, including public sculptures such as "Flightstop" (1979) and "The Audience" (1988-89). In recent years he has focused on the specific nature and potential of digital media, yielding works like the video-film "Corpus Callosum" (2002). Regardless of artistic genre, Snow consistently engages in an analytical discourse on the nature of consciousness and experience, and language and temporality.

Sheeploop est un plan fixe, un paysage qui évolue lentement. Sheeploop offre un drôle d`instantané bucolique. Regarder des moutons mastiquer graduellement leur passage dans un pâturage, encore et encore, force le spectateur à reconsidérer la beauté de décors aussi idylliques. Typique des stratégies cinématographiques de Snow, cette oeuvre nous sensibilise au regard que nous portons sur un paysage, et sur la nature même de notre perception.

Michael Snow (né en 1929 à Toronto) est considéré comme l`un des plus importants artistes canadiens. En mars 2000, il recevait pour l`ensemble de son oeuvre cinématographique l`une des plus hautes distinctions au Canada, le Prix du Gouverneur général en arts visuels et arts médiatiques. Artiste multidisciplinaire, il est peintre, photographe, cinéaste et musicien. En 1956, il réalisait son premier film. Son film Wavelength (1967) le consacre comme l`un des cinéastes importants de « l`avant-garde américaine » (sic). À la fin des années 1960, pour la réalisation de son film La Région Centrale (1971), il collabore avec un ingénieur canadien à la conception et à la réalisation d`un bras mécanique qui permet à la caméra de tourner dans tous les sens et à des vitesses de rotation contrôlées par l`artiste. Au cours des dix dernières années, Snow a participé à toutes les expositions importantes ayant trait aux images dans le monde contemporain : Passages de l`image, réalisée par le Centre Pompidou; Projections, les transports de l`image, d`abord présenté au studio national des arts contemporains, Le Fresnoy; La Biennale d`art contemporain de Lyon, qui célébrait en 1995 les cent ans du cinéma, intégrait Snow à l`exposition. Enfin, le Musée des beaux-arts de l`Ontario et le Power Plant lui consacraient conjointement une grande rétrospective, Michael Snow Project. Encore récemment, on présentait en Europe une grande rétrospective de ses travaux filmiques et photographiques intitulée Panoramique : oeuvres photographiques et films=Photographic Works and Films : 1962-1999 et la Arnolfini Gallery de Bristol en Angleterre présentait en 2001 une exposition intitulée Michael Snow: almost Cover to Cover. Il est membre de l`Ordre du Canada et Chevalier de l`Ordre des arts et des lettres (France).

Joanna is a singer who performs in a bar six nights a week, inside a hotel where she lives a few floors below. Her voice guides us through her work routine and the circular route between her room and the stage, all while the video continuously interrupts itself, disrupting the linearity of her story. 'B Plots' looks into the connection between images and physical spaces and how they mirror and affect each other. The mechanic movements of the camera are not hidden, but amplified, directing ones attention towards the camera as a medium and the materiality of the video.

Freja Sofie Kirk works within video, photography and installation, often in connection with one another. Through her ongoing work with two-dimensional representations, Kirk’s practice investigates how images generate meaning in contemporary society. Her work takes the form of a continuous study of spatial and medial constructions, the violence they perform and the architecture they manifest. By utilizing the camera, Kirk attempts to renegotiate the power relations inherent in both architecture and image production.

The “Bibby Challenge” – a cross between a cruise ship and container ship – is a kind of improvised home on the water that German authorities in Hamburg set up to accommodate refugees from the Yugoslav Civil Wars. Adnan Softi? lived on this ship, which was anchored in the middle of the city on the river Elbe.?? We hear voices and we see pictures. People remember and we become witnesses of their memories. And while we become witnesses, we remember ourselves. Maybe. Not all memories are divisible, but there are bridges. There is the ship, there is the sea. There is the container. There is the living space, rather limited, four people in nine square meters. Fates of war, fates of refugees. Perhaps the experience on board the "Bibby Challenge" was not much different than on Noah's Ark - both ships with a grotesquely bloated belly. The form follows the function: to accommodate as much life as possible. The "Bibby Challenge" does not actually sail; it floats. The ship is part of the city and yet a body beyond space and time. Softi? addresses the ship as both a place and a non-place at the same time – as a floating, highly mobile vessel that knows how to navigate the boundaries between national and international waters, if only because twothirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with water.

