Catalogue > Search

Between 9 May and 11 June 1943, the island of Pantelleria was violently bombarded by the Allied troops in the first operation to reconquer Italian soil. Residents recall that, after the surrender, some of the buildings were blown up for the cameras of a propaganda combat film. Pantelleria traces the memories of this event in the local collective consciousness and looks at the contemporary implications of an episode that took place in the shadow of official history. Through a two-years long participatory process with the residents, the film explores the tension between the truth and its ideological distortion, and between the reality of the bombs and their telling through images. The Nervi hangar, a symbol of Mussolini’s militarisation of the island, is now shown empty and inhabited by a magical animal presence. Extracts from the combat film are projected onto the buildings of today’s Pantelleria, while the camera travels through the bunkers dug by the Italian army. The voiceover, written and read by writer Giorgio Vasta, gives expressive form to the island’s stories, while the sound by GUP Alcaro and Davide Tomat distorts the recordings of the local orchestra Spata, finding in dance music a space for the reactivation of the past, and liberation in the present.

MASBEDO is an artistic duo formed by Nicolò Massazza and Iacopo Bedogni. They have been working together since 1999 and they currently live in Milan and Piacenza (Italy). Different artistic languages such as video, installation, cinema, performance, theater, and sound design coexist in their work. They are interested in emotional and intense narratives that delve into the depths of human relationships and the complex subjectivity of the contemporary individual. They have identified the relationship between cinema and art as a preferred area of investigation, which they approach with an attentive gaze to both socio-anthropological elements and the most intimate and poetic ones. MASBEDO’s works have been exhibited in international institutions such as: Manifesta 15 Barcelona; Centre Pompidou-Metz; CCCB Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona; Fondazione ICA Milan; MAMM Multimedia Art Museum Moscow; Manifesta12 Palermo; Hong Kong Arts Centre; Fondazione Merz; Leopold Museum Wien; MAXXI Rome; Centre Pompidou/Forum des Images Paris. Among others, their short and feature films have been shown at: Venice International Film Festival; Locarno Film Festival; CPH:DOX; FIFA – Festival International du Film sur l’Art Montréal; Villa Medici Film Festival Rome; Sharjah Film Platform; Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York; Lo schermo dell’arte, Florence, IFFR-International Film Festival Rotterdam.

The major video screening set up echoes the documentary Condivisione di un ricordo: this work presents the operation which concerned Bergamo and the municipalities of the Val Seriana over the summer, in which numerous posters portraying Pellizza’s painting were displayed, thanks to the involvement of people encountered by the artists.

The two artists have worked together since 1999, focusing on video art and installations. They express themselves through the language of video, and in different forms such as performance, theater, installation, photography and recently cinema. In Italy they are recognized among the most important video artists and innovators in the field of contemporary art. Their artistic research has focused on the theme of incommunicability, highlighting the paradox of our communication society. This has led them to produce very intimate pieces alongside work with a greater anthropological, social, and political feel. They strive to engage their audience by using the moving image as an immersive installation. MASBEDO have also worked with video-performances to engage their audience within the creative space and gestures created by the video itself

A flow of images, each from a different movie, connected to each other based on certain criteria. Insert shots that were born to be mere appendages of more important ones. Anonymous images that now have a second chance and create another narrative. One that has no plot, no characters, no motive, but still runs irresponsibly to nowhere. A stream of pure moving cinema.

Ignacio Masllorens is an independent Argentine film director, producer and editor. He graduated from the University of Buenos Aires, where he currently works as a teacher. His films have been shown at Anthology Film Archives, Cinémathèque Française, Filmmuseum München, ArcoMadrid Art Fair, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Fundación Fortabat, Fundación Klemm and many international film festivals.

