Catalogue > At random

A voice-over tells the story of a sailor that dreams of a homeland he has never had; day after day the sailor constructs his new native land shaping it to his imagination. Inspired by Fernado Pessoa`s static drama "The Mariner" the video deals with the notion of what each of us addresses as home and foreign and at the same time with issues related to language and its translation. Playing with the perception of who is watching, confusing it and mixing it, whilst images of landscapes trick the eyes of the viewer creating shadow play illusions, the female voice speaks Na`vi, an invented language artificially created upon commission for the movie Avatar. Like a second voice, the subtitles suggest a relation established among words, images and imagination.

Giovanni Giaretta (Padua 1983) currently lives and works in Amsterdam. After graduating in Design and Production of Visual Arts at the University IUAV of Venice, he took part in a number of residency programs including: Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris in 2010; and most recently De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Giaretta’s work has been featured in exhibitions in Italy and abroad at diverse institutions and galleries such as: La Criée (Rennes, FR); Tegenboschvanvreden, (Amsterdam, NL); Foundation Botin (Santander, SP); Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart, (Rochechouart, FR); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, (Torino, IT); and Motive Gallery (Amsterdam, NL). His films have been shown at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam (Rotterdam, NL) and the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival (Wroclaw, PL), among other festivals and screenings. His actual research is focusing on the relationship between perception and alteration during the night time. For the last year, to carry on such research Giaretta has been working as night porter in an hotel in Amsterdam. From 2015, he is also working as co-teacher at the Salzburg International Summer Academy.