The Cast Clemens von Wedemeyer a film show that discusses memory, the mechanisms of cinematographic fiction and the themes of contemporaneity 26 September 2013 – 26 January 2014 www.fondazionemaxxi.it Rome, 25 September 2013. Props and extras referencing the giants of the Rome film industry; the relationship between statue and actor, but also between these two and the spectator’s gaze; the history of film and its hidden aspects; the political struggles of the cultural sector workers of yesterday and today; the Greek myth of rebirth after destruction. These are the themes of The Cast, the exhibition produced by MAXXI, curated by Giulia Ferracci and dedicated to Clemens von Wedemeyer, one of the international artists most committed to experimentation within a new idiom that concerns time as much as cinematic space. For this project the artist has collaborated with Paolo Caffoni, co-editor of the exhibition catalogue (Archive Books), with contributions from Marco Scotini and Avery Gordon. THE EXHIBITION Clemens von Wedemeyer presents a film show composed of three new works specifically conceived for the museum’s Gallery 5 (Afterimage; The Beginning: Living Figures Dying and Procession) and an installation composed of diverse forms and sculptures (Remains: The Myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha). The title The Cast alludes to diverse meanings including the production of sculptures (the casting of forms), the process of selecting actors (casting) and the gesture of throwing (casting a stone). The exhibition is born out of the research conducted by von Wedemeyer over the last year spent in Rome and deals with a number of its symbolic, historic and contemporary sites such as the Cinecittà Studios and the Teatro Valle Occupato. Through a composite language and multiple video installations, The Cast compares the materiality of film and that of sculpture, the animation of props and the "pure presence" of the extras within the film. The display, configured in four chapters, opens to the public a multiple exhibition route in terms of forms and meanings that cannot be traced back to a natural sequential structure that is instead a characteristic of classic film. The great merit of von Wedemeyer’s work lies in the exposition of that which is separate, as Marco Scotini commented: starting out from the remains of the performing arts and the fragmentation of the cinematographic dispositif, his work guides us towards a new immersive experience in which it is up to the spectator to reconstruct their own vision. The first chapter Afterimage finds its location in Cinecittà, in the De Angelis family’s historic Cinears sculpture workshop, which for four generations dealt with the production of props for films that have earned a place in cinema history: from the colossal Ben-Hur and Cleopatra to Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The work is a 3D animation in which the protagonist is the spectator’s gaze that through the use of point of view shots moves through a store in which props, sculptures and stage material are stacked. The second chapter The Beginning: Living Figures Dying is an installation composed of brief fragments of historic films (from Mélies to Cocteau, from Fellini to Godard), projected along the glazed floor of Gallery 5, transformed for the occasion into rolling axis of a film. The found-footage film analyses the relationship between sculptures and actors, the perennial duel between immobility and movement, following a classic cinematic plot: the origin of the statue, its adoration and successive destruction. The third part of the exhibition presents Procession, a combination of the documentary genre and film fiction. The film script faithfully recreates an off-stage incident that occurred back in 1958, when thousands of extras attempted to enter the Studios, asking for work and interrupting the filming in progress. The cast of this re-

enactment is composed of the artists and activists from the Teatro Valle Occupato that from 2011 has become one of the most important players in the transformations taking place in the culture sector. The last chapter is Remains: The Myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha, two sculptures narrating the Greek myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only two human beings to survive the great flood that struck the world in remote times, recounted by Ovid in his Metamorphosis. The gods granted them the power to generate new life by casting stones over their shoulders. This section also features a number of negative forms: the moulds from the Cinears workshop, already presented in the first chapter. In the superimposition of different times – from the Greek myth to the extras’ protest and through to the present-day struggles of the workers of the spectacle – The Cast shows how the role of memory, like that of images in movement (film), is not that of defining the image of what has just passed, but a virtual dimension that constitutes the potential for every action in the present. Clemens von Wedemeyer was born in 1974 at Göttingen (Germany) and lives and works in Berlin. In 2013 he is an artist in residence at Villa Massimo, the German Academy in Rome. His works have been presented in prestigious international reviews and exhibitions including dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, (2012); Sydney Biennial (2010); Galleria Civica, Trento (2011), Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2010); Barbican Centre, London, (2009); CGAC, Santiago de Compostela (2008); 4th Biennale of Contemporary Art, Berlin (2006); Skulptur Projekte Münster (2007); MoMA PS1, New York (2006); Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2005). The press pack and images of the exhibition may be downloaded from the reserved area of the Fondazione MAXXI site at http://www.fondazionemaxxi.it/?page_id=5176 inserting the password areariservatamaxxi. MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts info: 06.3201954; [email protected] | www.fondazionemaxxi.it - www.romaexhibit.it opening hours: 11.00 – 19.00 (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday) |11.00 – 22.00 (Saturday) closed: Mondays, 1 May and 25 December | tickets: €11.00 adults, € 8.00 reduced MAXXI Press Office +39 06 3225178, [email protected]