Adnan Softi? is a director, author and visual artist. He is consistently dealing with historical and remembrance politics issues and his inter-disciplinary art activities are on display in numerous exhibitions and screenings in both Germany and abroad. Most recently: n.b.k., Berlin; Johann Jacobs Museum, Zurich; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo… Furthermore Softi? was recently awarded with the scholarships of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo and Working Fellowship of the Senate of Berlin.

BIGGER THAN LIFE is a music film in four acts, based between fiction and documentation, between reality and wishful thinking. The focus is on the fabrication of national history through architecture and urban planning. In Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, a government plan costing several hundred million euros is creating a brand new, ancient city center. »Skopje 2014« is the name of the monumental construction plan, which wants to stage its capital as the cradle of ancient high civilization and as the origin of Europe. So far, some thirty government buildings and museums, as well as countless monuments in the classic style have been erected in the Macedonian capital, in an attempt to put Skopje on a par with Rome and Athens. In some cases, existing socialist structures were incorporated into the new builds. A city looks for a future in history, Macedonia is inventing itself as a nation with historical status based on a model of antiquity that never existed in that form. Would that be something new? Will we buy that (hi)story?

Adnan Softic is an author, visual artist and director. He studied Film and Aesthetic Theory at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, where he also taught as a professor of Film and Time Based Media. Softic? was recently awarded with the scholarships of the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo. The current lm "Bigger Than Life" won the 3sat Prize at the 64th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

The film is based on Lenin?s article ?Before the Storm? which tells about the First Russian Revolution of 1905. So it is a very short reenactment of the previous revolution. On the other hand it is taking place in today?s Moscow and labour migrants feature in the film, so it can be also a rehearsal of the future rebellion.

Haim Sokol b. 1973, Archangelsk, Russia Lives and works in Moscow Winner in 2009 for Special Stella Art Foundation prize Haim Sokol is an installation, sculpture, and video-based artist whose practice addresses the dramatic social histories of Russia and Eastern Europe. Though many of his works teeter on the edge of fiction and fantasy, Sokol roots his use of literary allusion in historical reality and the legacy of major 20th century uprisings, revolutions, massacres and genocides. By compounding the grim realities of urban life with the complexity of exile and socio-political diaspora, Sokol?s works effectively capture experiences of alienation, isolation and disrupted communication. Sokol is a graduate of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1996) and the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art (2007). Sokol has exhibited in solo exhibitions at the M&J Guelman Gallery, Triumph Gallery, Anna Nova Gallery and other galleries in Moscow and St Petersburg. He has participated in the First Indian Biennale (Kochi-Muziris, 2012), Mediation Biennale (Poznan, Poland, 2010), the Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009), the Second Biennale of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki (Greece, 2009), the First Moscow Biennial for Young Artists (2008) and other exhibitions in Russia and internationally.

Digital footage of the river near the filmmaker's childhood home is laser-printed directly onto 16mm film, creating a shifting, liquified halftone. Memory dissolves into the texture of time. The print bleeds onto the optical sound strip, the image obscuring the soundtrack. The landscape is impossible to return to.

Kate Solar is a filmmaker from Ottawa, Ontario, currently studying at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is interested in experimental documentary and the physicality of celluloid film. Conceptually, her work explores the intersections of landscape with memory, identity, and gender.

You have been tracking us, is a video work that reconstructs one of the scenes of the movie Lawrence of Arabia (directed by David Lean in 1962), the scene is the one that has an oasis as background, where the little army of Lawrence has stopped to rest. The video has been shot at the same spots of Tabernas? Desert (Almería, Spain) where the scene was orginally shot, copying the movements of the camera, in order to analyze the landscape that the cinematographic industry produced and, afterwards, left behind. The production team of the movie created the oasis for the shooting and did not remove the palm trees afterwards, so the trees have managed to survive and they still remain alive, 40 years after; this particular condition creates an interesting situation, where fictional elements have produced a?real? landscape. The video works with images aesthetically close from documentaries, but follows the shots ant the movements of the original scene, creating a contradictory and strange landscape.

Teresa Solar has studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Complutense, in Madrid and has obtained an MA in Contemporary Art at the European University of Madrid. She has been selected in different national contests such as ?Momentos de paisaje 09? (CDAN) and has participated in various exhibitions like ?Yo no tengo razón? (Off Limits, Madrid, 2009) and LOOP Festival (Barcelona, 2009). Since 2008 she has been investigating the relationships between touristic and cinematographic industry and landscape. Nowadays she is producing a new project in Cairo, Egypt.

