Fireflies

2011 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
7 minutes

Montemozolo writes of the work: “ Fireflies is the result of a sudden event—and its transformation/translation into an art work—that erupts within a life, altering its flow, suspending it, creating a momentary intensity and deviation of the flow, channeling it somewhere unexpected. This unforeseen deviation is dissected in terms of affects in the time frame of 5 minutes. The affects that emerge in the piece are characterized by a sense of movement between pain and hope, and a work of association between cancer and expectancy. The concept of resistance and fireflies is taken from [Georges] Didi-Huberman’s work on the political relevance of the survival of fireflies as a metaphor for the contemporary importance of an intermittent resistance opposed to an inoperable, redemptive, absolute one.”

Born in Rome, Fiamma Montezemolo is both a cultural anthropologist (PhD, University of Naples) and an artist (MFA, San Francisco Art Institute). Not surprisingly then, she situates her art practice as a critical response to the “ethnographic turn” that was prevalent in contemporary art during the 1990s. In addition to ethnography—a research method adopted as a “medium” by many artists—Montezemolo works with various media including installation, cartography, video, digital photography, industrial materials, performance, and archival documents. Her art practice straddles various disciplines, sensibilities, and methodologies, including institutional critique, social art, and indigenous media.

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