VISIO – European Workshop on Artists’ Moving Images

Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival presents VISIO – European Workshop on Artists’ Moving Images.

VISIO consists of a series of seminars and meetings dedicated to expanding the vision and themes of artists who use cinema in their artistic practice.
VISIO intends to favour the development of a European network of young artists and professionals who work with moving images, promoting encounters and international mobility.

The Workshop will be held in Florence, within the context of the 5th Edition of Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival (21-25 November 2012). The participants will be 15 young Italian and European artists who work with moving images; they will be selected with an open call, in collaboration with some of the most important European Art Academies and Schools. The Selection Committee is composed of Leonardo Bigazzi, project curator VISIO, Silvia Lucchesi, director Lo Schermo dell’Arte and Heinz Peter Schwerfel, director Kino der Kunst.

Two participants of the Workshop will be selected for the Young Talent Award organized by the Kino der Kunst Festival in Munich, Germany (24-28 April 2013). These artists will have the chance to present one of their projects to an international jury who will award a prize of 10,000 euro of equipment provided by ARRI, the most important producer and distributor of cinematographic equipment in the world.

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Photo: Isaac Julien, The Leopard I 2007 Installation view, Nuit Blanche, Cour de L’hôtel de Ville, Paris Single-screen installation, super 16mm colour film, transferred to High Definition, sound, 19’ 51” Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London Photograph: Martin Argyroglo

VISIO – European Workshop on Artists’ Cinema has a 3-part structure:

1. Festival
The participants are invited to attend screenings, meetings and lectures of the Festival’s official program, and are encouraged to actively participate in the discussions. The themes will then be expanded and developed during the seminars and conversations with the curators and artists hosted by the Festival. This year’s edition will feature works by Isaac Julien, the Otolith Group, Gillian Wearing and Melik Ohanian among others.

2. Seminars
A cycle of 3 seminars will be conducted by artists and curators hosted by the Festival who will discuss various aspects of their artistic process and research methods with the participants. The seminars, which will last 2 hours each, will be structured in such a way to allow also moments of conversation and sharing of experiences between the professionals and the participants.

The three seminars will be conducted by:

Isaac Julien
Artist and filmmaker his early works include Young Soul Rebels awarded the Semaine de la critique prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991. Julien was nominated for the Turner Prize (2001) and he was the recipient of the Performa Award (2008), the prestigious mit Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts (2001) and the Frameline Lifetime Achievement Award (2002).
His work Paradise Omeros was presented as part of Documenta11 in Kassel (2002) and in 2003 he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Kunstfilm Biennale in Cologne for his single-screen version of Baltimore.
Isaac Julien was visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Schools of Afro-American and Visual Environmental Studies and a faculty member of the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Arts. He was also a research fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is currently a professor of Media Art at Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, Germany. Julien is represented in museum and private collections throughout the world, including Tate; Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York; Centre Pompidou; Hirshhorn Museum in Washington and the Brandhorst Museum in Munich.

Mark Nash
Curator, film historian and filmmaker, with a specialism in contemporary fine art moving image practices, avant-garde and world cinema. Nash has been co-curator of Documenta 11 (2002) and film curator of the Berlin Biennial (2004). He was Director of Fine Art Research at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and also a Senior Lecturer in Film History and Theory at the University of East London, and Visiting Lecturer on the Whitney Museum Independent Study Programme in New York. He has also taught in a number of US institutions including Harvard, NYU and UC Santa Cruz, and has collaborated with Università Napoli Orientale, Department of Anglo American studies, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, Department of Curating and Jagellonian University, Cracow, Department of Curating. Mark Nash is professor and head of the Curating Contemporary Art Program at the Royal College of Art, London. His exhibition of moving image artists, One Sixth of the Earth, opens in ZKM Karlsruhe November 2nd. 

Heinz Peter Schwerfel
Art critic, curator and film director Heinz Peter Schwerfel has been working on the relations between art and cinema since the eighties. Founder and artistic director of the artists’ film festival KunstfilmBiennale in Cologne (2002-2009) he is also the producer and director of several award-winning documentaries on international artists such as Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor and Bruce Nauman. Besides many articles on the subject, he has also published ‘Kino und Kunst’ (DuMont Verlag, Cologne 2003).
He is currently the founder and artistic director of the Festival ‘Kino der Kunst’ in Munich. 

3. Conversation room
In this informal environment participants will be able to meet every day, in 30-minute individual encounters, artists, curators, critics, producers and directors of international institutions hosted by the Festival. A day will be dedicated to the curators and directors of local contemporary art institutions. Ranging from the presentation of their own portfolios to simple conversations, these moments are conceived as an occasion for encounters and exchanges, to favour the participants’ professional growth and to extend their networks of international contacts.

Thanks to the collaboration with our partners the following scholarships will be offered:

• Two “LO SCHERMO DELL’ARTE – VISIO scholarship” of 350 euro each for a young european artist offered by Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival
• The ‘OPINIONCIATTI Scholarship’ of 350 euro for a young european artist offered by Opinion Ciatti, one of the leading italian design companies
• A full scholarship of 350 euro offered by the Institut français Firenze to a French artist
• A full scholarship of 350 euro offered by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Italy to a dutch artist
• A scholarship of 200 euro offered by the Deutsches Institut Florenz to a German artist

The scholarships will be assigned by the VISIO Selection Committee in collaboration with the Institutions and the companies that have offered them. The scholarships will be deducted from the registration fee of the awarded participant.

Promoted and organized by
Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival

In collaboration with the
Festival Kino der Kunst

With the support of

• Regione Toscana
• Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze/Osservatorio per le Arti Contemporanee
• Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Italy
• FST-Mediateca Toscana
• Deutsches Institut Florenz
• Institut français Firenze
• Opinion Ciatti

The selection of the participants in conduced in partnershio with

• Academy of Media Arts Cologne
• Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milano
• Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze
• Akademie der Bildenden Künste München
• École Nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Parigi
• LE FRESNOY Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing Cedex
• Piet Zwart Institute MFA, Rotterdam
• Royal College of Art, Londra
• Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenaghen
• Zurich University of The Arts