Films exhibited in Googles ‘Room With a View’, a collection of student work created during the coronavirus lockdown, curated by Amira Gad. https://artsandculture.google.com/project/room-with-a-view
‘Comprovate necessità’, Saladin Faroudi. Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. ‘It’s a personal response to crisis, uncertainty, and altered states of being.’ Sense of unease, pretty Spanish landscape eerily deserted + inclining noise, repetitive thuds. Liked use of audio.
‘Virus’, Sara Guerinoni. Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. Again lol ‘It’s a personal response to crisis, uncertainty, and altered states of being.’ Felt very accurate to young persons experience in covid times. Liked simple animation style – not too gaudy. Use of sound very effective – news reports closing in, v accurate. SpongeBob/fantasy is our break.
‘Viola’, Daniele Fugarese. Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. ‘The work wants to showcase the importance of personal priorities’. Pretty colours and set. Narrative of co-dependence/romantic relations/love/living in a bubble. Very nice, my favourite. Feels wistful for older romantic times, nostalgic. Echoes of history. Time. Time spent together, collecting, nesting, comfort. Idealist. Youth and old age.
‘Indoors’, Lorenzo Natuzzi. Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. ‘Indoor is a short video about a feeling, I always thought that my house was a safe place, but the quarantine took the safeness to another place, far from that walls, leaving the rooms empty like the streets during that time.’ Pretty shots, must’ve used a nice camera. Like that the scenes feel genuinely lived in. Nice clock editing to show time – sound v nice. Feels ghostly.
‘Memes’/Untitled, Sizuo Chen. Central Saint Martens. Deliberately weirdly animated fashion illustrations. Video as whole meh but liked the facial animation and combination with speech – really disconcerting, creepy, cool way of exhibiting otherwise average/boring drawings.
‘Bathroom’, Leonardo Lomurno. Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. Again ‘It’s a personal response to crisis, uncertainty, and altered states of being.’ Like this guys chin/lower lip piercing. Transitions between locations/moods/people v nice, emotive, confusing and agitated feel suited to corona experience. Like vaguely cyclical structure, house feels claustrophobic, maze-like or piled on top of each other. Some acting pretty cringe – reminder to myself to never grab my knees and contemplate life on a toilet (on film).
‘Karma’, Daphne Jiyeon Jang. The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art. ‘Jang’s ‘moving sculptures’, are designed to unravel the frozen time of antiquity and hint at hidden narrative meanings in the past, that still reverberates in the present.’ Like the idea of using a sites architecture in video projection – fucking with the fabric of a place. Chatter funny and makes you curious about the lives of the sculpture women – humanises them. Patterned overlay on dresses also humanises. Audio and filming could be better.
