Fondazione MAST presents the exhibition Vertigo – Video Scenarios of Rapid Changes curated by Urs Stahel: 29 international artists address the theme of societal changes through the medium of video art.
From February 10th to July 14th, the MAST Galleries will host 34 video works that analyze, comment, explore and investigate the rapid change in areas such as work and production processes, trade and traffic, new behaviors, communication, the natural environment, the social contract.
What artistic medium is more suitable than the moving image to convey, precisely, the idea of transformation, transition and, finally, the vertigo that this continuous mutation causes?
The exhibition is structured into six thematic sections accompanied by a series of “Intermezzi”, video installations scattered along the exhibition route that act as commentaries on the events that dot the present, on the state of the world, on the global condition.
Vertigo – Video Scenarios of Rapid Changes is therefore an atypical exhibition: it consists solely of video works of very different lengths, some even lasting several hours, whose audio can be enjoyed via mobile phone and headphones, by framing the QR codes next to the installations. Next to each work, the duration, description of the content and the thematic area to which it belongs are also indicated.
The exhibition spaces have been set up with seats to allow comfortable viewing of the films: the exhibition is designed to be discovered in more than one visit, so visitors are invited to return to the MAST to complete viewing of the video works.
The international artists featured in Vertigo, belonging to different generations, are: Lucy Beech, Will Benedict, Cao Fei, Chen Chieh-jen, Douwe Dijkstra, DIS, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Melanie Gilligan, Simon Gush, Lauren Huret, Sven Johne, Kaya & Blank, Ali Kazma, Dominique Koch, Gabriela Löffel, Ariane Loze, Eva & Franco Mattes, Richard Mosse, Paulien Oltheten, Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler, Julika Rudelius, Pilvi Takala, Wang Bing, Anna Witt.
«The exhibition was born from the reflection on the mass of information processed by each of us every day, which, combined with speed and complexity, turns into an overwhelming factor of change in society – explains Urs Stahel –. The data show that over 40% of the European population is on the way to completely giving up traditional means of information. We willingly leave writing and calculation to machines. Written communication is now obsolete or has been reduced to a few lines. Reading, thinking and memory are destined to weaken. The result is that today we find ourselves dealing with continuously evolving parameters, changes of such colossal proportions in terms of scope, speed and quality that we are no longer able to understand them, and we are not even able to react adequately. Most of the time we feel dizzy, insecure and lost: vertigo – understood in the broadest sense as uncertainty, darkness, lack of clarity and dizziness – has become the new normal».
