32:9 two channels, DVD, 7’, color, Dolby Surround, dimensions variable
Dio è morto/God is Dead
2003
GOD is DEAD is a passage, a transition.
A narration of body movements and silent actions, the main character is a gender unclear cowperson, a rugged being.
The cowperson steps into the frame from a bloody battleground, away from the dusty action scenes, gunfights and wars of good and bad, of war and peace, profit and people, male and female, healthy and ill.
A passage that asks for the will to continue, for a cowgirl to transit into a lighter spectrum of colors and emotions and to be able to care for one's own being, to unravel her skin, to connect to the viewer and to look forward.
If God is Dead our bodies can transit into genders, identities and pleasures, also within the western genre, the master of the master's tool.
The frame and the cinema’s mise en espace
A film photographed and edited to be projected in a extreme horizontal extension.
My work AL Confine tra il Missouri e la Garbatella was a first attempt to widen the frame through the split screen. In Giravolte I used the width of the cinemascope to photograph extensive human panoramas, faces, hands, bodies, sweat, dust and enviroments on the edge of the daily routines in a big city. Dio e’ Morto goes a step further, the frame is conceived in a format of 32:9. The screens at their angled horizontal extension get close to the spectator as the surround sound embraces the space. A mise en espace of the western genre.
“Carola Spadoni presents a mise en espace of cinema. For GOD is DEAD (2003, DVD, 7’, color, Dolby Surround) she has created a new frame in 32:9. Shot in Super 35mm film, the frame has been divided in two 16:9 in post-production, then projected in it’s entirety in 32:9 onto two adjacent screens. The audio is in Dolby Surround.
The western mise en scene reveals a cowgirl bleeding while walking down a dirt road and attempting to take off her clothes. Under each garment there is another one.The installation focuses on the difficulties of change and the possibility of an exodus from roles and defintions too tight.”
(from the catalog, Premio Giovane Arte Italiana/Young Italian Art Award 2003)
50ª Biennale d’Arte di Venezia, Young Italian Art Award, Padiglione Venezia, 2003
