No Shape Stays Innocent

Carlo Zanni

Carlo Zanni’s work is focused on the intersection of computation and representation using and fusing old and new media (Drawing, Painting, and Internet) to shape landscapes and portraits often confronting themes such as real time/real life; fiction/information; social economy/special effects. Zanni creates his own real time digital worlds, structuring them so that Internet feedback can take the lead in shaping the visual and real-world related information that they project. In recent years, Zanni’s work has been shown worldwide in galleries and museums including: MAXXI Museum, Rome (2007, 2006); New Museum, New York (2005); Gavin Brown’s Enterprise at Passerby, New York (2005); Chelsea Museum, New York (2004); CCA Glasgow (2003); Borusan Center for Culture and Arts - Istanbul (2003); Analix Forever Gallery, Geneve (2003); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2001).

My Temporary Visiting Position from the Sunset Terrace Bar

Set in the city of Ahlen, Germany, "My Temporary Visiting Position from the Sunset Terrace Bar", imitates an amateur's film of the landscape framed at sunset. While the city strip is pre recorded the sky is captured in real time from a webcam shooting the sky of Naples (Italy) at sunset and as such, always changing. The work, confronting themes such as exile, migration and border control, is enhanced by a poem by author Ghada Samman and music by the international band Gotan Project and well known composer Gabriel Yared.

The Possible Ties between Illness and Success

Is a short movie transformed by an Internet data flux and re-edited server-side when web statistics (Google Analytics) are available: the public can watch a new movie every day. Daily renderings are available at the website. The core idea of the work is the relationship between manic-depressive illness forms and success at large, a theme it symbolically tracks through the filming of an ill man lying in bed and the presence of his partner (actress Stefania Orsola Garello). The man’s body (actor Ignazio Oliva) progressively fills with stains: quantity and position depend on the number of users (and country of origin) visiting the website. The more users, the more stains, thus causing the "illness" to spread all over the body. The public grants success while appropriating the body of the artist. Music for the film is by Gabriel Yared (The English Patient, Cold Mountain); the voice-over's words are taken from the last page of American Purgatorio, a novel by Brooklyn based writer John Haskell.