In the heart of Bordeaux, the imposing Trade Union Center is still standing, reminding us of a time where class conflict and the value of work were the building blocks of society. The crumbling walls and abandoned floors are a clear sign that time has gone by, leaving behind a lifeless ideal for the Popular Front. A group is touring the building as the weight of the architectural heritage seems to doom union action to oblivion. However, the Trade Union Center starts to reveal its inhabitants, bursting with energy and actively involved in burning social conflicts.

Au c?ur de Bordeaux demeure l?imposante Bourse du travail, lieu témoin d?une époque où la valeur travail et la lutte des classes étaient moteurs de la construction de la société. Sa façade égratignée, ses étages désertés sont autant de signes que le temps est passé, emportant avec lui la vivacité de l`idéal du Front Populaire. Un groupe visite le bâtiment, le patrimoine semble pousser l`action syndicale aux oubliettes, pourtant le lieu dévoile peu à peu ses habitants, bien vivants et animés par des problématiques sociales on ne peut plus actuelles.

Isabelle Solas est réalisatrice et cadreuse. Suite à des études en anthropologie et en langues orientales, elle intègre la prestigieuse Ecole du Doc de Lussas, en 2005, où elle réalise Dorsale sur le proche Atlantique, et rencontre les différents acteurs issus de ce "village documentaire". Depuis, elle travaille comme cadreuse pour d`autres réalisateurs (Gilles Kerpen, Galés Moncomble, Anna Feillou). Elle réalise son premier long métrage Inventaire en 2009, diffusé à l`Utopia à Bordeaux, et au festival Traces De Vies 2009. Elle se consacre ensuite à la réalisation de films engagés, Anastasie, portrait d?une sans-papier, La Presqu?Île, portrait d?un SDF (Programmation au Festival Traces de Vie 2011), et Voisins, Rencontres et jardins cachés, documentaire sur la question du logement social à Begles, programmé en 2010 au Festival Traces de Vie. Elle travaille également comme vidéaste avec le collectif "Monts et Merveilles", autour d`expériences artistiques et participatives, dans Soupe 3, et Cocktail Manoir, en collaboration avec Florent Ghys, contrebassiste et compositeur, elle réalise des vidéos musicales, 4, et Déviation. Elle travaille actuellement sur un nouveau projet de moyen métrage documentaire en coproduction avec France 3, intitulé PAS DE NOSTALGIE, CAMARADES avec la société Sister productions.

We all have dreams. What happens, however, when those longings radically intrude the taboo that society and culture impose upon us? A hair-raising psychological documentary by Jan Soldat portrays three men whose concealed fantasies will evoke disgust and shock in some viewers. The protagonists wish to be slaughtered, dismembered, and eaten. A more insightful audience member may find references to famous cannibalistic films (“Cannibal Holocaust,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Grimm Love”).

Born in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in 1984. He has been making short films at Chemnitzer Filmwerkstatt since 2006. He studied film and television directing at the Konrad Wolf College of Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. He has presented his film many times at Berlinale and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. He won the CineMAXXI Award for best short film at the 8th Rome Film Festival.

Inspired by the legacies of real historical events and manufactured myths, American Fables, re-imagines through video vignettes some of the most celebrated moments in American History. I have long been influenced by the comically one-dimensional and inaccurate accounts of history common to most US textbooks, where ethnocentric perspectives create propagandistic narratives of American exceptionalism. Continuously, I find myself fascinated by the subjectivity of history, its vulnerability to partisan ideals and nationalism, rendering historical accounts more akin to folktales than facts. This inspired me to create my own library of counterfeit and re-imagined American History in an effort to submit my own voice into the ever expanding campaign of misinformation entrenched in Western rhetoric.

Federico Solmi (Italy, 1973) currently lives and works in New York. Solmi’s work utilizes bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present-day society. His exhibitions often feature articulate installations composed of a variety of media including video, painting, drawing, and sculpture. Solmi uses his art as a vehicle to stimulate a visceral conversation with his audience, highlighting the contradictions and fallibility that characterize our time. Through his work, Solmi examines unconscious human impulses and desires in order to critique Western society's obsession with individual success and display contemporary relationships between nationalism, colonialism, religion, consumerism. By re-configuring historical narratives across eras, he creates social and political commentary works which disrupt the mythologies that define American society. Scanning his paintings into a game engine, Solmi’s videos confront the audience with his own absurd rewriting of past and present, merging dark humor and sense of the grotesque with new technologies. He creates a carnivalesque virtual reality where our leaders become puppets, animated by computer script and motion capture performance rather than string.

