At the MAST Foundation in Bologna, an exhibition on the mutations of society through video art

On view until June 30, 2024 at the MAST Foundation in Bologna is the exhibition Vertigo - The Mutations of Society in Video Art, curated by Urs Stahel, which aims to address, through video works, the theme of societal mutations. Consisting solely of video art works of widely varying lengths, some even lasting several hours, the exhibition presents 34 video works that analyze, comment on, explore and investigate rapid change in areas such as labor and production processes, trade and commerce, new behaviors, communication, the natural environment, and the social contract. Twenty-nine international artists from different generations featured in Vertigo: Lucy Beech, Will Benedict, Cao Fei, Chen Chieh-jen, Douwe Dijkstra, DIS, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Melanie Gilligan, Simon Gush, Lauren Huret, Sven Johne, Kaya & Blank, Ali Kazma, Dominique Koch, Gabriela Löffel, Ariane Loze, Eva & Franco Mattes, Richard Mosse, Paulien Oltheten, Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler, Julika Rudelius, Pilvi Takala, Wang Bing, Anna Witt.

The exhibition project is divided into six thematic sections accompanied by a series of video installations scattered along the way that are intended to be commentaries on the events that dot the present, the state of the world, and the global condition.

Visitors are invited to sit on the seats placed in the exhibition spaces to comfortably view the films (audio is available via cell phone and headphones by framing QR codes next to the installations) and return to MAST on several occasions in order to complete the viewing of the video works.

“The exhibition stems from reflecting on the amount of information processed by each of us every day, which, combined with speed and complexity, becomes an overwhelming factor of change in society,” the curator explains. “Data show that more than 40 percent of the European population is on its way to completely giving up traditional information media. Writing and computing we willingly leave to machines. Written communication is now obsolete or has been reduced to a few lines. Reading, thinking and memory are bound to weaken. The result is that today we are confronted with ever-changing parameters, changes of such colossal proportions in terms of scope, speed and quality that we are no longer able to comprehend them, nor are we able to react to them adequately. Most of the time we feel dazed, unsure and lost: vertigo - understood in the broadest sense as uncertainty, dullness, lack of clarity and dizziness - has become the new normal.”

For all info visit https://www.mast.org/

Image: Cao Fei, Asia One, 2018. Film still © Cao Fei. Courtesy of the artist, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers.

At the MAST Foundation in Bologna, an exhibition on the mutations of society through video art

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