VAA-VIDEO ART AWARDS BEYOND THE SHORT FORMAT WEBINAR

We’re preparing the 3rd Edition of VAA. The new call will comes out soon. The Prize conceived and promoted by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro is dedicated to video art between Italy and South Africa.

In such a delicate moment caused by the persistence of the pandemic, we want to insist on the need not to stop, to continue to keep alive those threads that nourish and enrich creativity and at the same time offer a new opportunity for promotion and visibility to the works that the VAA has selected and awarded, between the two past editions 2018 and 2019.

The appointment is for the 8th DECEMBER 2021 at 4 pm (italian time) as part of the initiatives for the Contemporary Day in Italy and in the world. the Centro Luigi Di Sarro and the Italian Cultural Institute in Pretoria present Beyond the short: webinar , a remote dialogue between Italy and South Africa with the protagonists of the VAA Award which encourages and promotes the production of works that use the moving image.
The meeting will be opened by the message of the Italian Ambassador to South Africa Paolo Cuculi as a testimony of how important are the exchange projects that cross ideas and cultures.
At the end of the event, the new Call will be opened and published.

The 3rd Edition of the VAA includes a new prestigious partner GRENZE.Arsenali fotografici, the experimental photography festival in Verona that will host the selection of the finalists and the winning artists.

On the web platform https://vaa.webinars.zone/ an archive of the two editions of the VAA held in past years has been created, it will be possible to register for free for the webinar or even just discover the protagonists of the two editions of the Award, or the two Top 10 of the works that the jury has selected and among which has identified the winners. The works of the 20 artists involved are visible in the video section.

VAA 2019. The winners are Jabu Nadia Newman with “Untitled:Friends” and Niccolò Masini with “White time”. At Cinema Labia in Cape Town the ceremony, next screening will take place at cortoLovere Festival in Italy.

Screening and Awards Ceremony of the 2 winners and 8 finalists of the VAA-Video Art Awards 2nd edition took place on May 14th at the historic Labia Cinema in Cape Town. Now the VAA screening evening moves to Italy where the cortoLovere Festival will host the event on September 26th at the Tadini Art Academy.

The prize-giving event took place in the historic Cinema Labia, Tuesday 14 May 2019. All the 10 shortlisted works in the two selections (Italian and South African) have been projected.

The VAA – Video Art Awards is designed and promoted by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro with the contribution of Italian Cultural Institute of Pretoria and the International Short Film Festival cortoLovere, where the VAA Top10 will be screened again (23-28 September 2019).

Niccolò Masini CV http://www.niccolomasini.com

He studied in the classrooms of the IED in Milan, graduating in 2011 in Illustration and Animation courses. Thus began his career in the world of visual art. However, the definitive turning point accomplished by moving to the Netherlands, where he attended the prestigious Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, from which he graduated in 2015 with a specialization in Audio Visual Arts. During his time at Rietveld, he has the opportunity to follow an international exchange program at RMIT University in Melbourne. The Dutch experience will open to him doors to several international experiences: Australia, Argentina, the United States, Kuwait and Canada. Winner of numerous international prizes, competitions and residences, from 2016 he began to devote himself entirely to his personal research, which he combined with commissioned work. Practicing in three continents, his work has been exhibited internationally in countries such as Australia, Canada, Argentina, Japan, Holland and Italy. To date, he lives and works between Genoa and Montréal.

“White Time” still

“White Time”

“There are a certain amount of ordinary moments in life that are con- sidered neither here or there, these are spaces for otherness, for some considered irrelevant, that are simultaneously physical and mental, such as the space of a phone call or the moment when you see yourself in the mirror.” Michel Foucault

These spaces of otherness are infinite, disposed on time framed dimensions that inexorably passes through, with or without our consideration. The experience of the traveler, consisting of a series of movements within space, producing a phenomenon of a new order, where geography overtakes knowledge. Our conception of spatiality shapes our perception of time, and, on an individual scale, defines our way of perceiving movement. Spaces trace an inventory of the adventure of knowledge, omitting nothing; knowl- edge traces cartography of known lands, omitting nothing. Acting as a prelude to a subjective perception of a suspension in time, White Time is a video installation where a simple figure stands in a not specific dimension. Surrounded by the surface of the black screen different elements interact with each other, mutating through the composition of an undefined spatial location. Niccolò Masini

Jabu Nadia Newman CV https://jabunew.tumblr.com/

Jabu Newman was born and raised in Plumstead, a suburb of Cape Town. She is 25 years old and studied at UCT, University of Cape Town, where she graduated in Political Science and then specialized in Visual and Media Arts, then deepening cinema and directing at the African Arts Institute. He works in film production and continues his artistic research with video art and photography works, mainly oriented to the exploration of human and social relations. He won the VAA award with the video “Untitled: Friends”.

Jabu Nadia Newman

“UNTILED:FRIENDS”

The title Untitled:Friends alludes to the complexity of chosen relationships, specifically how deeply bound two souls who share no family relation can be: a strong connection that no title or description can truly articulate. 

Like most of Newman’s body of work, the film specifically focuses on femme binary identity and relationships. The storyline is intentionally centered around femme friendships and simultaneously challenges and celebrates them against a backdrop of a mundane heteronormative neighborhood, where these layered and complex identities are prosecuted and undervalued. 