THE BALLROOM With his typical sardonic and irreverent approach, Federico Solmi has orchestrated a masquerade between history’s most feared and beloved leaders in his latest work, ‘The Ballroom’. In the installation, videos display surreal vignettes of a lavish ballroom party that converge multiple narratives of gluttony, gossip, and over the top exuberance. The follies of each overly ambitious leader result in a chaotic festival of drinking, smoking, dancing, and feasting. A vain display of ridiculous costumes, shining with medals and jewelry, promote a visual disorder that coalesces with the indulgent antics of these powerful figures. Rather than reimagining history, the leaders enter into our conceited present-day celebrity culture. They call to fault our own complacency and perpetuation of skewed historical myths and perspectives.

Solmi’s elaborate installations combine 3D animation and video game technology with paintings, drawings, and kinetic sculptures. Bright colors and a satirical aesthetic portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Through an intricate process in which technology and hand-painting merge into an organic whole, his unique approach renders the most loathed aspects of modern life. With garish imagery and mesmerizing movement, Solmi expresses a harsh criticism toward the system that approves and trusts without questioning the fragile foundation on which our culture and post-modernist society is based. Federico Solmi, (lives and works in New York). In the year 2009, Federico Solmi was awarded with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category of Video & Audio by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York. He is currently a visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art, New Haven (CT). Solmi has been featured in solo museum exhibitions at the Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2016) Museo de Arte Contemporaneo del Zulia, Maracaibo Venezuela (forthcoming), and the Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2015). His work has been included in several international Biennials, including the Frankfurt B3 Biennial of Moving image (2015), the First Shenzhen Animation Biennial in China (2013), the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), and the Site Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico (2010).

In Chinese Democracy and the Last Day on Earth Federico Solmi aims to lampoon the contemporary society and the self–destructive nature of mankind. In contrast with their playful faux-naïve aesthetics, the videos indict a male dominated, hierarchal world controlled by corrupt, arrogant dictators, politicians, businessmen as forces behind the disintegration of ethical and moral values.

BIOGRAPHY Federico Solmi (Italy, 1973) currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, use bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Irreverent, surrealistic, the videos and the works by Federico Solmi are as he is: extravagant, rowdy and ironic. They are satires about the evilness and the vices that affect contemporary society and mankind. The artist uses images culled from the video game industry, pop culture, and the Internet and collages them with a historical influence to produce original artworks about the seemingly disparate subject at hand. The universe that Solmi likes to represent is the exaltation of a present that is crumbling apart. His work is a criticism of a system that approves and trusts without questioning the fragile foundation on which our culture and post-modernist society is based. In the year 2009, Federico Solmi was awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category Video & Audio. Solmi`s works has been exhibited in several international Biennials, such as First Shenzhen Animation Biennial in China (2013), the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), and Site Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico (2010). His works have been exhibited and screened in the following museums and institutions for contemporary art: Centre De Pompidou, Palais De Tokyo, Paris; Drawing Center, New York; Reina Sofia National Museum, CA2M Centro De Arte Dos De Mayo (upcoming), Italian Cultural Institute, Madrid; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Arts, Israel; OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai; Australian Center of Moving Images, Melbourne; Victoria Memorial Museum, Calcutta, India; Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome, Palazzo Delle Belle Arti, Naples, Italy Solmi`s video have been screened in several film and video festivals around the world including the Kassel Documentary film and video festival; Tina B, Prague; Les Rencontres Internationales, Paris, Madrid, Berlin; The London International animation festival; Loop Barcelona and others. Federico Solmi has given lectures on his work in several universities and art schools in the United States and Europe, including Yale University in New Haven, School Of Visual Arts in New York, and Accademia di Belle Arti Brera and Universita` Cattolica in Milan.

"A Song of Tyranny", is the first video episode of the Trilogy entitled Chinese Democracy and The Last Day On Earth, a project by Federico Solmi, which was commissioned by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York after the artist was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for video. In this swarming animation, the artist investigates the self destructive nature of mankind through the examples of political dictatorship and authoritarian behaviors. Beyond the apparent Manichean character of such a vision, the video is articulated as a fictitious portrayal or the hagiography of an imaginary leader of the mid-21st century, idolized by his crowd of subjects. Solmi`s playful aesthetics integrate a series of visual metaphors to present viewers with a comedic-grotesque parabola on power and its excess. This sarcastic and irreverent tone allows Solmi to target the epitome of human folly, greed, and thirst for power, preventing a simple reproduction of the dichotomic good versus evil. A Song of Tyranny, centers on the protagonist in the phase of becoming a dictator while he is permeated with values and models that will influence his successive actions and decisions in the process of rising to power. Solmi?s complex technique combines traditional hand drawn animation with digital models, utilizing computer gaming engines. The result is an absolutely unique hand-made texture within a real-time 3D framework, created in collaboration with Australian based 3D artist, Russell Lowe.

