Curated by Giulia Ferracci
Sep 26, 2013 – Jan 26, 2014
In the new four-part film installation "The Cast", which was commissioned by the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts—MAXXI, Rome, Clemens von Wedemeyer explores the material, institutional, and political backgrounds of cinematographic illusion. Using laser technology, von Wedemeyer built a digital model of the interior of the oldest sculpture workshop at the Cinecittà studios in Rome; he then reconstructed the space, in which countless props had been manufactured and stored, in a 3D animation film. In a found-footage film, he scours the history of the cinema for interactions between the movements of actors and the stasis of sculpture. Working with actors and activists of the Teatro Valle Occupato, who have campaigned for political changes in the cultural sector since 2011, he reenacts a workers’ rebellion that took place in 1958, when extras tried to storm studios at Cinecittà. Two sculptures—representations of the Greek myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha—discard the past so that a future may arise from it. In von Wedemeyer’s project, object and imagination, truth and vision, reminiscence and revolt, forgotten history and critique of the present are intimately interrelated, engendering a unique experience of time that visitors can step into at the MAXXI starting on September 26.