From the 18th of March to the 18th of April, 2025
Curated By VVV-Residency
Artists: Maria Aoyama, Will Sibley and Lara Zimmern
The exhibition “Something is not going very well” 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.
VVV-R and the exhibition “Something is not going very well” 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.
Something is not going very well
The three artists wield the strategy of the cinematic subjective to introduce the spectator to dystopian visions that analyse and annul the gap between memory and action, between artificial and natural, between medical and ecstatic.
It is from the investigation of the performative dimension of water, as in Alto Ribeira’s performances or Bruce Lee’s ‘be water my friend’ invitation, that Maria Aoyama‘s work takes off: through images of floods and waves, she transforms the advertising propaganda of General Motors into a cluster of pixels, crumbling capitalist positivism into a digital, wavering signal.
Will Sibley investigates the bowels of the digital world through the material dimension that allows it to function: the atmospheres of video games permeate the work, creating a loop between organic and mechanical imagery. The artist immerses us in a proprioceptive dimension in which our body and that of the web merge.
In this present and horizon, in which things are not going very well, Lara Zimmern confirms the short circuit, engaged by the exhibition, between the personal and the political, the individual and the collective, evoking dance as a cure, not only for individual malaise, but as an ecstatic rite (B. Ehrenreich 2023) in which the collective finds the strength to resist. In fact, her research moves from the images that remain to moments of collective celebration.
VIDEOLIST
NEW HORIZONS
Maria Sayoko Aoyama
3’54’’, 1280 x 720, colour, stereo, 2025.
Maria Aoyama’s practice is underpinned by the exploration of material and translation. In New Horizons, footage by US automotive company General Motors, promising a vision of a technological utopia, is washed away by the depiction of water in overabundance. Aoyama’s investigation of online footage has formed an interest in the grid of pixels defining the visibility of information online. Images are cut off, subjects bleed into poorly lit backgrounds, clarity of vision relinquished for the utopic ideal where everything is seemingly within our reach. New Horizons poses the question: How do we mitigate the flood of inaction that follows the endless consumption of everything all at once?
UN/FAMILIAR
Will Sibley
3’19”, 1280 x 720, colour, stereo, 2025.
Will Sibley’s research began with one video: a deer that had broken into a video game server room. Reposted until it had lost context, the deer seemed more symbolic than literal. Un/familiar attempts to explore and deconstruct the binary between natural and artificial. The work appropriates footage from video games, digital simulations of mycelium growth, and photos of poorly organised cables from the subreddit r/CableGore. It positions both the computers and the deer as bodies: familiar, yet alienated from each other. The music that accompanies this found imagery is made from a synth choir and organ. It is both illusory and devotional.
RECOMMENDED DOSAGE
Lara Zimmern
2’13”, 1920 x 1080, colour, stereo, 2025.
Lara Zimmern delves into alternative and forgotten narratives within a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and what we are fed online. Looking into how history is reconstructed, the work uncovers unexpected connections. Drawing from visuals and sound from dated medicine adverts and rave footage sourced from the Prelinger Collection and YouTube, her work creates a dissonant experience. Highlighting the tension between free will and external control over our bodies – physical, mental and spiritual. As society navigates the post-pandemic era, this work explores the growing skepticism towards modern medicine, confronting issues of trust, misinformation, and the search for true healing.
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.