From 06 May to 30 July 2017 GAMeC is pleased to present the 9th edition of Artists’ Film International, a project created by the Whitechapel Gallery in London involving this year international institutions all over the world.

At the GAMeC, the ninth edition opens with the projection of the video by the artist selected by the museum – The Column (2015) by Adrian Paci.

The Column is a project Paci has been working on for a long time, which required complex organization and hard work. It consists of a video representing the sea journey of a block of marble that, after being extracted from a Chinese quarry, is carried on a cargo ship and then carved on board until being transformed into a classical-style column. What is peculiar to Paci’s work is its narrative impulse and strong sense of humanity, its deep dimension coupled with critical distance. In the artist’s view, travelling, moving around, the strong ties to homeland and the sense of displacement that leads to imagining new ways of life are not only new forms of relationship with the context, but also new languages of art through which to express oneself; they are not only key topics of our time, but first and foremost something experienced personally.So in Paci’s artworks what is personal and what is collective, social reality and personal dimension are melting together.  In the work, the theme of travel is thus associated with the expanded economic strategies pursued by our society. The Column relates to commercial traffics and factory-ships, sense of collaboration and the value of classical culture, represented in one of its most emblematic elements: the column. The anecdotic element is, however, removed from the artwork, which ultimately carries strong metaphorical value. Through its work, Paci reflects the strong changes of our times: he talks about travelling and moving along, global orientation and the intercultural dynamics affecting us all.

As in the previous editions of this show, each institution has been asked to report an artist coming from its country, through a selection of works in which the use of moving images represents the key medium.
These are the artists and the institutions involved for this edition:

Mikhail Karikis – Whitechapel Gallery, London
Laura Horelli, Nina Lassila, Agnese Luse, Angela Melitopoulos, Eléonore de Montesquiou, Tanja Ostojić, Meggie Schneider, Isabell Spengler e Gitte Villesen – Belgrade Cultural Centre, Belgrade
Desire Machine Collective – Project 88, Mumbai
Cengiz Tekin  Istanbul Modern, Istanbul
Dario Azzellini e Oliver Ressler – Video-Forum of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin
Ane Hjort Guttu – Tromsø Kunstforening, Tromsø
Mary Reid Kelley e Patrick Kelley – Hammer Museum, Los Angeles