The CONTROL NEGATIVE experience is an exercise in a loss. Using VR technology, author Monika Mas?o? situates the viewer in an emotional state where frustration, helplessness, anger, and sadness are used to reveal basic human assumptions, including the illusory conviction of being fully in control of one's own life. The unreal world of the experience — a negative version of the real world — is a training space where you can better understand yourself and your emotions. The user is guided through seven chapters, which gradually move from physical activity to contemplation.

Dr. Monika Maslon (born 1982) - visual artist and art educator. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in ?ód? and Ph.D. studies at the Film School in ?ód?, where she completed her Ph.D. thesis entitled “Do zobaczenia” (See you), under the supervision of Prof. Józef Robakowski. She is a lecturer at the University of Leipzig and the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw where she conducts classes with the students of the department of Arts education in fine arts. In 2014 she stayed at an artistic residence in Singapore, where she made an artistic project called “Comfort of Long-Distance Perceiving”. In 2016 she implemented the project “Template - a tool to learn how to use an image”, as a part of a scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The scope of her art activities is manifested mainly through realizations based on audiovisual material. She participated in numerous exhibitions and shows. She is the author of the VR experience - CONTROL NEGATIVE.

One Place One Boy One Day One Shot One Wheel of Film

Nana is 4 years old and lives in a stone house beyond the forest. Back from school, a late afternoon, all she finds is silence in the house. A journey into the night of her childhood.

It's through photography, and notably her collaboration with Nan Goldin, that Valerie Massadian came to image-making,Creating slide- show screenings (The Link, Mary Go Round, Journal de Bord), exhibited in Tokyo, London and Porto. What she has retained from photography is its freedom and the rigor of frontal contact. She has taken this same approach, committing to a project from concept to completion, in her collaborations with several film directors. From there came the need of her own film, NANA, which won the Price for Best First Feature Film at the Locarno Film Festival 2011, as well as the Price for Best International Feature Film at the Festival Internacional de Ciné de Valdivia.

La Selva oscura (La forêt obscure) film/vidéo, texte de Dante Alighieri, La Comédie, L’Enfer, Chant treizième (XIII) Préambule: Dans la forêt des suicidés, Dante et Virgile croisent deux formes humaines qui fuient devant eux, arrachant tout sur leur passage et brutalisant ainsi elles-mêmes leur chair jusqu’à ce que des chiennes faméliques (Harpyes) les rejoignent et les dépècent. Tel est le châtiment de ceux qui ont péché contre eux-mêmes par dissipation. Synopsis: Par une nuit obscure, A. et D. progressent, séparément, dans une forêt où nul sentier n’indique le chemin à suivre, où aucune issue ne se présente à eux. Ils se sont égarés, la forêt les retient. Ils surgissent de l’obscurité, débusqués par les éclairages qui les aveuglent. Un face-à-face s’installe entre eux et la forêt, à la présence des arbres répondent leurs propres regards et voix. A. s’est levé, D. de même, résonnent en eux les aboiements d’une meute de chiens qui progressivement se rapproche. Une course-poursuite est engagée où toute issue leur sera fatale.

Guy Massaux est artiste visuel, curateur d’exposition, professeur d’art à l’Académie des beaux-arts de Bruxelles. Après avoir consacré son travail d’artiste principalement à la peinture, il oriente, depuis plusieurs années, ses préoccupations de création autour de l’image en mouvement par l’écriture cinématographique, notamment à travers des dispositifs de vidéo-installations. Il a réalisé plusieurs courts métrages en langue italienne, La Selva Oscura (2018), Il Rifugio (2014) et "B.", film en cours de post-production (2020). Il partage ses principales activités et son emploi du temps entre l’Italie et la Belgique. Il collabore régulièrement avec Mirco Mencacci ingénieur du son. Créateur des univers sonores de films italiens tels que « Le Regard de Michel Ange (Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo) » de Michelangelo Antonioni, « Nos meilleures années (La Meglio gioventu)» de Marco Tullio Giordana ou encore «La Fenêtre d’en face» (Facing Windows) de Ferzan Ozpetec. Pour ses créations, il travaille sur une nouvelle manière de diffuser le son et développe le système du « son sphérique », utilisé pour la première fois dans le film « Le Regard de Michel Ange ».

