It is a beautiful story of pioneers and avant-gardists that is told by Things – Museum of Modern Art of Bologna in the exhibition «A multipurpose research. Experiences from the Video Art Center of Ferrara», set up until October 13th in the museum’s Project Room, the space dedicated to in-depth studies on the situations that have played a fundamental role in the history of contemporary culture in the Emilia-Romagna region. That of the Video Art Centerborn between 1973 and 1974 as an expansion of the Civic Galleries of Modern Art in Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara and for twenty years a point of production, aggregation and promotion of International Video Artis a story that began fifty years ago and, although unfortunately concluded with the closure of the institution at the end of the nineties, in many respects it is still vital, not only in the memory of those who followed its activities but also, and above all, in the work of authors who still work along the lines of experimentation traced in that context in the years of their debut.
Among these, three Italian artists that the Ferrara institution has launched on the international scene, Maurizio Camerani (Ferrara, 1951)Enzo Minarelli (One Hundred, 1951) and Fabrizio Plessi (Reggio Emilia, 1940), proposed as protagonists of this small dossier exhibition, in which each exhibits a significant work from the 1980s and 1990s alongside a series of projections that instead document in a more choral manner (with a selection of videos of Federica Marangoni, Joseph Clear, Claudio Ambrosini, Claudio Cintoli e Sylvano Bussotti) what was the early attention of the Center for performance, a research field particularly dear to Lola Bonora (Ferrara, 1935).
Actress, critic and curator, founder of the institution which she directed until 1996, making use of a technical team of rare specialization, composed of Charles Ansaloni e John the Greatand the support of Frank Flourthen director of the Ferrara museums, Lola Bonora was the soul and icon of the research space, which she guided by starting courageous and innovative projects, «a very important figure who, if he had operated in a less provincial context, would now certainly be recognized as the most prominent international personality in the field of video culture», underlined Fabrizio Plessi, considered one of the pioneers of video sculpture worldwide, linked by a close collaboration with the Centre since the production of his first single-channel video works, among which the original «Acquabiografico» (1973-74, visible at MAMbo in the permanent section on Performance).
In addition to the historic collaboration with Plessi, who in the exhibition displays «Le Stanze», a series of 35 project drawings made between 1988 and 1992, representative of his peculiar research in the field of the combination of purely sculptural materials and technology, the Video Art Centre has also operated in the field of Visual Poetrythrough a long collaboration with Enzo Minarellion display with «La Bandiera», a provocative video sculpture from 1989 composed of three monitors that electronically reproduce the Tricolour, generating an ironic interference with sounds and words. And it is also a large video sculpture in which tangible materials interact with sounds and images contained in the monitors, the work of Maurizio Camerani «Vista dal Basso», a rigorous iron pyramidal tower on which climb stairs made impassable by glass plates, to make the vision of electronic landscapes unattainable and suggestive; the work, created at the end of the 1980s, entered the permanent collection of the MAMbo by will of the artist, who donated it on the occasion of the exhibition, to underline his connection with the Centro Video Arte, with which he also had a fruitful collaboration.
And in the spirit of a strengthened collaboration, the proposal of the curators of the exhibition is also placed, as underlined Uliana Zanettiresponsible for the MAMbo heritage, wants to reopen paths of synergies on the contemporary axis between Bologna and Ferrara already experimented in the past and which, as stated Chiara Vorrasicurator responsible for the Ferrarese Galleries, «explores the opportunity to revitalize the precious heritage of the videotape archive of the Video Art Center since, after the restoration financed by the Pianori Foundation and carried out by the University of Udine in recent years, it offers the possibility of having access to a large documentary heritage on a prolific experimental activity, which has seen the involvement of numerous international authors».
