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Courtesy Ben Rivers.
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Mathew Emmett, St Sebastian: Plague Memory.
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Mathew Emmett, St Sebastian: Plague Memory.
Event
Ben Rivers – Mathew Emmett: REIMAGINED CINEMA curated by Camilla Boemio
14 May 2022
Free admission
On the occasion of the Night of Museums 2022, Polo Museale Sapienza promotes Reimagined Cinema, a performative cinematic intervention, that explores the notion of contamination of the flow of images in the sense of broad and conceptual, in a dialogue with the external architecture of the museum.
About
On the occasion of the Night of Museums 2022, the Polo Museale Sapienza promotes Reimagined Cinema, curated by Camilla Boemio, a performative cinematic intervention, with Ben Rivers and Mathew Emmett, that explores the notion of contamination of the flow of images in the sense of broad and conceptual, in a dialogue with the external architecture of the museum, and is a representation of the relationships between artist and public, narratives and disconnections, ecologies and new worlds in the making, reality, and fiction.
The title takes up the theoretical basis of the book by Gene Youngblood, tutelary deity and the first theorist to have included video as an art form, deeming the new expanded cinema necessary for an expanded knowledge.
Following this theoretical outline, three video installations by British artists Mathew Emmett and Ben Rivers will take shape on the facade of the museum in an unprecedented way.
St Sebastian: Plague Memory, of Mathew Emmett, is an AV performance reflecting the human search for refuge and protection in the face of fear and violation. A discomforting narrative is attained by the exploitation of necrotic flesh-like forms. Representing the infected tissues of the human body, disease and vulnerability undergoes transformation into something other: manifest with healing. St Sebastian the “protector of plagues” is presented as the archetype of mortality and protection.
Emmett is an architect who disrupts the original use and perception of buildings. Drawing upon intermedia disciplines spanning video, electronic sound, and digital performance, Emmett infects architectural spaces with an altered sense of reality.
Ben Rivers is an artist and filmmaker. His body of work has been exhibited worldwide at numerous galleries and festivals. River's films are typically intimate portrayals of solitary beings or isolated communities; his practice as a filmmaker treads a line between documentary and fiction. Rivers uses these themes as a starting point from which to imagine alternative narratives and existences in marginal worlds.