It all began with a simple card, bearing the note: `If you find this image, please write to the following email address...`. Sabine Massenet, like others who toss messages in bottles out to sea, `launched` her messages into the unknown. Slipped between the pages of books chosen at random in various libraries of the Seine-Saint-Denis region on the outskirts of Paris, they were the beginning of an adventure that lead to rewarding encounters with anonymous readers.

Sabine Massenet is a video artist. She was born in 1958 and lives and works in Paris. In 1997, after having worked with various media (clay, plaster, photography) to create installations in which she would sometimes include narrative elements, she decided to focus solely on video. She explores portraiture, open to language and the resonance of images in collective and personal memory. She also practices the recycling of television or cinema images, which she `re-edits` by playing with the visual codes specific to both media. In 2003, she received digital art funding from the SCAM (Civil Society of Multimedia Authors) for 361° de bonheur, jointly published by the Incidences / Vidéochroniques label. She has also created videos for the theatre, along with site-specific works for the Maison Rimbaud in Charleville Mézières in 2005. Her videos are regularly presented at film and multimedia festivals in France and abroad, in art centres and museums. Solo presentations of her work have been shown at the Cinémathèque Française (2004), Festival Némo and at the Jeu de Paume (2005), and at the Festival des Scénaristes in Bourges (2009). Her video Transports amoureux was selected for inclusion in the TALENTS collection`s first volume. All her videos are distributed by Heure Exquise.

The video work "no mental scars, no nursed grudges," 2022, presents two young acrobats creating figures together — the older girl becomes a support for the younger one. There is also a pose performed by the younger girl individually, however on an object, which is the handstand canes. All the exercises are recorded with two cameras, one of which is fixed on a large bolt. The robot observes and analyses girls' movements in close-ups and slow motion, in order that all their gestures and strains are detectable. This anthropomorphic machine becomes a character itself — it is visible in the distance shots performing a choreography. The title of the work comes from Zygmunt Bauman's "From Pilgrim to Tourist – Or A Short History of Identity," from the passage "The Player."

Female visual artist based in Warsaw. Graduate of the Studio of Spatial Activities by Miros?aw Ba?ka at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (2018), former student of Candice Breitz and Eli Cortiñas at the HBK in Braunschweig (DAAD scholarship for 2019/20), guest by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin at the HFBK in Hamburg (2017/18). Her main focus is mechanisms of control and processes influencing and exploiting an individual. She uses poetic visual language to analyze restrictive rules established within intimate relationships, communities, states, or companies, and towards the natural environment. She exhibited in MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, eastcontemporary gallery in Milan (2022), Fabbri Schenker Projects in London, MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome, Center for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci in Prato (2021), Wschód gallery in Warsaw (2020), Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw (2019), Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Fondation Hippocrène in Paris (2018), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2017 – laureate of the Hestia Artistic Journey Competition). Agnieszka was a resident of Hospitalfield in Scotland (2022), Muzeum Susch in Switzerland, the Artists Development Program at the EIB Institute in Luxembourg (2021), and Futura gallery in Prague (2020, Visegrad Fund). She participated in the Lucy Art Residency public program in Kavala (2022) and in the School of Expressions in PLATO Ostrava (2019). Works of her are in Fondazione in Between Art Film by Beatrice Bulgari, Ergo Hestia Group, and European Investment Bank collections, as well as in private ones. Represented by eastcontemporary gallery in Milan.

