Try Hard Johnny!
VALENTINA BESEGHER & ALESSANDRO MASSOBRIO 04:11, 2007


Johnny is a child. Johnny can't play the game, because everyone gets in his hair. It's just a matter of changing, of altering his own face. With a smiley face, he would be considerate of others. But there is a gap between the inside and the outside. Something like an ambiguity of the memory, which is a play that makes fun of us and fixes its rules through time and generations.

The social guidance films of the fifties are deconstructed and overlapped with authors’ super8 films and sound recordings, remarking the deafness which the communication imperative is in and the ambivalence of sound and sense in the human language. The speaking children slid down into a vortex of references and dreamlike analogies, while the music creates a crucial, deep, mental environment.

 

 

Screenings video

OPEN EAR / AUDIO-VISUAL EVENTS AND PERFORMANCES
13th June 2008 / 08.00 pm
ATRiuM Theatre at the University of Glamorgan’s Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries
Cardiff / UK

CARTES FLUX3 / CENTRE OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY ESPOO
FESTIVAL OF NEW MEDIA ART
6-18 May 2008
Cultural Centre of Espoo / Finland

EMAF / EUROPEAN MEDIA ART FESTIVAL
23-27 April 2008
Osnabrueck / Deutschland

OPTICA / INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF VIDEO ART
16-18 November 2007
Gijòn / Spain

VAD FESTIVAL / INTERNATIONAL VIDEO AND DIGITAL ARTS FESTIVAL
17-21 October, 2007
Casa de cultura / Placa de hospital 6 / Girona / Spain

SIMULTAN 03 / VIDEO AND NEW MEDIA ART FESTIVAL
24-26 May 2007
Timisoara / Romania

Bio
Valentina Besegher (1976, Milan – Italy) is a visual artist and live video performer. Her focus is on the narration of the real world through the oniric decontextualization of its elements, on dream as a nonlinear and out of control tale of memory. She uses a slow and various iconographic language and mixed media such as super8, 8mm, and photography. In her performances, images and concrete life representations stir ironically within an oniric aesthetic-context, abruptly interrupted by obsessive intrusions where motion and repeated gestures are hinted without any fulfillment.

From 2005 she collaborates with the electonic musician Alessandro Massobrio (www.flushingdevice.it) on the audiovisual project Monotono.

Monotono explores the phisical aspects of sound and light as a materical plot of the cognitive process. A path across everyday life objects or through the wide spaces of nature where it emerges, from an introspective and lyric background, the border that both separates and units the natural and the artificial, origins and culture, time and history.

She is curator and video reporter of vjcentral.it

Screenings / Performance
• 2008 - Cartes Flux Vol.3, Cartes Centre of Art and Technology, Espoo, Finland
• 2008 – Loop Festival, International Festival & Fair for Videoart, Barcelona, Spain
• 2008 - EMAF / European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck, Germany
• 2007 – LIVE! IXEM / Electonic Music and Art Festival, Palermo, Italy
• 2007 - Optica International Festival of Video Art, Gijon, Spain
• 2007 – Festival della creatività, Florence, Italy
• 2007 - VAD - Video and Digital Arts International Festivals, Casa de Cultura, Girona, Spain
• 2007 - Videominuto PopTV, Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy
• 2007 - Simultan3, video and new media art festival, Timisoara, Romania
• 2007 – Loop Festival, International Festival & Fair for Videoart, Barcelona, Spain
• 2007 – OFFF / International festival for the post-digital creation culture, CCCB, Barcelona, Spain
• 2007 – GeneraComunicAzioni, Casa Masaccio Arte Contemporanea, San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy
• 2006 – Atrium, video installation, Torino, Italy
• 2006 – LIVE! IXEM / Electonic Music and Art Festival, RialtoSantambrogio, Roma, Italy
• 2006 – Videominuto PopTV, (New Italian Wave) Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy
• 2006 - What's next? Intersezioni audio video, Pistoia, Italy
• 2006 - MUV FESTIVAL , Music and Digital Art Festival, Limonaia di Villa Strozzi, Florence, Italy
• 2005 – VISUALIZERS, live performance in remixing video, Basilica di Superga, Turin, Italy
• 2004 - CLUB TO CLUB 2004, International Festival of Electronic Music and Arts, Turin, Italy

