Catalogue > At random

The video investigates the complex relationship between language and cultural identity in our contemporary times. Instead of considering languages as simple communication tools, here they become viruses able to contaminate each other shaping new identities and geographies. The starting point of the video is a fragmented narration of an anecdotic story: an intimate adolescent memory of learning English. This memory is playfully filtered through references to the mainstream visual culture of the late 80s and 90s. The video work describes the process of shaping new forms of the self through the use of language. Words, memories and images merge with artificial landscapes, created and filmed in a marine engineering studio, and flow in vague yet coherent sequences that feel as natural and unsettling as a dream.

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, De Ateliers in Amsterdam and Deltaworkers in New Orleans. Giaretta’s work has been featured in exhibitions in Italy and abroad at diverse institutions and galleries such as: Palazzo Fortuny (Venice, IT); MAMbo (Bologna, IT); Galleria Tiziana Di Caro (Naples, IT); La Criée (Rennes, FR); Foundation Botin (Santander, SP); De Appel (Amsterdam, NL); MACRO (Rome, IT); Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart, (Rochechouart, FR); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, (Turin, IT). His films have been shown at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam (Rotterdam, NL) IDFA (Amsterdam, NL) and at the New Horizons International Film Festival (Wroclaw, PL), among other festivals and screening. Between 2016-17 His research was focusing on the relationship between perception and alteration during the night time. To carry on such research Giaretta has been working as night porter in an hotel in Amsterdam. He is lecturer at AKI in Enschede, NL. He is represented by Galleria Tiziana Di Caro.