Federico Solmi (Italy in 1973), currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, use bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Irreverent, surrealistic, and sexually explicit, the videos and the works by Federico Solmi are as he is: extravagant, rowdy and ironic. They are satires about the evilness and the vices that affect contemporary society and mankind. The artist uses images culled from the video game industry, pop culture, and the Internet and collages them with a historical influence to produce original artworks about the seemingly disparate subject at hand. The universe that Solmi likes to represent is the exaltation of a present that is crumbling apart. His work is a criticism of a system that approves and trusts without questioning the fragile foundation on which our culture and post-modernist society is based. In the year 2009, Federico Solmi was awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category Video & Audio. Solmi?s videos were featured in the 54th Venice Biennial, in the exhibition entitled ?Italians do it better?. His work was included in the year 2010 at the Site Santa Fe Biennial, an exhibition curated by Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco. His work has been exhibited in the following museums and Institutions for Contemporary art; Centre Pompidou, Paris, Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid, Drawing Center, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Australian Center of Moving Images, Melbourne, Victoria Memorial Museum, Calcutta, India, Contemporary Art Center of Rouboix, Palazzo Delle Arti, Naples, Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy. In addition, his video animations have been screened in several film and video festivals, such the Kassel Documentary film and video festival, Tina B, Prague, The London International animation festival, Loop Barcelona, IndieLisboa, Lisbon, Impakt Film and Video festival, Utrecht.

Douche Bag City is a video installation of 24 drawing animated film. It was conceived by the artist to be a satire about the current world economic crisis. The main character ?Dick Richman? is a greedy, dishonest, and selfish Wall Street employee who has been banished to live in Douche Bag City. Douche Bag City is a hopeless place, where the greedy villains of society are imprisoned for their atrocities committed against the community. The video is made of several chapters. In the final version of the installation, 24 videos/episodes will be playing simultaneously; each episode represents a mission for the main character. The ultimate goal of the protagonist ? Dick Richman? is to survive different challenges, but the drawing animated /video games are set by the artist in a way that the main character ?Dick Richman? cannot win. For each video I used a combination hand-made drawings, video game technologies, 3D and 2D animation. The installation was made in collaboration with Russell Lowe, an Australia-based 3D artist and professor at the New South Wales University in Sidney.

Federico Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy in April 1973 and currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, use bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Irreverent, surrealistic, and sexually explicit, the videos and the works by Federico Solmi are as he is: extravagant, rowdy and ironic. They are satires about the evilness and the vices that affect contemporary society and mankind. In the year 2009, Federico Solmi was awarded by the Guggenheim Foundation of New York with the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in the category Video & Audio. Federico?s work has been featured in the following museums and Institutions for Contemporary art; Santa Fe Biennal (upcoming June 2010), Centre Pompidou, Paris, Drawing Center, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Australian Center of Moving Images, Melbourne, Victoria Memorial Museum, Calcutta, India, Contemporary Art Center of Rouboix, Palazzo Delle Arti, Naples, Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy.

KING KONG AND THE END OF THE WORLD - 2005 - 2006 King Kong and the End of the World is a sensational and sarcastic drawing animated film, based on the original 1933 King Kong movie. In this version, King Kong (played by the alter ego of the artist) destroys New York City, using the Guggenheim Museum as a weapon, then he climbs to the top of the Empire State Building where he pees, eats wall street brokers for lunch, and fights the Statue of Liberty in the arena of Time Square. The artist uses King Kong as an allegory of the art world and the money-frenzy culture of the city. In this world, art is struggling against its role as a commodity. Ideas around the nature of money, technology, the natural and ?man-made? come together in the painstaking hand drawing of every frame. When he is finally killed, King Kong triggers a cataclysmic earthquake that destroys the earth or as it?s called by the artist ?the world of assholes?. All that is left is for Federico and his wife Jennifer to repopulate a better mankind using a baby making machine.

Federico Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy in April 1973 and currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, uses bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. Power is often the nemesis in his worlds, manifesting itself in the elliptical layers of the Guggenheim Museum (King Kong and the End of the World, video 2006), the shiny Prada shoes of the Pope (The Evil Empire, video 2007), and the personal obsession to be as famous as the giant letters that spell out ?Hollywood?. The artist uses images culled from the video game industry, pop culture, and the Internet and collages them with a historical influence to produce original artworks about the seemingly disparate subject at hand. What results from the combination of all these elements is art that is humorous, absurd, and scathingly critical of our contemporary society. .