The first two parts of data capture_in search of… are a pair of performances developed in response to my experiences during my residency. One of my first impressions of Bologna was of public protest in the streets. The protests continued at intervals during my residency. I followed one of the marches in which citizens and immigrants were protesting the forced removals of immigrants from squats in the city. Then the student protests flared up in South Africa. I followed and sourced footage from the protests at the university of Cape Town and particularly the campus where I teach, Michaelis School of Art. This I compiled into a digital video, which I projected next to a film projection of archival super8 footage of student protest in the late 1970’s in Bologna. The archival footage was sourced from Home Movies, an organization that is collecting, archiving and digitizing collections of home movies from families in Bologna. My performance was linked to a festival program they were running for the month of October to December titled Archivio Aperto. The digital and film footage were rear projected side by side onto a double layer of paper and drafting film. Wearing a mask that I created to split my vision (only allowing my left eye to see the digital footage and my right eye the film footage) I attempted to paint the moving images in black ink.
This performance was set up in a small space adjacent to the main theatre.







The second performance took place in the theatre. Here, in contrast to the act of attempting to capture the visible moving image, past and present, Cape Town and Bologna, split between left and right eye and hand, I wanted to create a space of internal reflection and on the video itself. I worked blindfolded painting with my hands (one hand black, the other white paint) onto a large roll of paper on the floor. A video loop was set-up using a camera and projector rigged to the ceiling scaffolding in the theatre. This created a video loop (similar to when you place two mirrors facing each other) of my movements on the paper, smaller and smaller disappearing into the light. Here the focus was on an ascending and descending movement, up and down, back and forth, inside and out. The performance was inspired by my walk through the longest arcade of porticos (666 arches) up to San Luca on a hill outside the historical centre of the city.






The third part to my exhibition was on display in the cafeteria at Atelier Si. This consisited series of paintings created before I took up my residency at Nosadella Due. There are three series of paintings. #Inter- face are a series of ambidextrous portraits painted from Skype video chats with people at Nosadella Due residency and at the theatre Atelier Si. The other two series are titled under #insearchofBologna and comprise of a series of ambidextrous paintings from love webcams feeds of Bologna and the other from Instagram photos sourced from searching for #bologna.

During my residency I was also creating a series of digital sketches from life on my iPad during my exploration of Bologna. This series was created to compliment the painted series #insearchofBologna and titled #Bolognavivo. The complete series of paintings and digital drawings can be viewed on the following Tumblr blogs:
#Inter-face
#insearchofBologna
#Bolognavivo

[Photographs by Tihana Maravic & Linda Rigotti]