Curation of an installation on the film studios Cinecittà, within the section Monditalia at the 14 International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (by invitation of the general curator of Rem Koolhaas)
Corderie dell'Arsenale, Venice (Italy) / June 7 - November 23, 2014
The studio complex Cinecittà, known as Italy's "factory of images," manufactures realities for film and television and circulates them as fictions gathering together different constituencies. At the same time, these fictions are housed in a built structure that, though remaining invisible behind them, occupies more than 500.000 sqm within the city of Rome and is submitted to its changing logics throughout history, its legal frameworks and associated processes of land speculation. Access to this enclave is a precious (and restricted) asset, since its activities congregate an influential set of actors playing roles not only in film, but in broader cultural and economic networks.
The installation Cinecittà Occupata borrows its name from the 2012 occupation of the famous roman film studios, by workers in protest against their recent business strategies, which workers saw as dismissing their expertise and turning Cinecittà's interests away from film and toward projects that depend on the entanglement of image production with the entertainment and tourism industries. As squatters, they are the most recent occupants of the studios, "Cinecittà okkupata."
Beyond this polemic, Cinecittá Occupata showcases the studios' different kinds of occupations—considering both the fictional spaces that gather us, and the spaces of fiction production—and reflects on Cinecittà as a laboratory for the scrutiny of post-industrial societies—one that has been continuously negotiated and contested.
See more in www.cinecittaoccupata.com
Photo by Miguel de Guzman, imagensubliminal.com
Design and research: Ignacio G. Galán
Ignacio G. Galán and Jose Ahedo, design and construction; Cyrus Penarroyo, graphic design; Jose Meza, diagrams; Jacob Moore, text editor; Juan Rey, structures; Bat Spain, textiles; Luis Mesejo, web design. With video by Hugo Kenzo, drawings by Thomas Kelley and photographs by Begoña Zubero.
Special thanks to Lucia Allais, Katy Barkan, Sara Martin, Marina Otero, Javier Rubin, Andrea Sabbadini, Azzurra Stilo, Lèa-Catherine Szacka, Fondo Belloni Peressutti, and Cinecittá World.
Supporters: Consejería Cultural Embajada de España en Roma (AECID), AC/E, www.batspain.com, Serge Ferrari, Elise Jaffe+Jeffrey Brown