MASBEDO at Manifesta 12 Palermo, The Planetary Garden. Cultivating Coexistence.
From June 16 to November 4, 2018, in the courtyard of Palazzo Costantino MASBEDO is presenting Videomobile, their new multi-channel video installation commissioned by Manifesta12 and produced by Beatrice Bulgari for In Between Art Film.
Following the curatorial statement of Manifesta 12, Videomobile has been conceived and completely shot in Palermo, involving local citizens, prominent figures and iconic places in the cultural and civil life and history of the city, drawing a multifaceted portrait of the town.
MASBEDO transformed an old OM van of the 1970s into a “video wagon” to visit places of the cinema of the past, to investigate Sicilian society and the history of the Palermo area: a moving studio, a laboratory and stage for performances, some of which will be realized live during the Biennale. The project “physically” runs through and crosses memory, specifically the memory that emerges from investigative cinema.
Before the opening of Manifesta, Videomobile hosted several performances on the open theme of cinema in Palermo. When on show, Videomobile is a modular and accessible video installation, with cameras, monitors, screens, lights, sound system, etc., allowing film production and video projections: a narrative device, a multi-channel documentary work, whose content is essentially a conceptual and social reinterpretation of still topical cinema themes.
MASBEDO have elaborated images that reveal the dynamics of power and the socio-cultural changes hidden in Palermo’s present, paying particular attention to themes such as the sense of belonging or genius loci and faith in utopias. The first phase of their research started interviewing characters who have worked in cinema in an almost anonymous or marginal form, with secondary characters, such as make-up artists, extras or technicians. A second phase replaced the latter with better known and important figures such as directors, intellectuals, producers or politicians. A third and last phase included some of these figures in the realization of performances produced with the Videomobile in the streets and squares of Palermo where cinema was and still is a protagonist. Videomobile is an ongoing project, a sort of performative tour, a journey through the world of images of Vittorio De Seta, Gianfranco Mingozzi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ugo Gregoretti, Mario Baffico, Francesco Rosi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Letizia Battaglia, Mimmo Cuticchio and many other directors, authors and artists who have succeeded in creating other worlds in the city of Palermo.