Catalogues / Release dvd
• 2008 - NMD, New Media Design – Le nuove frontiere dell’ arte / curated by Alberto Cecchi from the University of Perugia / Editrice Sometti / Book
• 2008 Simultan, Video and Media Arts Festival Timisoara, Romania / dvd release
• 2008 Cartes Flux vol. 3, Festival of new media art. Cartes Centre of Art and Technology, Espoo, Finland / catalogue
• 2008 EMAF / European Media Art Festival. Osnabrück, Germany / catalogue
• 2007 VAD - Video and Digital Arts International Festivals, Casa de Cultura, Girona, Spain / catalogue
• 2007 MarryKlein / Femele Electonica. Harryklein Club, Munich, Germany / catalogue
• 2007 Videominuto PopTV, Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy / catalogue
• 2007 OFFF / International festival for the post-digital creation culture. CCCB, Barcelona, Spain / catalogue
• 2007 Pig Magazine n.49 / Focus on Zerofeedback dvd release / review
• 2007 Zerofeedback video label experimental / dvd release
• 2006 MarryKlein / Femele Electonica. Harryklein Club, Munich, Germany / catalogue
• 2006 MakeSomeNoise Magazine / Donne Post Moderne / Interview
• 2006 Videominuto PopTV, Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy / catalogue
• 2006 Mixing Identities a/v dvd curated with Vjcentral.it in collaboration with Elettrowave Festival / dvd release

Contacts Valentina Besegher
www.besegher.com

email: contact@besegher.com
skype: besegher

 

Alessandro Massobrio - Musician and sound recordist, Turin 1974. Graduate in Ontology an Hermeneutic and postgraduate in marine bioacoustic at CIBRA, Alessandro is an auctodidact guitarist and composer. His research is focused on real-time manipulation of his own recorded sound. He makes use of guitar, cassette tape, feedback, environmental recordings, noise generators, electronic testers, microphones, creating continuous resonant clusters of harmonics or silent backgrounds. Since 2005 he is editor in chief of the sound art review Decibel/Exibart. In 2006 he released on Betulla Records the album Event Horizon.

Discography:

Simultan03 / DVD compilation / Simulatan 2008 (V. Besegher+A. Massobrio)
Save the Fu2re / CD compilation / Betulla 2008 (Flushing Device)
Event Horizon / CD album / Betulla 2006 (Flushing Device)
Sound Without Film Remixes / Mp3 compilation / Jon7 2005 (Flushing Device)
Piemontegroove Vol. II / CD compilation / Xplosiva 2005 (Flushing Device)
Plateaux / Mp3 ep / Sinewaves 2005 (Flushng Device)

Live Performances:
Firenze Muv Festival @ Limonaia di Villa Strozzi Florence / What's Next? Festival@Parco Pertini Agliana pistoiese / Videominuto pop tv @ Centro Luigi Pecci per l’Arte Contemporanea Prato / Encode Festival @ Anfiteatro Romano di Monserrato / Homeworkfestival @ Centro Multimediale 2bo / Hypermanipolation @ Clandestino / Meakusma “Jame La Fermè” @ Vielsalm Belgium / LPM Live Performers Meeting @ Linux Club Rome / P.E.A.M. Pescara Electronic Artist Meeting @ Ecoteca Pescara / Diavolo Rosso @ Chiesa sconsacrata di San Martino Asti / Radio Blackout @ FM 105.250 Turin / Nomusic Festival X @ Live dual Streaming with Ieva / Eye Jam @ El Barrio Turin / Derefrigerazioni @ Ex Macelli Prato / Visualizers @ Superga Basilic Turin / Live!ixem @ Rialto Santambrogio Rome / OFFF Barcelona @ CCCB Barcelona / Flora, live media by Netmage Festival @ Cango Cantieri Goldonetta Florence.


Audio-visual projects:
“The distance to the sun” expanded cinema with Andrea Dojmi 2008.
Music for “Alan Walks to a Red Point” Film, Andrea Dojmi 2008.
“Try Hard Johnny!” experimental video with Besegher 2007.
“Monotono” live AV Besegher / Flushing Device 2004.

Screenings and fair:
Cartes Flux3, Cartes Centre of Art and Technology, Espoo Finland / Festival de Cannes - Short Film Corner, Cannes France / EMAF European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck Germany / Athens International Film + Viceo Festival, Athens Ohio USA / Mediawave, Budapest Hungary / Ybor Festival of Moving Image, HCC Performing Arts Building, Tampa Florida USA / NIIFVF - New York International Indipendent Film And Video Festival, Village East City Cinema New York USA / Loop Festival, Barcelona Spain / Optica International Festival of Video Art, Gijon Spain / VAD Video and Digital Arts International Festival, Casa de Cultura, Girona Spain / Simultan3, Video and New Media Art Festival, Timisoara Romania, OFFF International Festival for the post-digital creation Culture, CCCB Barcelona Spain / Generacomunicazioni, Casa Masaccio Arte Contemporanea, San Giovanni Valdarno Italy / Filmstudio 80, Rome I

Contacts Alessandro Massobrio
www.flushingdevice.it

email: alessandro.massobrio@gmail.com
skype: flushingdevice