Thursday

July, 12 2008: EXPANDED UNREAL

The title and the idea of the exhibition - curated by Camilla Boemio - draws on the the theoretic foundations of the cult work "Expanded Cinema", written in 1970 by Gene Youngblood - and in which the connections between cinematic experimentation and video research are analysed.
It is a pioneering text on the necessary exchanges among the several arts of our century; it talks about a creativity which is able to use the sinergy among science, art and technology, free from narrow models.
Youngblood defines the evolution of the cinematic language, reversing the ideas of narrative, drama and realism.
He describes the cultural changes which would characterize the following decades, the relationships between man and media, predicting the present virtual scenario of media system: a container which rearranges the reality following commercial demands.

"We will arrive to a point where the idea of reality will not exist anymore. Cinema will become a part of a mental life and communications will evolve in a metaphisical dimesion."

Camilla Boemio has a similar point of view (she also makes reference to one of her previous exhibitions: "Aniconics Icon Killers - Rome, 2007").
She sees deep changes in contemporary art: for years it had undervalued cinematic, fashion and show languages and now it has to deal with them. Videoart is one of the most evident examples of this tendency.