For Lengths – Installation (2016 – 19)

For Lengths is a collaborative project between artist filmmaker Sam Jury, choreographer Luca Veggetti, and composer Paolo Aralla, featuring performances by actor and dancer Alice Raffaelli. The starting point was a response to sketches and stage directions by Samuel Beckett. It was filmed in various locations in Bologna region of Italy.

Visualisation / installation

Visualisation / installation

Synopsis

For Lengths is a short film based on the sketches and stage directions by writer Samuel Beckett. It is a work that simultaneously embodies three interrelated states: the physical, theatrical stage, the imaginary space of literature and the omnipotent presence of an off-stage authority. Through choreographed movement, the film explores the imprisonment and neurosis of repetitive acts –  a theme often returned to by Beckett – the suspended trauma of being stuck in a behavioural or narrative loop. Visually the work is inspired by the unifying and sparse aesthetic often encountered in Beckett’s stage productions, pitched against the heightened illusory space of early cinema. Drawing these worlds together is a sound composition by Aralla technically derived from the dynamism of the film’s movement alongside off-stage voice and instrument. For Lengths is a collaborative project between artist Jury, Veggetti, and Aralla. Filmed in various locations in Bologna, Italy, the film features choreographed performances by the actor and dancer Alice Raffaelli. 

Installation

The project is  a multichannel installation. Three large-scale projections and stereo x 3 sound. Installation would respond to site. Ideal sites are at least 140 m2, with little or no natural light. The work is highly malleable and site responsive. The intent is to create an immersive installation where the movement on screen activates physical space, concretised and dissipated by sound.      

Visualisation

Visualisation / installation
Duration: 01:47

 Complete Film

https://vimeo.com/604797477/c56cc13641

For Lengths – 3 Channel Configuration
HD video with sound. Black and white.
Duration: 11:00

  • Still from For Lengths
    Still from For Lengths
  • Still from For Lengths
    Still from For Lengths
  • Still from For Lengths
    Still from For Lengths
  • Still from For Lengths
    Still from For Lengths
  • Still from For Lengths
    Still from For Lengths

Artists’ Bios

SAM JURY – Artist Filmaker

Sam Jury works across the mediums of film, video, installation. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Popehelm, film screening as part of Disasters of Peace, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; To Be Here, a multichannel video installation at the MSU Broad Art Museum, USA; The Approach, screening as part of Moving Time, Video Art at 50, at CAFA Museum, Beijing and Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art, Guangzhou, China. In 2018, Jury was nominated for the UK’s Jarman Award and won the Arts Humanities Research Council Research in Film (RIFA) Award for her short film To Be Here which centres on the lives of Sahrawi refugees living in long-term displacement.

LUCA VEGGETTI – Choreographer/Stage director

Luca Veggetti’s work has been produced and presented by some of the world’s leading theaters, companies and festivals, such as the Martha Graham Dance Company and Works&Process at the Guggenheim. Turning his interests toward contemporary music, experimental forms and new technologies has lead him to develop collaborations with leading artists and composers, and with visual arts institutions such as the Drawing Center in New York. In 2012 his piece Meditation on Violence performed at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow was awarded a Golden Mask. His collaboration with composer Paolo Aralla has produced a number of dance and theater pieces that explore the relation between dance, theatre and new sound technologies, creating works that have been presented throughout the world. He has recently directed and choreographed Toshio Hosokawa’s The Raven at the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Hosokawa’s operas Hanjo and Vision of Lear in Japan, and the US premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s The Tempest Songbook for Gotham Chamber Opera with the Martha Graham Dance Company at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2016, he will work with MART, Rovereto for a major new installation/performance.

PAOLO ARALLA – Composer

Paolo Aralla studied at the Accademia Chigiana under the tutelage of Franco Donatoni. In his early career he was awarded scholarships from the SIAE and the Conservatoire Superieur de Paris and the National Academy of S. Cecilia in Rome and in 1990 he was winner of the prestigious Gaudeamus prize in Amsterdam. In 2001, his interest in the performative interactions between artistic disciplines led him to create the group PRISMA (Pedagogia e Ricerca Internazionale sui Sistemi Musicali Assistiti da computer) with other European composers and supported by IRCAM. Aralla’s music has been performed and played by renowned ensembles and musicians such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Either/Or Ensemble, Orchestra Toscanini, Günter Neuhold, Jonathan Nott, Maurizio Ben Omar and Yoichi Sugiyama, to name just a few. His music has been presented in festivals around the world such as Radio France, Cité de la Musique, Paris, Teatro Farnese, Parma and the Biennale Musica in Venice. Since 2005, he has collaborated extensively with choreographer Luca Veggetti on works such as Scenario for Operà de Paris in 2008 and Memory/Measure, for Cedar Lake, New York in 2009. In 2002, he was one of the founding members of the FontanaMIXensemble based in Bologna. He teaches composition in the Conservatory of Music in Bologna.

For further details see:

www.piecesfor.com

www.samjury.com


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