Nodes is a project analyzing spells as an example of control over another being. I focused on the violence of persuading somebody to fall in love. I have been considering casting a spell as an influential but not direct act for which specific tools or gestures might be needed. I chose orchids whose roots were used to influence another person, both when it comes to feelings and sexual activity. In the areas of today’s Poland and Italy, dried wild orchid roots were hidden under somebody’s clothes, or an orchid-based powder was added to goat milk which was supposed to help sexual arousal. On the contrary, nowadays, in a huge industrial space, hundreds of almost identical orchids run through a commercial line. Although the production is highly mechanized and managed by technology, the final sculptural touch on every flower goes through the working hands of females — they manually shape this organic material by adding artificial backbones and cutting off the rotten parts. The women use this intimate act to fit the normalized aesthetics. With Nodes, I am bringing attention to the powerful operations both in private and industrial environments by looking at the human element in them.

Female visual artist based in Warsaw. Graduate of the Studio of Spatial Activities by Miroslaw Balka at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (BA, MA, 2018), former student of Candice Breitz and Eli Cortiñas at the HBK in Braunschweig (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Scholarship for 2019/2020), and a guest by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin at the HFBK in Hamburg (2017/2018). She also obtained her BA in Cultural Studies at the University of Warsaw (2013). Currently participant of the Autumn Intensive at the Malmö Art Academy. She exhibited with Catinca Tabacaru Gallery at the Goethe Institut in Bucharest (2024), NS-Dokumentazionszentrum in Munich (2023), MOCAK – Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Manifesta 14 Prishtina, eastcontemporary gallery in Milan (2022), Fabbri Schenker Projects in London, MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome, Center for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci in Prato (2021), Wschód gallery in Warsaw (2020), Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Starak Family Foundation in Warsaw (2019), Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Fondation Hippocrène in Paris (2018), Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2017 – laureate of the Hestia Artistic Journey Competition), and TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art in Szczecin (2016). Art fairs include NADA Villa Warsaw (2024), Artissima, and Arco Madrid (2021). Agnieszka Mastalerz was a resident of Hospitalfield in Scotland (2022), Muzeum Susch in Switzerland, the Artist Development Program at the EIB Institute in Luxembourg (2021), and Futura gallery in Prague (2020, Visegrad Fund). She participated in the Lucy Art Residency public program in Kavala (2022) and in the School of Expressions in PLATO Ostrava (2019). She is a laureate of M?oda Polska scholarship for 2024. Works of her are in Fondazione in Between Art Film by Beatrice Bulgari, Ergo Hestia Group, European Investment Bank, and Warsaw Ghetto Museum collections, as well as in private ones. Since 2021, Mastalerz is represented by eastcontemporary gallery in Milan.

Sigmund Freud and a Tyrant take a journey together on a boat into the mountains. My video work, ‘Mountain’, investigates Sigmund Freud’s connection to the neighbouring villages of Berchtesgaden and Schönau am Königssee, in Bavaria, Germany, where he often spent his holidays between the late 1800s and 1929. In a rented house in Schönau, Freud wrote his seminal work ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ in 1898. The region is infamous as the base for the National Socialists. Hitler and Freud are reported to have been in the small village of Berchtesgaden at least twice in the 1920s at the same moment, a relatively unknown historical fact. In making ‘Mountain’, I have explored theories Freud examined in Group ‘Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego’ (1921), specifically his theories about mass psychology and the supplantation of the super-ego with the will of the Tyrant. His personal connection to the historical character of Hannibal, and neurosis about reaching Rome, alluded in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ (1899), are also reflected in the work. The footage was taken from a boat launched at Schönau am Königssee steered through the mountains to St Bartholomew. This trip was one Freud did almost daily, in a wooden boat rowed by ‘four strong local women’, while on holiday in the region.

