Rä di Martino, August 2008 | 2009 | 5min | DV | Belgium
In a spacious, classic-looking room, which could also be the décor for a 1950s movie, a man and a woman are singing to each other. You get the impression that they have not spoken to each other for a long time and are exchanging the latest events. They stand still in a tableau-vivant while the camera meticulously portrays them, very cinematically, from a variety of viewpoints. In an absurdist manner, they sing a flood of headlines about attacks, wars, catastrophes and political highs and lows. The title suggests that all these events happened in one month, which seems rather unlikely; and yet, the lyrics of their song are based purely on newspaper headlines from August 2008.
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Rä di Martino was born in Rome in 1975, lived in London since 1997 where she graduated with an MFA at the Slade School of Art and moved to New York in 2005. She has shown in PS1 (Long Island NY); Palazzo Grassi, Fondazione Sandretto, MACRO (Rome); MART (Rovereto); HANGAR (Bicocca, Montevideo) Netherlands Media Arts; MCA (Chicago); and Bronx Museum & Artists Space (NYC). She was included in MANIFESTA, the Busan Biennal and the Turin Triennial. She has also participated in many international film festivals including Locarno Film Festival, Viper Basel, Impakt FF, Torino FF, Kunsti Film Biennale, Transmediale04, New York Underground FF, Locarno FF, Les Recontres Parigi/ Madrid/ Berlino, and Kassel Video & Doc Festival.
