What is the time of research and experimentation for you?
Certainly in this case, and it may well be the best condition for me, we have decided to address the residency by working collectively (director, composer, musicians, director of photography) which means that each one of us has brought his or her own vision to the project. So it is certainly a necessary moment of sharing.
In what ways is your practice influenced by the space of an artistic residency?
It is impossible to think of a work in a vacuum, we always have a place, even if it is imaginary, in which our work lives and emerges.
Moonbird, the project on which we worked during the residency, which at the end of day is a hybrid between an opera, a video and an installation, will also be presented in the spaces of the Mattatoio and will become site-specific, so it is perfect to be working ahead of time in the spaces.
How do care and artistic research interact?
Artistic research needs a space in which to be able to make mistakes, even to attempt the improbable. It is only afterwards, looking at the work achieved, that you can understand whether those ideas have turned into something more solid and visible. That period of gestation needs protection, it is almost a secret job, impossible to share with those who are outside of it. Perhaps curating lies precisely in make a space an area protected from potential outside criticism, in other words sometimes you need to tumble into ridicule in order to be able to emerge from it with a new gesture.
Rä Di Martino (Rome, 1975) studied at the Chelsea College of Arts and at the Slade School of Fine Art in London before moving to New York from 2005 to 2010. She lives and works in Rome. She has shown in Italy and abroad in such institutions as the PS1 in New York, Palazzo Grassi, the Fondazione Sandretto, the MACRO in Rome, the Mart in Rovereto, the HANGAR Bicocca, the Montevideo Netherlands Media Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Chicago, the Bronx Museum, Artists Space NY and such exhibitions as the Biennale in Mardin, the Biennale in Busan, the Triennale in Turin and Manifesta. She has taken part in such internationatl festivals as the Festival del film in Locarno, VIPER Basel, Transmediale, the New York Underground Film Festival, the Kasseler Dokfest and the Torino Film Festival, and she entered the medium-length docufilm “The Show MAS Go On” in the Giornate degli autori, Festival del cinema in Venice in 2014 winning the SIAE award and the Gillo Pontecorvo award. The docufilm also earned a special mention at the Salina DocFest, and the Nastro d’argento for the best docufilm in 2015. In 2017 she once again took part in the Mostra Internazionale del cinema in Venice with her first full-length feature film “Controfigura” with which she won the Eurimages Lab Award for that year and was shortlisted for the nastri d’argento for best docufilm of 2018. In 2018/2019 she developed the project AFTERALL with the support of the Mibac - Italian Council award in collaboration with the Fondazione Volume! with two exhibitions at the Mattatoio in Rome and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2020).