Pilar Mata Dupont is an Argentinean/Australian artist based between Australia and the Netherlands working in video, installation, performance, and photography. Using highly theatrical and cinematic methods, she uses allegory and narrative to reimagine/rework histories and classical texts, and aims to create alternative readings that question the conditions of the construction of dominant narratives that shape history. In 2015, she won the Plymouth Contemporary Open in the UK, and the Wexner Center for the Arts residency prize at the ‘19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil’ in São Paulo. Her solo exhibition, ‘Kaiho’, opened in the Rappu space at the Pori Art Museum, Finland in 2014. Other recent exhibition highlights include the ‘SeMA Biennale – Mediacity Seoul’, at the Seoul Museum of Art and ‘Salon Fluchthilfe’, at Secession in Vienna and Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart. In 2012 she was a recipient of a Mid-career Fellowship from the Western Australian Government. In collaboration with Tarryn Gill, she participated in the Sydney Biennale and won the Basil Sellers Art Prize in 2010, and as part of collective Hold Your Horses, she made work commissioned by the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 2012 for the exhibition ‘Wagner 2013: Künstlerpositionen’.

In the course of one day, the flm follows various characters in their local environment, which is infuenced by the presence of an industrial plant. Their individual sights tell about the relation between human being and industry.

Jonas Matauschek 1987 born in Dresden, Germany 2007 – 2014 studies of photography at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig since 2015 Meisterschüler in the class of Prof.Peter Piller, Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig Emerson Culurgioni 1986 born in Munich, Germany 2007-2009 studies of visual communication at the Free University of Bolzano 2010 - 2014 studies of media art at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig currently Meisterschüler in the class of Prof. Clemens von Wedemeyer, Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig

Bakhmut, a small city in East of Ukraine, becomes an example of the dichotomy between the Soviet past and the present times. Until it finds the culmination of cultural and political borders in one product: the Soviet Champagne. The precarious, war-driven landscape and the dreams of financial stability dissolve in the remains of the leisure culture from the past.

Leri MATEHHA (b. in Tallinn, Estonia) is an Estonian-German artist and filmmaker. She studied Philosophy and Scandinavian studies before graduating from the Academia of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany with an emphasis on media theory and cinema. Her films and video works have been exhibited and awarded internationally. 2020 she received a development grant by the Wim Wenders Foundations for her debut „W“. 2021/22 she was working as a postgrad researcher in Tel Aviv, Israel with the DAAD grant. She lives and works between Germany, Estonia and Israel.

We live in a globalized world where national and supranational identity has been subsumed by the value and brand image; A world in which politics is written in capital letters on the desks of major companies and ends endorsed in the areas of representation of popular will: the parliaments, with the essential and necessary support of the media, which, in turn, are part of the fabric of these same corporations. However, it is a historical reality, the search for differentiation with respect to the other, from a political and socio-cultural. Today we can hardly distinguish the discourse of national identity distinct of riots, revolts and terrorism, for the sake of a flawed and corrupt information that is confusing the part with the whole in a universal metonymy, and that is where this project address. NATIONAL BUILDING TOOLS is formalized in video format that work as a manual that relates ideological instruments and tools, used to reaffirm a hypothetical national identity, using the techniques and applications specific to the media.

Ramón Mateos. (Madrid1968) Works and lives in Madrid. Graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts ofthe Complutense University, Madrid. He has participated in numerous solo and group, nationals and internationals exhibitions, and his work is in major public and private collections. Founder and component, until its dissolution in 2006, of the ?EL PERRO? art collective. He has participated in: PROYECTO JUAREZ. Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (2007-2009); INTERFERENCIAS, PhotoEspaña 2008, Casa de America, Madrid, 10 th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2007); FRECUENCIAS in 2008 and 2009 for the Cervantes Institute in Morocco

