AlbumArte | VideoArtForum

On February 10th, 2016 AlbumArte inaugurated a screening series of film and video art titled AlbumArte | VideoArtForum, which after the first edition success among critics and audiences, became in 2017 an ongoing project, hosted mainly within AlbumArte exhibition spaces. VideoArtForum is an analysis and study opportunity on the theme of video art and artist films, carried out through projections, video exhibitions and public talks with artists, curators, and enthusiasts. The project affirms AlbumArte's interest in video art, an expressive medium with which it has worked since the beginning, continuing to intensify its investigation in this area as one of the main characteristics of its research path.In 2011, video art was, in fact, the protagonist of the first edition of the "Anteprima" project, an international program of artist residences, exhibitions, screening, conferences, and talks, between Italy and abroad, born from an idea of Cristina Cobianchi, President and Project Manager of AlbumArte. Some of the artists presented during the various editions of "Anteprima" returned to AlbumArte on the occasion of "VideoArtForum" project, including the Turkish artist Ferhat Özgür who had participated in the first edition of "Anteprima", held in Instabul.In the following years, AlbumArte continued its exchanges with the Turkish city, presenting at Casa d'Italia, part of the Italian Cultural Institute, videos and films of Italian and foreign artists. It also organised the première in Italy and in Turkey of Adrian Paci's video, "The Column" (2012). Both the artist and the curator of the project Gabi Scardi were present at the events and, together with others curators, AlbumArte invited them to give a talk, after the screening, in the days of the XIII Istanbul Biennale (2013). The video had been previously presented only at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris.Finally, since 2015 AlbumArte includes art videos and films within the context of several exhibitions hosted in its space, such as the videos that made up the exhibition of Lucia Nimcová and Martin Kollar presented in the autumn of 2015 (“From Room to Roam ", curated by Lýdia Pribišová) in which Nimcová presented her project “Khroniky” (Ukraine, 2014) in collaboration with the sound artist SoltoDobie. Or exhibitions almost entirely dedicated to video art such as “Eglė Budvytytė | Between eyelashes and thoughts” curated by Benedetta Carpi De Resmini in 2017 or the collective PARADISO by Rosa Jijón, with a video by Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiz produced by Jeu de Pomme, in 2018 Kristina Inčiūraitė "Reflecting Women" curated by Benedetta Carpi De Resmini and in 2019 "What is happening with sleep today?" curated by Lýdia Pribišová. Among these videos, "Slides" by Martin Kohout, a work with which the Czech artist won the Jindřich Chalupecký award in 2017, the most prestigious award for young artists in Czech Republic.

The appointment with Francesco Jodice, introduced by Adriana Polveroni (April 12th, 2016) ended the first edition of VideoArtForum (February 10th – April 16th, 2016), directed by Cristina Cobianchi and curated by Ilaria Gianni, Cristiana Perrella, Adriana Polveroni, Paola Ugolini, and Vittorio Urbani.In this first edition, AlbumArte presented five artists in five different moments, giving them the opportunity to freely occupy the space, setting up a personal video art exhibition preceded by a projection, in the presence of the artist and the curator. The methodological decision of a free discussion held after the projection, as in the cineforum of the Seventies, aimed at creating a moment of in-depth analysis and dialogue that has continued to characterize the project also in the following editions.

After the first edition, AlbumArte | VideoArtForum continues, mainly through projections and debates, often followed by a two-days show, and presenting only videos that were never presented before in Italy or in Rome. Moreover, it continues to favor the inclusion of video works in the exhibitions of Italian and international artists. Among the artists involved in 2017, Ferhat Özgür and Elena Bellantoni, who together with Silvano Manganaro and Cecilia Canziani presented "Maremoto" (May 18th, 2017), the Italian première of a work concerning immigration in Italy.

In 2019, AlbumArte presented a new edition of VideoArtForum. In the last of the five appointments of this new series of AlbumArte | VideoArtForum 2019, Marco Trulli presented “Mediterraneo Sensibile”, a selection of video works by the artists Luca Coclite, Khaled Jarrar, Randa Maddah, Youssef Ouchra and Anna Raimondo, followed by a public debate, with the participation of Saverio Verini.“Mediterraneo Sensibile” focuses on some art practices that characterize the Mediterranean public space, which in recent years has been the subject of a series of exhibitions, workshops and residencies curated by Marco Trulli within the project La ville ouverte and promoted by ARCI Nazionale in the context of the BJCEM network – Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean. Following the publication of the volume “La ville ouverte. Politiche e poetiche dello spazio pubblico mediterraneo” (Viaindustriae publishing, 2018) which summarizes the work of observation, research and production of the project, the event at AlbumArte featured a selection of videos by artists who are active in the Mediterranean territory, with a particular attention to works focused on the delicate interweaving of poetry and politics

In the edition of 2016 of AlbumArte|VideoArtForum, it was presented the project “Chasing Boundaries”, a series of documentaries on contemporary art directed by Zaelia Bishop and  Emanuele Napolitano and coordinated by Micol Di Veroli. The project was developed with the intention to describe the condition of making art through a work that approaches video art and tends to go beyond the traditional narrative method of linear structure in favor of an open platform, discovering new ways of perceiving concepts and information. The goal of the project is also to collect different voices from distant lands, artists who operate under difficult or impossible conditions, managing to transform these experiences into artistic production. Each interview puts the viewer in the position to observe fragments of natural moments placed in  sequence and produce a personal experience: it is not about watching an ideological portrait of the filmed subjects but simply being present and observing things as they unfold.