THE CAST. CLEMENS VON WEDEMEYER Introduction Exploring the theme of memory and cinematic fiction, Clemens von Wedemeyer presents at MAXXI a film show entitled The Cast, developed during a year-long research project in Rome. Employing multiple video installations and styles, the show includes three new films created for Gallery 5 of the Museum. The title The Cast alludes to different meanings, including the production of sculptures (casting a form), the selection of actors for a film production (casting) and the gesture of throwing (casting an object). At first glance, the show pits film against sculpture, in order to question the materiality of moving images and the life of props in the construction of cinematic fiction. The Cast is also an investigation into our way of looking at human representation in film. As the theme is developed further in this multi-screen exhibition display, the film spaces created by Clemens von Wedemeyer lead the spectator from the remains of the culture of spectacle to new immersive forms of cinematic experience. The exhibition space is presented as a narrative journey through four chapters that can be read in chronological order, from the entrance to the windows, or simultaneously, as past events gain new importance and the present is brought to life through forgotten histories. The exhibition also presents materials used during the shooting of the film Procession: a small model of a fictitious film studio, a newspaper depicting an incident occurred in Cinecittà (Rome) in June 1958 and photographs. In this overlapping of different times, the sculptures come alive, a Greek myth and a demonstration by extras interact with contemporary political struggles led by precarious workers in the cultural sector. Here the role of memory, like that of motion pictures, is not to define the image of what has just passed, but rather to remain as a virtual dimension, which constitutes the potential for every movement in the present.

THE CAST. CLEMENS VON WEDEMEYER ARTWORKS 1 | Afterimage, 2013 6 min. semicircular video installation, 3 channel, colour, sound The main character of Afterimage is the camera, navigating space as though searching for something, a ghost looking for its own body, walking through an abandoned store of sculptures. The location is the workshop of Cinears, the oldest company at Cinecittà Studios, which has been producing sculptures and props since the beginning of the Italian film industry. It is now run by the fourth generation of the De Angelis family. Hundreds of sculptures, in the form of resin and plaster moulds, are gathered in the workshop, with figures representing gods as well as other religious, mythical and historical characters that have been used in films, some of which are copies of famous artworks. The original space was scanned by laser technology and transformed into a point cloud - a system of pixel coordinates that exist in a virtual space - and then an animated film was made from this during post-production. The film installation translates into space the field of vision of the human eye, thus creating an immersive experience. Reflecting the crisis affecting the cinema industry, the Cinears workshop was temporarily closed in spring 2013. 2 | The Beginning. Living Figures Dying, 2013 18 min. video installation, 10 channel, sound The Beginning. Living Figures Dying depicts the relationship between humans and sculptures throughout cinema history. The video is made up of fragments of films that deal with the phases of the creation, adoration and destruction of humanoid sculptures in cinema. The found-footage film was collected during the research process for the exhibition The Cast: from early films by Méliès and Cocteau, to later ones by Fellini and Godard, every sequence has to be seen in relation to the other. The video is projected onto the glazed floor of Gallery 5 in an experimental ‘timeline’. The existing 10 windows of the lower floor have been turned into projection screens. Each screen shows the same film but with a delay of six seconds. In this way the spectator is invited to move and follow the progression of the film in space. 3 | Procession, 2013 14 min. HD Video, sound The film recalls an incident that took place in 1958 in Cinecittà (Rome) during the shooting of the movie Ben Hur, when thousands of extras tried to force the gates and enter the studios demanding work. In the film, a Roman procession scene is being rehearsed on set and a casting is taking place in preparation for shooting when the scene is interrupted by the demonstration outside and the production team calls for intervention by the police. The following actions reveal that Procession is staged by a contemporary crew and the cast of the film is in fact composed of actors and activists from the Teatro Valle Occupato. The Teatro Valle, one of the oldest theatres in Rome, was occupied in 2011 and has since turned into a self-organised cultural centre. The narrator of the film is the eyewitness Mino Argentieri, a critic and cinema historian, who wrote the article about the incident for the newspaper l’Unità on 7 June 1958. In this film von Wedemeyer employs different genres to create a unique visual atmosphere: from documentary essay to theatrical choreography.

4 | Remains: The Myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha, 2013 sculptures fiberglass courtesy Leo Katz Collection, Bogotá, Colombia moulds Satir, Prassitele, 370 a.C.; Auriga di Delfi, 500 a.C.; David, Michelangelo, 1501-1504; female bust XIX Century; mano/hand, 2013; leg, 2013; foot, 2013; arms, 2012-2013 wood, plaster, fiberglass courtesy Cinears Two sculptures, portraying Deucalion and Pyrrha, stand in front of the panoramic window, looking onto part of the Roman cityscape outside the museum. Both are holding stones, ready to throw them. But it is not clear if the stones are meant to be thrown through the window or behind their backs. As described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Deucalion and Pyrrha survived a great flood that killed all human beings. They were asked by an oracle to throw ‘the bones of their mother behind them’. The stones – interpreted as the bones of the (Mother) Earth – created new life out of the destruction, for when they hit the ground, they melted and turned into living bodies. A new human race was born. The two statues were made by a sculptor who, like the De Angelis family at Cinecittà, works for cinema. Selected from a vast storage of Roman and Greek copies at Cinears, several moulds are shown alongside the sculptures of Deucalion and Pyrrha. The moulds are ready for casting new sculptures for the cinema, or to get new life as in this exhibition.