The concept of camouflage has seeped into virtually all the human social activities. Over the past century, the companies have developed acquiring a power that is even greater than that of the countries and they have invented the science of marketing that camouflages objects in dreams. All humans use the different brands, like a second skin to integrate ourselves into the social group of the sheet to which we want to belong; the products that we use do not project what we are; they project what we want to be or just want to appear. The economic power has kidnapped the sense of sight that was until recently a ?notarial act of the truth?. Polyespan, Photoshop and plastic surgery have turned our surroundings into a theme park in which the objects, messages and bodies are false. The eternal sentence ?if I hadn?t seen it with my own two eyes, I would not believe it? no longer has any meaning. However we continue believing it because we are all actors on the same stage; with leading or supporting roles, but accomplices in different degrees. Currently, the military look has spread throughout the social strata. The large clothing chains offer us every day garments for going to school or work that are camouflaged; the houses on the new estates acquire the presence of unassailable bunkers in the same style as the kibbutz?s in the ?occupied territories?; even the vehicles have been contaminated by the armour plating appearance of the Empire?s war ships. With the total militarization of all our borders, implanted with the excuse of security, we are all ready for a general mobilisation. We do not know when or where the conflict will arise, but we must be ready for it. In "Thanksgiving Turkey" a general harangues to his troops. Following his precise instructions, the soldiers will conquer his guests, during a memorable dinner, with a delicious and magisterial recipe of the "Thanksgiving Turkey". Mateo Maté, 2007

MATEO MATÉ Born in Madrid (Spain), 1964. Lives and works in Madrid (Spain) www.mateomate.com m.mate@mateo mate.com SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2007-?Paisajes uniformados?. Centro de Arte de Burgos, CAB. Spain. -?Nacionalismo Doméstico?. Galería Llucià Homs. Barcelona. Spain. -"Thanksgiving Turkey". Galería Trinta, Santiago de Compostela. España. 2006-?Cartografías personales?. Sala CAI Luzán. Zaragoza. Spain. -?Nacionalismo Ibérico?. Fundación Encosta, Lisboa. Portugal. -?Fronteras interiores?. Casa de España, Lima. Perú. 2005 -?Delirios de Grandeza?. Galería Grita Insam. Viena. -?Nacionalismo Doméstico?. Galería Oliva Arauna, Madrid. Spain. 2003 -?Desubicado?. Galería Oliva Arauna. Madrid, Spain. -?Desubicado?. Galerie Six Friedrich & Lisa Ungar, Munich. Germany.

A fast and dirty analogue movie to accompany my audio piece "Radiance"

I was born october 1967 in Saarbrücken, Germany and spent a good part of the 90s as a professional drummer in Berlin. In 1998 I moved back to Saarbrücken where I?m working today in the field of digital arts. Since 1999 sixteen albums of my music have been released on labels worldwide. In 2002 british magazine The Wire voted ²frequencyLib³ among the 10 best electronic music releases of the year . I am creating sound installations, graphic design and have worked as a lecturer on digital arts and conception at the Royal Academy of Arts, Göteborg, the Bauhaus University, Weimar, the University of Arts and Design HBKSaar, Saarbrücken and the Merz-Akademie in Stuttgart among others.

On the day we vanish from the world, what will remain? Fragments, like memories, spread in nature, creating ripples. As we rethink the future with AI's rise and authoritarian values, how will we repent? How will we move forward, unable to live forever? -We focused on creating a sense of déjà vu with a touch of dissonance, like a parallel world, by using unconventional over colors and effects. The focal points and layers were intentionally designed to avoid naturalism.

Nonoka Matsuo and Tomi Katz from Japan. We both graduated from Musashino Art University. We came from different backgrounds —from the fashion field and from art academia. During the COVID period, we decided to collaborate and created an experimental video piece called Temperature Gap. In 2023, we made our first short film Empty Shell, which was selected for several film festivals including Aesthetica, Interfilm Berlin and Teheran international short film festival.

In this film, Yuiko Matsuyama concentrates on light and microscopic movements, attempting to metaphorically create a flower. Using the same film several times, Matsuyama produced this film with a double exposure technique, as well as with Indian ink. This work is the fourth in a series begun with Field in 2000. In this film Yuiko Matsuyama is interested in the light and movements that exist on a microscopic level. She tries in particular to evoke metaphorically a flower. To produce this film, she carried out a double exposure technique while using the same reel several times. This work realised with Indian ink is the foruth of a serie begun with Field in 2000.

