RECORDED IMAGES: HISTORY REACTIVATING [ARTISTIC PRACTICE]
The screening show 'Recorded Images' presents five contemporary artists with a different approach to moving image. The show is divided in two brief programs. The first presents works by Jimmy Robert, Mario Garcia Torres and Manon de Boer, who are exploring and reactivating the heritage of conceptual art practice. The second part introducing Khaled D. Ramadan (with Alfredo Cramerotti) and Clemens von Wedemeyer, puts a focus on the process of filming, editing and social issues. – – – Participants Manon de Boer: Resonating Surfaces (2005), Khaled D. Ramadan & Alfredo Cramerotti: Comrade Alfredo Neri (2006), Jimmy Robert: L’Education Sentimentale (2005/06), Mario Garcia Torres: A Brief History of Jimmy Johnson’s Legacy (2006), Clemens von Wedemeyer. Curated by Goran Petrović
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Comrade Alfredo Neri, 2006
performance, video, sound
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Comrade Alfredo Neri is a "performative documentary" on media representation and identity construction through the media, by Khaled D. Ramadan and Alfredo Cramerotti.
The video is a constructed documentation, with real interviews and footage material, about the life of Alfredo Neri, the spokesman of the Italian fraction of the Skinhead Movement. The skinheads are affiliated with the neo-Nazis and are active in the European countries as well as in the former East Block. Neri is the representative and promoter of the Italian division of the skinheads, their international affiliations and events; in other words, the representative of the state of fear that envelops civil societies. In the documentary, he explains how the movement changed its strategy to suit contemporary global political tendencies, urging its members to operate as invisible as possible and infiltrate the political, economic, and cultural structures, with the ultimate aim to rule in Europe. They operate without being exposed and are directly affiliated with the neo-Nazi ideology. Is history about to repeat itself, changing only the outfit? The authors met Alfredo Neri during his visit to Scandinavia, on his travel to Helsingborg, Sweden, for the annual gathering of the neo-Nazi movement in Autumn 2005.
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The film is presented after a short lecture-introduction by Khaled d. Ramadan, followed by a discussion with the audience, in which the spokesperson, takes part unexpectedly. The whole project «Comrade Alfredo Neri» questions media representation and construction of identity through a fake documentary-portrait based on real facts, presented as Part 1 of the project. The audience expects Part 2 to come after the debate; instead, the audience itself becomes Part 2, the debate, discussion and sparking of stimuli injected by the film (Part 1).
– – – Presented at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen (2006), Hotel Pro Forma in Copenhagen (2006), and was part of the itinerant project «The Disappearance of the Public Space», curated by Goran Petrovic. The piece has also been shown on tv-tv Copenhagen (2006) and at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide (2008)