“How to tell a story and why we should tell it in a certain way?” is the title of the workshop led by the artists Diego Tonus and Elisa Caldana, as part of  BLAST: aesthetics of violence between image, video and document; the workshop was designed to investigate -together with a group of students from the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Verona-, the issues of post-truth and journalistic fiction with particular attention to the relationship between the real body and the virtual body, personal and collective, in the actual context of semi-dystopian reality, a critical period of reconfiguration of priorities, adaptation and development of new methodologies of thinking. The meetings proposed to question the aesthetic and political potential of video techniques, which have been used to cope with the limits of social isolation, and their influence on the perception and use of information in everyday life.

The two videos that make up this programme where produced during the workshop and selected to be screened on VIDEOCLOOP during the LOOP Festival 2022, for their formal quality and message.

Angela Laci & Anna Ronchiato, Mani(e), 2022
Single-channel video, colour, 10’10”, 16:9

The video by Angela Laci (South Tyrol, 1999) and Anna Ronchiato (Venice, 2000) is a gestural dialogue between two bodies acting upon one another, alternating active or passive positions. Each body inflicts acts of intimate (micro) violence to the other; automatic and repetitive gestures fuse together the two. Losing dominance upon one’s self and acquiring control and responsibility upon the other becomes an act that aims at generating awareness.Written and edited by Anna Ronchiato e Angela Laci , directed by Davide Galandini

Chiara Marcon, Proprietà privata, 2022
HD Video, colour, filmed with a Smartphone

The project by Chiara Marcon (Treviso, 2001) investigates the concept of invasion of an individual’s personal space. In the absence of physical contact or specific closeness, the only filmic gesture causes a feeling of vulnerability in the subject being filmed. We are faced with a form of incorporeal violence, towards which each individual reacts spontaneously.

BLAST: aesthetics of violence between image, video and document; proposes to explore the relationship between violence, document and public truth in an enlarged and participatory way through the use of video. In particular, it focuses on video as a tool for documentation, research and narrative re-elaboration, addressing the concept of violence as a moral, social, political category and as a relative dimension, which is not composed only of explicit gestures and situations but also of subtle concealed actions.

BLAST is a research project promoted by the cultural association Urbs Picta, conceived and curated by Jessica Bianchera and Marta Ferretti; it was carried out between 2020 and 2021 and consisting of an articulated program of events and activities aimed at young people, civil society, and the public of the art system. The project is divided into five areas of intervention mainly aimed at affirming the importance of contemporary art languages ​​as tools for analysis, involvement and social and cultural growth: EXHIBITION, LEARNING, FORUMS, ALLEANCES, VIRTUAL.