Surface of the World: Michelangelo Antonioni Film Retrospective
featuring
Johanna Billing
Project for a Revolution
Carlo di Carlo,
My long Journey with Antonioni
September 16th – September 26th, 2008
Curator: Adam Budak
In collaboration with Nikos Grigoriadis, KIZ Cinema in the Augarten, Graz, Austria
“Words do not come easily to me, images do!” Michelangelo Antonioni used to confess. With Surface of the World, the Restrospective of the oeuvre of the Italian master of contemporary cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni, Kunsthaus Graz in collaboration with KIZ Augarten cinema Graz, aims to display the architecture of vision of the director who used to be known as „the Man of Images”. From early documentaries (Gente del Po, 1943-47) through groundbreaking feature pictures Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970) and Professione: Reporter (1974) to documentaries on Antonionis life and work, this retrospective analyses the condition of an image, the status of a colour, the treatment of a space and the intensity of an emotion – all necessary components of the fabrics of the Surface of the World.
This investigation’s second layer includes possible passages and intentional relations: Johanna Billing’s video Project for a Revolution (2000), on view in the Kunsthaus Graz (opening on September 16th, 7pm) constructs a bridge between formal grammars of cinema and visual arts. Billing masterfully restages the introductory scene from Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, featuring an intense meeting of student activists at the campus during 1968 revolutionary tensions. The artist concentrates on generating the ambiguity of students’ advanced state of expectation, between revolutionary alertness, passivity and boredom, thus commenting upon the possibilities of a real social engagement and rebellion in a present-day culture.
Surface of the World is complemented by My Long Journey with Antonioni, a lecture by Carlo di Carlo (Septmeber 23rd at 7pm in Kunsthaus Graz), Antonioni’s long-term collaborator and friend, film critic and author of essays and books, including Michelangelo Antonioni (1964), Il primo Antonioni (1973), Professione: Reporter (1996), Il Cinema di Antonioni (2002), Michelangelo Antonioni sul Cinema (2004), Antonioni (2004). He also worked on at least 30 short and mid-length films. The collaboration with Antonioni (and especially working on the Italian versions of films such as Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point) was of crucial importance for the development of his career. Di Carlo was curator of the Ente Autonomo Gestione Cinema, Cinecittà International and the Progetto Antonioni, which aimed at reissuing all Antonioni’s films and presenting them at 22 international events. He worked on the project for the future Antonioni Museum in Ferrara (1996) and was in charge of the first complete solo show of all Antonioni’s works for the 59th Venice Film Festival (2002). He also collaborated on Antonioni’s “Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo”, a documentary about the restoration of Michelangelo Buonarrotis Moses (2004), who nowadays can be visited in San Pietro in Vincoli church in Rome.
