From the 15th of March to the 24th of April, 2024
Artists: Nancy Violet Downs, Chanda Mwamba, William Sipling and Prajvi Mandhani
The exhibition “Mumasha, a Hunger, an Endless Flow” displays the result of the research and sharing process
that began in January with the VVV-R research and audiovisual production residency.
In March, the exhibition was presented at SuperOtium, Naples, including talks and meetings with artists, curated by Alessandra Arnò and Simona Da Pozzo.
Mumasha, a Hunger, an Endless Flow is the title with which the curators of the VVV-R project, Alessandra Arnò and Simona Da Pozzo, present the process and the works created between January and March as part of the online residency. Thanks to the exploration of images and clips found in the vast sea of the web, with this exhibition, the artists Nancy Violet Downs, Chanda Mwamba, William Sipling and Prajvi Mandhani restore to our vision the process of re-signification of some fragments of the digital imagination collective through four works in a loop.
These artists’ works re-elaborate, with an intersectional critical gaze, the urgencies that pass through our daily lives between the web and social media.
Videoart List
Prajvi Mandhani – Endlessly hungry, 3’ 05’’, 1920 x 1080, stereo, UK, 2024
Chanda Mwamba – Ukuba N’go umuntu ku shana (To be human is to dance), 2’ 35 ‘’, 1458 x 1080, Mp4, Stereo, UK, 2024
Nancy-Violet Downs – This is the river and it still flows, 2’41”, stereo, 1920×1080, UK, 2024
William Sipling – Flux. Electrical Murmuring, 3’45’’, 1920×1080, 16:9, stereo, UK, 2024
Prajvi Mandhani
endlessly hungry
3’ 05’’, 1920 x 1080, stereo, UK, 2024
Through her research, Prajvi Mandhani explored her personal relationship with her home-country and its worsening political climate. However, being away from home in the UK, most of this was through information and images that she receives and perceives from the internet. She wanted to explore this distance to a fluctuating political state, as well as attempt to remember and navigate through her own memories and experiences, and her own feelings of anxiety and distress.
Entering a digital interface, the viewers follow the cursor as it travels across screens and windows, peering through or grazing at the surface, translating the act of navigating into a more collective experience.
Chanda Mwamba
Ukuba N’go umuntu ku shana (To be human is to dance)
2’ 35 ‘’, 1458 x 1080, Mp4, Stereo, UK, 2024
Through the video Ukuba N’go umuntu ku shana, Chanda Mwamba aims to explore the act of watching and performing in an online space. Social media platforms are ruled by our thumb that give us control to decide what we like and consume.
However, what if we denied the technological civilization that “the technical man” French Philosopher Jacques Ellul defines as one who is “fascinated by results, by the immediate consequences of setting standardized devices into motion”. And only driven by the desire of “the never-ending search for the one best way to achieve any designated objective”.
What if we embraced the untameable nature hidden in the polyrhythms of the talking drum and divine creation? In many African cultures, the talking drum acts as a nonverbal communicator of celebration, danger and emotion of the person who plays it. The drum no longer acts as a constant element in African living. -In this age of postcolonialism and decolonising the mind, how can we return to the intimate relationship we once held with our body and mind through the art of dance?
What does the body say that the mouth and heart cannot? The talking drum asks us the question: are we human, or are we dancers?
Nancy-Violet Downs
this is the river and it still flows
2’41”, stereo, 1920×1080, UK, 2024
Grounded in the artist’s research and practice underpinned by ecofeminist theory and alternative spiritualities, this is the river and it still flows explores the role of ritual in protest, and how (re)connection, with the more-than-human and with each other, is a vital act of resistance. The video comprises audio from various protests (anti war, London, 2003 and Greenham Common Peace Camp, UK, 1982) and visuals from recent protests for the freedom of Palestine (manifestazione pro Palestina 2023, Milan).