Yuiko Matsuyama was born in Ehime Japan in 1972. She studied at Tsuda College, where her major was social psychology. She began making films in 1997. Yuiko is now living in Tokyo. She belongs to the ISLANDS collective.

"Conical Intersect", Matta-Clark's contribution to the Paris Biennial of 1975, manifested his critique of urban gentrification in the form of a radical incision through two adjacent 17th-century buildings designated for demolition near the much-contested Centre Georges Pompidou, which was then under construction. For this anti-monument, or "nonument", which contemplated the poetics of the civic ruin, Matta-Clark bore a tornado-shaped hole that spiralled back at a 45-degree angle to exit through the roof. Periscope like, the void offered passers-by a view of the buildings' internal skeletons.

Gordon Matta-Clark studied architecture at Cornell University, but never practiced as a conventional architect. He also spent a year studying French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris where he also was during the student strikes of May 1968. It was in Paris that he became aware of the French deconstructionist philosophers and Guy Debord and the Situationists. These cultural and political radicals developed the concept of détournement, or "the reuse of pre-existing artistic elements in a new ensemble". Such concepts would later inspire his work. He is most famous for works that radically altered existing structures. His "building cuts" (in which, for example, a house is cut vertically in half) alter the perception of the building and its surrounding environment. Matta-Clark used a number of media to document his work, including film, video, and photography. His work includes performance and recycled pieces, space and texture works, and his "building cuts". Matta-Clark also used puns and other wordplays as a way to re-conceptualize preconditioned roles and relationships (of everything from people to architecture). He demonstrated that the theory of entropy applies to language as well as to the physical world, and that language is not a neutral tool but a carrier for society's values and a vehicle for ideology. Matta-Clark died from pancreatic cancer on August 27, 1978.

This newly assembled work is a rare document of a 1976 Matta-Clark performance in Berlin. The piece begins with the following statement: "In 1976, as part of the Akademie der Kunst and Berliner Festwochen exhibition `Soho in Berlin,` Gordon Matta-Clark went to Germany with the intention of blowing up a section of the Berlin Wall. Dissuaded by friends from such a suicidal action, the result was the following performance." The film records Matta-Clark as he stencils `Made in America` on the Wall, affixes commercial advertisements over graffiti, and has a run-in with the police. A remarkable record of a little-known Matta-Clark performance, this work is also a historical time capsule of a political and physical landscape that no longer exists.

Gordon Matta-Clark was born in New York in 1943 and died in 1978. He studied French literature at the Sorbonne and Architecture at Cornell University. From the early 1970s, as a founding member of the artist-run Food Restaurant in New York`s Soho neighborhood, Matta-Clark participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects. His work was presented in Documenta V, Kassel, Germany; and at exhibitions in Sao Paolo, Berlin, Zurich, and in the 9th Biennale de Paris. Major projects by Matta-Clark were staged in Aachen, Paris and Antwerp. Following his death, retrospective exhibitions have been organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany; and IVAM Centro Julio Gonzalez, Valencia, Spain.

BloodLight (Draft 1) is an impressionistic depiction of vampires in real life, hungry and sensual beings among inky shadows. The vampires are observed in a document which blurs the distinction between fictional narrative and video documentary. Picking up on the reinvigorated interest in vampire mythology in the last 10 or so years (Twilight, Let the Right One In, etc..), BloodLight investigates this mythology from a perspective that is scaled down, sensual, and existing in shadows of our day to day. The vampire performers are Cameron Gibson, Claire Arctander, and Todd Mattei. As artists themselves, they live just outside the full exposure of 9 to 5, familial life.

Todd Mattei: Bio Todd Mattei is a media artist working in animation, video, music, performance, the written word, and the spaces in between these discrete media. Todd has screened and exhibited throughout the US and abroad, made records with several notable music groups, and toured and performed throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. www.toddmatteiart.com