Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photo de Fès: The Invisible Cities
Time: November 22nd to December 15th, 2014
We have just gotten back from Fès, Morocco, where Arthub has curated the 8th edition of Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photo de Fès in collaboration with Fantom Editions. The show, organised by the French Institute of Fès, inaugurated on the 22nd of November and will be up in five locations across the city; if you are in Morocco make sure to pay a visit to the exhibition!
In the context of an international Photo festival, the theme of the city emerges as a pivotal point within the mechanism of cultural mobility widely promoted–maybe now more than ever before–by contemporary art. While the concepts linked to national identity tend to remain rarefied, the dynamics behind the portraiture of a city allow the access to a wide spectrum of possibilities, which trigger a sharing of visions directly concerned with our daily lives in urban environments.
Residencies, fellowships, Biennales, are all opportunities that allow artists and curators to approach foreign realities, with the predetermined aim of merging them in their own artistic practice. The outcomes are windows of acknowledgement overlooking the cross-cultural encounter. Swaying in the territories between the golden age syndrome nostalgia, and the technology-led race towards an already perceivable future, the exhibition unfolds views of the ruling powers incarnated by top-down urban policies, on utopian multifaceted imaginary places, on the rhetorical disquisitions on our human nature, fueled by mixed feelings towards our digital lives. The City becomes a common denominator, where we can share struggles, fears and lyrics of the present time.
Our exhibition pays homage to Italo Calvino’s book published in 1972, still the richest reference on urban culture and its multiple meanings. The works on show stand near each other without linearity or hierarchy; they coexist in a common frame where multiple paths and plural interpretations can be traced. The exhibition evokes the universal entity that is today The City: a crossroad of lives and destinies, personal and collective dimensions, historical and visual stratifications. The filter of disappearance–the idea that observing, becoming familiar with a place, coincides with the very same space’s invisibility–is a feature that the experience of space shares with photography.
Organized in different venues around town, the exhibition’s photographs, projections and video-installations give photography new connotations without diluting its potential. In André Princìpe’s work, photography brings back to life the ghosts of past people and memories. It gravitates towards individual memories in Li Mu’s images and Thomas Sauvin’s display of archives. It is strengthened by the power of collective memory in the work of Heba Amin and Raed Yassin. Photography acts as a theatre, raising its curtain on Peter Steinhauer, Felicity Hammond, Anthony and Phillip Reed’s lyrical scenarios, that give new values to the basic elements that build a city. In Vincenzo Castella and Alessia Cargnelli’s investigations, the force of images pulls together what reality separates, as do the perspectives in the subjective documentaries of Liz Hingley, Céline Villegas and André Merian. Regula Bochsler’s city portraits are no less than apocalyptic. Representation is thinned down to its purely virtual dimension. With the passing of time, the technologies used to produce numerical images are more and more refined, offering ideally perfect depictions as a result: memories of a future past.
Curated by Francesca Girelli, Selva Barni and Ilaria Speri.
In collaboration with:
Fantom Editions, www.fantomeditions.com
French Institute of Fès, www.if-maroc.org/fes
