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Tempo Scaduto, interactive installation, 2012
A production of Le Fresnoy-Studio national
A co production of Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains / Honeymoon - Cinema e Restauro, Palerme, Italie, 2012 in partnership with research teams MINT (Université Lille 1, CNRS, LIFL UMR 8022 & IRCICA, INRIA Lille Nord-Europe) and FOX (Université Lille 1, CNRS, LIFL UMR 8022) and INSID Inc. (Plaine Image)
« Ready, aim, fire: based on these three orders commonly used in video games, Tempo Scaduto is an interactive installation which places the spectator in the paradoxical situation of having to take up position both physically as well as intellectually and morally, faced with an image and a story that will make him aware of his act.
Against the backdrop of mafia war in Palermo in Sicily in the 80’s, place and time of the artist’s childhood, the story unfolds in different settings and several scenes, some of which are the stage of a murder. The «player» is informed on the screen of the possibilities he has to fire at moving targets inspired by real murders which took place at the time in different parts of the city, often documented by press articles like those of Letizia Battaglia who worked for the daily paper L’Ora; these images are engraved in the memory of V incent Ciciliato.
Six murder scenes have thus been re-enacted and interpreted according to the different methods of representation specific to documentary, fiction cinema and press photography. From general shots which show the activity of the neighbourhoods of Palermo, to more specific shots for the imaginary presentation of fiction (the pictorial quality of the image and the sound track in suspense which accompanies it creates the necessary conditions for the characters and events to appear), the player decides to aim and fire at a target which he supposes is the right one. The accuracy of the «player’s» aim at a «well chosen» target sets off the deafening sound of a real shot, accompanied by a series of hand-held camera type images then a succession of black and white photographs of a body shot down, sometimes accompanied with the sound of the camera taking the photo.
By executing the gesture of aiming at a human target, the spectator goes from player to witness of an act that actually took place that is already documented, archived, belonging to History. Encouraged to choose a target amongst an undifferentiated series of possibilities in a very ordinary reality, the artist puts the player in the situation of re- acting a terrorist act: firing at any target, without knowing for what reason this target might be the right one. The black skies and the ghostly silhouettes that haunt the images tell of the power of memory to go back to a news item which always thrives on our twilight zones. »
Françoise Parfait, text / exhibition catalogue Panorama 14, Le Fresnoy, June 2012.
Vincent Ciciliato is artist, musician and PhD in visual arts.
After a postgraduate degree at Paris 8 University, he continued his researches on real-time interaction in a post-graduation called "ARI" (Atelier de Recherche Interactive) at ENSAD (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs) in Paris. Here, he produced several works includig Incremento, shown during the exhibition "TRANSMISSION" (ICHIM), in 2005. Then he collaborates with the CITU laboratory of Paris 8 University, and participated in 2006 at the first exhibition titled "OUTLAB" with the work Cluster. _ Then he presented Qualia, co-produced by Arcadi, in 2009 during the new media researches exhibition "IN/OUT x.0".
In 2010, he obtained a doctorate in visual arts questioning the relationships between sound and image in interactive and generative devices, and the specific notions of behavior and micro-movement.
In 2012 he obtained his post-graduate diploma in Le Fresnoy, Studio National des arts contemporains (Tourcoing - France).