Untitled:Friends was shot, written, directed and edited by Newman over a period of two years and reads like a personal visual diary, in which she invites us into her childhood and teenage years in Plumstead. Come per la maggior parte dei lavori di Newman, il film pone un’attenzione particolare all’identità e alle relazioni nel mondo femminile. Il racconto è volutamente centrato su una storia di amicizia fra donne in cui contemporaneamente si sfida e si festeggia, in una atmosfera mondana, quel substrato di codici di etero-normalità in cui le identità stratificate e complesse sono perseguitate e sottovalutate. Untitled:friends è stato girato, scritto, diretto e montato da Newman nel corso di due anni e si offre come un personale diario visivo, nel quale l’autrice svela i suoi anni d’infanzia e adolescenza nel quartiere di Plumstead. (Jabu Nadia Newman)

“Untitled:Friends” still
VAA Screening Programme

VAA-VIDEO ART AWARD 10 Finalists on Show in PHILIPPI, Cape Town March 24th 2018. In September again in Italy during the CORTOLOVERE International Festival

The selection of the VAA-Video Art award Competition launched by the Luigi Di Sarro Center with the Italian Cultural Institute of Pretoria concluded. The jury chose the 10 finalists of the two sections: Italy and South Africa. The finalist videos will be shown on March 24th during the Italian Art Day in Philippi, Cape Town and then again in Italy in September during the CortoLovere International Festival.

 

LUIGI DI SARRO WORLD DISCLOSURE curated by Paola Ballesi EDOARDO VILLA MUSEUM UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA SOUTH AFRICA

March 2 – May 18, 2018

Inaugurated in Pretoria, South Africa, the exhibition with which the international celebrations for 40 years after the death of Luigi Di Sarro starts. The event is promoted by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Pretoria with the collaboration of the UP ARTS Department of the University of Pretoria. The images of the opening and the academic lecture.

 

 

A JOURNEY TO DISCOVER ART AND SUBURBS: the ARP art residency in Rome of SKUBALISTO and JORDAN SWEKE concluded

Public art has become in recent years not only an alternative form of expression, but also a real stage with which artists confront and dialogue. We no longer speak of a conflict between an artwork that is by definition donated to the community and an artwork that is born to be sold under the rules of the market: artists more and more often move freely between these two options, until a few years ago considered in antithesis. Rome offers several examples of public art: from the fantastic intervention by William Kentridge Triumphs & Laments on the Lungotevere banks under Ponte Sisto, to the SanBa project that designed San Basilio’s public housing according to a specific urban redevelopment project, to the spontaneous open-air gallery that is flourishing in Corviale  at the foot of the famous building called ‘Serpentone’, to arrive at interventions in the occupied realities such as the Tufello students’ house run by the Astra activists. ARP has made a journey to discover these realities together with the South African artists Skubalisto and Jordan Sweke participating in the residency in Rome in November and December 2017.

Both artists chosen this year by the ARP-Art Residency Project (created by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro with the contribution of MAECI and with the collaboration of Everard Read/CIRCA and RainbowMediaNPO) have an interest in the investigation of urban reality, as well it is the gentrification of the peripheral areas or redevelopment planned by social and housing policies, or even fertile ground of public artistic commission. Their investigation of the Roman reality has therefore often turned to those areas that could offer fertile inspirations. In parallel to the study that led to the realization of the exhibition REALTA’ IMMAGINARIE/IMAGINING REALITIES that was held at the Centro Luigi Di Sarro (30th November-14th December 2017), the two artists also wanted to bet on the public art front, realizing some works in the Roman suburbs: in Corviale (where they worked thanks to the hospitality of Alessandro Fornaci and the Laborintus Association and to the Prenestino, in a center for asylum seekers, a place of high symbolic value. In these years there is much discussion about what to do and how to give meaning to interculture: Art is one of the most universal means of communication and friendship between people.

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In the middle of the walk of our life, I found myself in a dark forest … (Dante, The Divine Comedy, Hell)”,  the quote of the greatest Italian poet is not accidental and takes on meaning at the end of the long journey of meetings and crossings of routes that the two artists, guests of the ARP residence, have completed in the Capital. Jordan Sweke’s forest and the Skubalisto’s portraits tell of the past and the present. The immediate interest that both have shown for the urban socio-economic structure integrated with their artistic research has given rise to a very deep dialogue in their practice and with the inhabitants of the city. Dialogue that was realized with the final two-handed work performed in Corviale.

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LINDEKA QAMPI SHOWS AT 2010 FIFA WORLD CUP VILLAGE IN ROME ‘DAILY LIFE’ PROJECT

It’s called “Daily Life” and is a self-presentation project. The picture of Africa seen with the eyes of Africa itself. Lindeka Qampi‘s photographs will feature, from June 22, 2010, at Fifa Fan Fest, in the magnificent location of Piazza di Siena. The event, organized by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro and Erdmann Contemporary together with the Embassy of the Republic of South Africa in Rome, proposes the work of the South African photographer, known beyond the boundaries of his nation, just for the talent and heart that puts in every shot. Qampi lives in Cape Town, in Khayellitsha township, a huge suburb where more than a million people live.

In the Lindeka Qampi’s pictures formal areas and slums, but also gestures and glances in which misery, joy of life and great dignity are mixed: everything is enclosed in her shots that capture the most salient features of daily life, in a still poor context, but with deeply rooted habits and traditions. The selection chosen for the occasion portrays the passion of the black community for football.

The Daily Life project promoters will sell Qampi’s photos and will send the full proceeds to the artist to allow she to continue her work. With these funds, in fact, her self-presentation project will be able to go on. As the same said: “After graduation, I sold my clothes all my life, just like my mother did. I started taking photos only a few years ago. I started photographing my family. Then I went to weddings, though I was not invited, and sometimes the people were surprised, seeing that I was taking pictures and not knowing who I was. I did this to learn. ”

 

 

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