TAIPEI–BEIRUT–MADRID-BERLIN-ISOLA

videos by Kuang-Yu Tsui, Ziad Antar, Democracia, Nevin Aladag, Manuel Scano, Matteo Rubbi

Opening Saturday 22 November 22 from 6pm Tantrika Shop, Via Pollaiuolo 2 / Soundmetak, Piazzale Segrino 1 25 November 2008– 28 February 2009
Tuesday – Saturday 3.30 – 7.30pm

Screening-round table-dinner
Sunday 23 November 23, 6-11pm Osterialnove, via Thaon de Revel 9 with Anna Daneri, Mario Gorni, Marco Scotini, UnDo.Net, Tiziana Villani

After the “Stecca degli Artigiani” in Milan has been privatized in April, 2007, Isola Art Center has not died. The Center still pursues its project of a Center for Art and Community alongside other Isola associations, within various public and private venues in the neighbourhood. After Tantrika Shop and Soundmetak, which have followed Punto Rosso in hosting Isola Art Center projects, a new address is now added to the list: Osterialnove will host the single screening of a film selection and a public discussion of it.
TAIPEI–BEIRUT–MADRID-BERLIN-ISOLA is a selection of films, most of which have been screened within the Taipei Biennial 2008 curated by Vasif Kortun and Manray Hsu. All participating artists experience new ways to come to terms with urban life, oftentimes reserving a special eye to musical and sound elements.

TAIPEI: Taiwanese artist Kuang-Yu Tsui's self-ironical videos, featured in Italy already at the 2005 Venice Biennial, portray him as a sort of present-day Buster Keaton, facing contemporary urban objects and landscapes. Often his works' titles and concepts are linked to the Taiwanese tradition. In Taiparis York, 2008, instead, the artist surprisingly deals with some occidental cultural symbols somehow grafted within his own country's public space, as the statue of liberty, the Eiffel Tower or the Paris Arc de Triomphe.

BEIRUT: Lebanese artist Ziad Antar's two videos, Wa and Tambourro, intimately deal with life as it can be within family walls. Their protagonists – two kids in the first, a showering man in the second – use rhythm and music instead of words to convey us their feelings.

MADRID: A wholly different story for the Welfare State/Smashing the Ghetto video, by the Democracia group (Pablo Espana and Iván Lopez), portraying the destruction of a Roma encampment just outside Madrid as if it were a show or a demolition party.

BERLIN: Turkish artist Nevin Aladag goes looking for Turkish squatters and has them spend the night singing their native countries' songs. Or drives through a suburb letting the wind play a harmonica. Or has model cars dance to the frenzied rhythm of Arabian music.

ISOLA: Italian artists Matteo Rubbi and Manuel Scano have lived in the neighborhood and worked with Isola Art Center for years now. The former's video attentively studies the American ambassador in Tirana's driver, while the latter offers us two of his video-performances, with their almost neo-dada liberating poetical drive, one of which is titled Festa in città (urban party).

A public round table will be held at Osterialnove on the evening of Sunday, November 23rd, with Antonio Ratti Foundation critic and curator Anna Daneri, video archive C/O curator Mario Gorni, critic and curator Marco Scotini, contemporary art network UnDo.Net directors Vincenzo Chiarandà and Anna Stuart, and philosopher Tiziana Villani.