Le Vele di di Scampia
©
All rights reserved
Tobias Zielony 2009 Australia
Courtesy KOW Berlin.
Tobias Zielony: Le Vele di Scampia
IMA - Institute of Modern Art
Saturday 22 October 2011 to Saturday 04 February 2012
Opening Saturday 22 October 2011 5-7pm
Exhibition
previously on
at
IMA - Institute of Modern Art
in
Fortitude Valley precinct,
Queensland,
Australia
The futuristic housing estate Le Vele di Scampia in northern Naples now looks like a shell-shocked fortress. Architect Franz Di Salvo designed it in the 1970s. With its radical tiered form, galleries, and social spaces, he felt it was a revolution, but now it symbolises the failure of Italian socialism.
Even before its completion, its apartments were appropriated by squatting Camorra mafia families, and the building is now seen as a symbol of the their power in the Naples region, a centre of European drug trafficking. It was used as the set of the 2008 film Gomorrah.
German photographer Tobias Zielony documented the building and its occupants. He animated 7,000 single images, shot at night with a digital camera, to create a nineminute film. The film disassociates itself from real time with disruptive editing and stuttering rhythm. The architecture falls in and out of focus. Zielony captures lethargy, the transitory state between night and day, and the familiar marriage of utopian architecture and dystopian society. There is no mention of the mafia, drugs, or crime, just young, broken kids slouching, smoking, and disappearing into shadows, albeit with an otherworldly, melancholy beauty.
Tobias Zielony is represented by KOW Berlin.
Location
IMA - Institute of Modern Art420 Brunswick Street
Fortitude Valley Precinct
Queensland
Australia
© All rights reserved Tobias Zielony 2011 Australia
