In Reggio Emilia the 10th edition of Fotografia Europea 'EARTH EFFECT'

This year is going to be a very special edition for Fotografia Europea. In celebration of its tenth anniversary, the event in Reggio Emilia proposes a reinterpretation of the themes of Expo 2015, the Universal Exposition in Milan, through a wide-ranging and engaging reflection on the relationship between man and nature. Photographers and curators have been asked to explore areas of investigation linked to the representation of the planet, environmental protection, the riches of the territory, the new equilibriums established between the demands of Earth and human intervention, and the dynamic relationship between man, nature, and technology. The result is Earth Effect, a guiding thread that ties together the exhibitions, installations, and all the other events in the festival programme.

Once again this year, Fotografia Europea is taking a free and interdisciplinary approach, involving many different languages around the core of the major photographic exhibitions. The paths are often unconventional and full of surprises, thanks to the imagination, talent, and brilliance of Italian and international masters. The dialectic between man and nature – the main theme of the event – is explored through novel points of view, such as that of the snails in the Gastrópoda series by Catalonian photographer Joan Fontcuberta, or the story of the uncompleted restoration of a Fiat 500 Topolino in Unfinished Father by Dutch artist Erik Kessels, but also in a series of individual explorations (the panorama on artificial lights in Olivo Barbieri’s Ersatz Lights case study #1 east west) or the multifaceted kaleidoscope of impressive collective shows (No Man Nature, curated by Elio Grazioli and Walter Guadagnini). With the gaze directed from Earth towards the heavens (and vice versa), works that explore our cities, scientific progress, and the relationship with nature, reconstructing the past and revealing the future, complete an exhibition programme brimming with ideas and reflections.


The opening days will kick off the festival on the weekend of 15-17 May, with an ample calendar of meetings with the artists, conferences, screenings, workshops, guided tours, and performances. The Dutch agency NOOR is this year’s special guest in the Host section, and opening night will be entrusted to one of the most famous Italian DJs in the world, Reggio Emilia native Benny Benassi, presenting a completely new set of music and video mapping dedicated to the theme of the fragility of nature and of our planet. The façade of the Teatro Valli will become the surface and backdrop for a video experiment animated by the DJ’s sounds. The images are by Guy Laliberté (the historic founder of Cirque du Soleil), the first artist in space, whose unusual perspective spawned these extraordinary images, a “social and poetic mission” in support of ONE DROP, a project to raise awareness on the issue of the water emergency (Friday 15 May, 9.30 p.m., Piazza Martiri del 7 luglio).

The 2015 edition also brings back Speciale diciottoventicinque (curated by Alessandro Bartoli, Fabio Boni, Fabrizio Cicconi, and Laura Sassi), a project dedicated to young photography enthusiasts aged eighteen to twenty-five.

Reinforcing the symbiotic relationship between Fotografia Europea and the city of Reggio Emilia, the tenth edition of the festival adds some new local venues (such as the Renaissance era Palazzo da Mosto, open specially to host the collective exhibition No Man Nature) and new collaborations (such as the one with Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, which to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary will become the partner and protagonist of the photographic project Fotoscopia by Alessandra Calò), in addition to the traditional festival locations (Chiostri di San Pietro, Chiostri di San Domenico, Palazzo dei Musei, Galleria Parmeggiani, Spazio Gerra, Sinagoga, Biblioteca Panizzi, Museo dei Cappuccini). During the opening days, the map of Fotografia Europea will be enriched by over 200 sites that will host the OFF Circuit with its exhibitions, meetings, and installations, transforming the city into a single pulsating exposition. Fotografia Europea will also be part of Reggio Emilia for Expo 2015, the city project for the Universal Exposition that aims to promote the Reggio Emilia “system” and highlight the territory’s excellence in innovation and production and its historical, artistic, and cultural wealth. In this regard, the opening days of Fotografia Europea will include the inauguration of the exhibition NOI – Storie di comunità,  idee, prodotti and terre reggiane (WE – Stories of the communities, ideas, products, and lands of Reggio Emilia) at Palazzo dei Musei (Saturday 16 May, 12 midnight).

Organised by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, Fotografia Europea 2015 has entrusted the advisory committee duties to Elio Grazioli and Walter Guadagnini (ongoing curators of the festival) and Diane Dufour (director of the prestigious Paris venue Le Bal), whose task will be to select the exhibit projects submitted last autumn following the public call for proposals. Due to the special nature of this edition and the connection with Expo 2015, the opening period of the exhibitions has been extended to 26 July 2015.

THE CONCEPT – EARTH EFFECT
In conjunction with Expo 2015 and its call for reflection upon the health of the planet (local areas, food, roots, energy, and so on), Fotografia Europea investigates the relationship between man and nature, focussing not just on the representational and documentary function of photography, but also on its potential for originality and renewal, and on its distinctive approach – with an awareness of how enormously tools, techniques and iconographies have changed in recent decades, and with them, our imagery as well as our reflections.

One preliminary aspect concerns the representation of the planet. What kind of new geography is photography able to deliver today? Is there still an antithesis between nature and artifice, between historical memory and new developments, between tradition and future? New places, new methods of representation, new realms of the imagination and new manipulations of the image: these lead not only to novel perspectives but also to different ways of thinking about the past. Depending on the perspective we adopt, from the most internal one to the most dizzyingly external one, the way we experience and consider things clearly changes. How undecipherable certain images produced by science and technology appear to us – in the most unfathomably microscopic images, in those that reveal invisible distances and the most incredible immensity beyond all possible human imagination. How far from reality is technology able take us today – with the possibility it affords to rework and invent images.  How close we are able to get to reality through incredibly precise and accurate simulations!


While conflicts are denounced and catastrophes are documented, efforts are also being made to find new equilibriums between the demands of nature and human intervention. Art does not confine itself to representing, but frequently feels it ought to act in order to trigger change: from a commitment to depicting the world and its problems, it goes on to design and implement actions involving local areas and communities. It is ‘public art’, and makes an active and performative use of the image, frequently using new technologies in a constructive and shared way. Tensions have become more acute, issues have become more complicated: while on the one hand there is a search for balance and interconnection, on the other there is still a serious risk that everyone will go their own separate way, and that this drifting apart may also involve the (no longer) collective imagination. We can see ‘nature as separate from man’ – powerful and sublime perhaps, but also virgin and serene – as well as ‘man as separate from nature’, thanks to technologies that are so far advanced as to have lost all connection with images of nature. The exhibits in the tenth Fotografia Europea Festival explore these themes, showing that photography still has a role to play in them: a role that is both effective and thought-provoking.

Fotografia Europea 2015

10th EDITION

EARTH EFFECT

Exhibitions, installations, conferences, meetings, workshops, screenings, performances.
The inaugural days (15-17 May 2015) will open the tenth edition of Fotografia Europea, dedicated to the relationship between man and nature and included in the Reggio Emilia project for Expo 2015

Exhibitions open through 26 July 2015

www.fotografiaeuropea.it