The Italian Cultural Institute of Zurich presents at the Kunsthalle Winterthur a preview of the video work Verdrängung by Francesco Bertocco, Italian artist and filmmaker who intersects the documentary genre with scientific research. Screening Verdrängung and Talk in english with the participation of the artist and neuroscientist Gaia Risso. Project curated by Francesca Ceccherini.
Presented for the first time in Switzerland on 11 May 2022, with a screening and a talk that sees the participation of the artist and neuroscientist Gaia Risso (HES-SO Valais, -Wallis), Verdrängung addresses the issue of the removal of memory as a therapeutic action. The subject of this visual investigation is the TMS, a contemporary ‚cure‘ considered an elixir-therapy that today allows the human beings to erase traumatic events from their own memories. Through the use of magnetic waves sent directly to the brain, the TMS in fact shapes the patient’s neuronal tissue and models it to modify the behavior. The therapy – considered quick and painless – acts without the need for a slow awareness, as opposed to the „analog“ therapy that works towards the acceptance and transformation of trauma. This rapid technique, widespread in recent years in several Western countries, opens up significant reflections on our present, on the meaning of memory erosion, on the spectrum of violent cancellation and on the fractures that the capitalist model – devoted to speed and emotional control – helped create.
Due to its spontaneous relationship with the discipline of psychoanalysis, Francesco Bertocco’s work turns to Swiss geography, where it will be presented in two stages: the first in the form of a single-channel screening at the Kunsthalle in Winterthur (11 May 2022) and the second through a multichannel video installation at the Wasserkirche in Zurich (3 – 20 November 2022).
Verdrängung was created thanks to Cantica21, an initiative that promotes Italian contemporary art abroad organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Ministry of Culture. The work becomes part of the collection of Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, partner of the project.
Francesco Bertocco (1983) is a visual artist and filmmaker. His research field is aimed at the exploration of the documentary genre that he has developed in recent years through the intersection with the scientific imaginary. In 2009 he obtained a BA in Modern Literature and he finished the program of Cinema and Video (MFA) at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan, in 2011. His work has been exhibited in various institutions, such as PAC (Milan); MAMbo, (Bologna); Museo del Novecento, (Milan); Villa Romana (Florence); Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci (Prato); OCAT, (Shanghai); Fondazione Merz, (Turin); la rada – spazio per l’arte contemporanea, (Locarno); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, (Chile); The Italian Cultural Institute (Zurich). Among exhibitions and screenings: Italian Lo Schermo dell’Arte, (Florence); Visions du Réel, International Documentary Festival, (Nyon); Stuttgarter Filmwinter-Festival for Expanded Media, (Stuttgarter); 11ª Festa do Cinema Italiano,(Lisbon); Kino der Kunst, (Munich); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Santiago); 13th Bienal de Artes Mediales, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Santiago); Bienal Internacional de Arte SIART, (La Paz).
Gaia Risso is a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist born in Genoa in 1991. In 2021 she received her PhD in Bioengineering and Robotics from the University of Genoa and Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), and she currently works as post-doctoral researcher at the HES-SO Valais Wallis (Sion) and IIT (Genoa). Her research interests concern action, perception and bodily self-consciousness and she investigates multisensory processing and body representations in healthy and clinical population. In the clinical setting she gained work experience at the Department of Eating Disorder and Anxiety Disorder at the Ospedale San Raffaele Turro (Milan; 2017) and at the Department of Psychology of the Giannina Gaslini children’s Hospital (Genoa; to date). She is completing the last year of psychotherapy specialization at the Centro Terapia Cognitiva of Como.Fr
Free admission, no reservation necessary.
When and where:
11 May 2022, 19h, Kunsthalle Winterthur, Marktgasse 25, Winterthur
Organisation: IIC di Zurigo in collaboration with Kunsthalle Winterthur + MAMbo Bologna