This work can be seen as a spell; the artist interweaves this igniting footage [fire], with that of a kite flying against the open sky [air] and drone footage of the Jordan River [water, earth] (reported by Al Jazeera English, 2015). In a dialogue between these elements, power and agency is given to them through visuality; a new articulation of “from the river to the sea”.
William Sipling
Flux. Electrical Murmuring
3’45’’, 1920×1080 (1.0), 16:9, stereo, UK, 2024
William Sipling followed the sound of energy : the everyday buzz, the drone of powerlines and his phone charger. An everyday hum that he chases up to, the kettle, to the food he cooks and the bus he travels around on.
These electrical structures supply us with our essential needs and our pleasure, but also supply us with our bills and our struggles. These structural connections have become even more apparent in the current economic landscape of the UK, with the country in a recession and a rise in poverty.
Flux compiles capitalist energy structures and threads narratives of current economic recession in the UK from firsthand experiences and perspectives of people through interviews, layered over a soundscape of sampled energy.
VVV-R and the exhibition “Mumasha, a Hunger, an Endless Flow” are a Visualcontainer Platform and Vegapunk// Ex-Voto project curated by Alessandra Arnò and Simona Da Pozzo in collaboration with Arts University Bournemouth, as part of Global Networks and SuperOtium.
V V V – R
VISUALCONTAINER VEGAPUNK VIDEOART RESIDENCY
video art residencies
a project by
Alessandra Arnò, Visualcontainer
Simona Da Pozzo, Vegapunk.
VVV Residency is a project of critical reflection and an audiovisual production time articulated through a residency, an exhibition and an event to introduce the student to the contemporary artistic professional field.
The project is articulated around a web-based artistic residency in its tools and the analysis and use of online digital audiovisuals to create new works.
VVV-Residency is an online residency, an exhibition and an event time
The project aims to experiment with moving image and video art through an online artistic residence in which the Academy’s students while creating the work, move in a professional research environment with process collaborative and horizontal.
The path ends with selecting the most exciting works and their presentation and promotion on a professional level through the online exhibition on the VisualcontainerTv digital platform.
The exhibition will be visible 24/7 in the Exhibitcontainer section, which is dedicated to the Best of International Festivals and independent curatorial projects.
The artists and Course Leaders participate in a live public moment (screening and talk) where the various international academy participants meet in an event divided into a screening and a talk. The event presents artists and works created in residence to the Naples art scene, involving institutions, curators and cultural planners.
SuperOtium, a residential space in Naples’s historic centre, promotes the event.
For info info@visualcontainer.tv
The project results from the process of transformation of the residence born in 2014 in Milan. Since then, the experience has continued by connecting different realities and academies, such as NABA, The Blank, Tilde, Via Farini, Non-Riservato and AUB university with which we launched VVV-Residency in 2020 as a digital evolution of the project.
VisualcontainerTv International Videoart web channel, curated by Alessandra Arnò, has been presenting videoart projects and festivals under the care of curators and festival directors, interviews, and monograph programs from all over the world since 2009. It’s a big renowned cultural project made for videoart lovers, students, curators, and all audiences, a place to find the best videoart selection for free and cultural purposes. The project aims to spread the fresh and latest research in the videoart scenario under the care of visualcontainer and many other worldwide partners into an overall view.
Vegapunk is an artist-run space&time for sharing artistic practices. It is an extension of Simona Da Pozzo’s artistic practice into the domain of curating driven by impromptu curiosities. The focus is on artistic practice as both an intellectual and physical process guided by dialogue (between people, formats, and disciplines). Vegapunk tends to build collaborations with artists whose discourse stretches beyond the artistic frame to include research entangled with the world, also in a social and political sense. The attention to the relationship between space and time, both in a physical and aesthetic sense, leads Vegapunk to favour time-based projects and to define Vegapunk as an artist-run-space-&-time. Vegapunk is a project born in the frame of www.ex-voto.org activities.