OBSERVATION IN PROGRESS
Un incontro con Jeanne Liotta / Ein Treffen mit Jeanne Liotta
short film program + Q&A + live performance
> 11.NOV h 20.00 WAAG
Jeanne Liotta è un’artista e filmmaker di New York che lavora con diversi medium dagli anni ‘80. Il suo interesse per la scienza, l’astronomia e la sperimentazione sono alla base dei lavori che vengono presentati in questa sua prima visita a Bolzano.

Loretta è un film astratto del 2003, basata sulla tecnica del rayogramma, tecnica che permette di realizzare immagini senza cinepresa, esponendo gli oggetti direttamente sulla pellicola.

Eclipse è un film del 2005 in cui viene documentata l’eclisse lunare del 2003 utilizzando una pellicola fotosensibile Kodak.

Observando el Cielo è il risultato di 7 anni di riprese filmando il cielo notturno in 16mm.

Alle proiezioni segue un’intervento dell’artista, in dialogo con Martine De Biasi.
Jeanne Liotta ist eine in New York lebende Künstlerin und Filmemacherin, die seit den 1980er Jahren mit verschiedenen Medien arbeitet. Ihr Interesse für Wissenschaft, Astronomie und Experimente bildet die Grundlage für die Werke, die bei ihrem ersten Besuch in Bozen vorgestellt werden.

Loretta ist ein abstrakter Film aus dem Jahr 2003, der auf der Technik des Rayogramms basiert. Diese Technik ermöglicht es Bilder ohne Kamera zu erstellen, indem Objekte direkt auf den Film belichtet werden.

Eclipse ist ein Film aus dem Jahr 2005, der die Mondfinsternis von 2003 auf lichtempfindlichem Kodak-Film dokumentiert.

Observando el Cielo ist das Ergebnis von 7 Jahren Filmenaufnahmen des Nachthimmels auf 16mm.

Im Anschluss an die Vorführung findet ein Gespräch zwischen der Künstlerin und Martine De Biasi statt.
Loretta by Jeanne Liotta
2003 / 16mm / 4min / sound by Carlo Altomare

An abstract moving rayogram in the form of a woman or an aria. Living in time experienced as high drama, dissolving into the infinite. A dialectical manifestation of phenomena in flux, like any other movie.

"I love that which dazzles me and then accentuates the darkness within me."
- Rene Char
Eclipse by Jeanne Liotta
2005 / 16mm / 3’20’’

A lunar eclipse event documented and translated via the light-sensitive medium of Kodachrome film.
In the 4th century BCE Aristotle founded The Lyceum, a school for the study of all natural phenomena pursued without the aid of mathematics, which was considered too perfect for application on the imperfect terrestrial sphere.
Observando el cielo by Jeanne Liotta
 2007 / 16mm / 19’

Seven years of celestial field recordings gathered from the chaos of the cosmos and inscribed onto 16mm film from various locations upon this turning tripod Earth. This work is neither a metaphor nor a symbol, but is feeling towards a fact in the mist of perception, which time flows through. Natural VLF radio recordings of the magnetosphere in action allow the universe to speak for itself. The Sublime is Now. Amor Fati!
Path of Totality by Jeanne Liotta
30 min. soundtrack by Eric Baus, Phil Cordelli, and Oren Silverman 
> 11.NOV h 22.00 WAAG / 2nd Floor
A live projector performance made with one handmade 16mm loop, invented lenses, concrete and transparent objects and shadowplay. A series of light and dark gestures inspired by the total solar eclipse of August 2017. Not trusting photography’s ability to render the feel of those ineffable light conditions, the artist replaces the solar with the projection system in her own “restaging” of the event, bringing the cosmic into the confines of a projection room.

Path of Totality consists of one 16mm film loop with no images whatsoever running through a 16mm projector in a rhythm of intermittency, while the artist moves light out into the space and beyond the frame. Visual concepts of light latency, peripheral vision, and the cosmic imagination are activated through the use of simple objects and external water lenses, as one might use a flashlight and an orange to demonstrate the relationship between the sun and the earth. The art of projection is posited as essentially mimetic of the cosmos — light source, screen, and reflection.

Path of Totality is named for the described path of the Moon’s shadow on the Earth’s surface during a total solar eclipse. In August 2017, “The Great American Eclipse”, the width of this path in the U.S was only about 70 miles wide , a narrow ribbon of moon shadow travelling over 1000 mph across numerous States.
JEANNE LIOTTA (NYC) makes films, moving image installations, projector performances and other lens based mediums operating at a lively intersection of art,  science,& natural philosophy.

She has been making work for over 3 decades, including early collaborations in film and performance with Bradley Eros, Her signature 16mm film of the night skies, Observando El Cielo (2007), has been much loved over the years, and received  the Tiger Award  for Short Film at the Rotterdam International Film Festival,. Her works have been seen at  venues worldwide,  from film festivals to micro cinemas, museums, galleries and basements, including The Whitney Museum of Art, The New York Film Festival, Flaherty NYC, Crossroads Festival, Experiments in Cinema Albuquerque, Museo Nitsch in Naples Italy, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The McCormick Observatory, The Kopernik Observatory, and Songs for Presidents artist run gallery in Ridgewood Queens .

Her works are collected by The Museum of Modern Art NY, The Vienna Film Museum, Harvard and Duke Universities. Liotta researched the Joseph Cornell Film Collection at Anthology Film Archives for many years and has more recently published an essay in Millennium Film Journal  “Enter Germs, Enter the World: Hand processing artists films in the AIDS era” . Currently she is a Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder where she directs the graduate program in Film and has been mentoring graduate students in the Bard MFA program NY for many years .

Her films are distributed by Lightcone, Paris and her work is represented by Microscope Gallery,NYC.