Introduction
SODOM AND GOMORRAH
Many things have been said about sodom and gomorrah but still nobody knows anything.
The only the only "plentiful" evidence that Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed has been handed down to us by the Book of Genesis.
Some think that they are submerged under the heavy waters of the Dead Sea, destroyed by a natural disaster as was Pompeii. In fact, according to geological studies, the area where they stood appears to be rich in sulphur, bitumen and oil (not yet found).
When it is said that Lot's wife (Lot was the only inhabitant fearful of God and was therefore saved from Divine wrath), overwhelmed by the seed of doubt and second thoughts, was transformed into a pillar of salt upon looking behind her as she was fleeing, one could understand her to have been struck by a scorching gust of sulphur and ashes, as with the petrified bodies of the ancient Pompeiians.
So as not to have to face the colossus of Archeology, I have decided to approach the subject by following a precise itinerary, imagining landscapes, portraits, environments and objects, and by following almost the same path that Italo Calvino took thirty years ago in his Le Citta' Invisibili [The Invisible Cities] (1972, Einaudi) where, through Marco Polo's eyes, he visited these seemingly believable cities. He wrote:
"All cities were invented; I have given each one a woman's name: Procopia, Zenobia, Chloe, Hypatia, Zora, Phyllis, etc (...). The book was created one piece at a time, at intervals which were sometimes lengthy (...). I keep a file on objects, a file on animals, one on individuals, one on historical figures and another on mythological heroes. I have a file on the four seasons and one on the five senses; in one I collect pages related to the cities and landscapes of my life and in another, imaginary cities, outside of space and time."
I have the habit of taking photographs of everything wherever I go: human and animal matter, objects, landscapes and architecture. Materials that I have accumulated and catalogued of things photographed in museums and on the street, on trips outside Europe and on brief afternoon outings.
Materials presented in this imaginary journey, the journey which launched me into the metaphor of these two forbidden and damned cities where people happily live in a total absence of morality, devoted to vice and lust, where every kind of sexual perversion is part of everyday life.
In Sodom and Gomorrah, sexual perversion is considered a virtuosity. Virtuosity in which genetic crossbreeding from one generation to the next accumulates over time. Yet it did not cause shame; on the contrary, for the New Progeny it was the rule to show off with pride and irony an evermore unique body.
I have imagined these two cities as a kind of amusement park for visionaries, where my gaze is neither accusing nor benevolent, but simply amused and curious, open to taking in as much as possible. An enormous freak show designed with kitsch and geometrical rationality, like that of crib, where one can get lost, and scrutinize an intimate daily life as hybrid as it is metaphysical, and then find one's path, perhaps to get lost again.
In short, I have wanted the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to be happy, creative and imaginative up to the very day of the apocalypse in which God omnipotent, vexed by their excessive exuberance, decided to spread forevermore his immense black veil.
"Sodom and Gomorrah" is an open-ended project, to which I will continue to add artworks. It is an always expanding project, like Sodom and Gomorrah would be if they had survived the Divine Wrath: an irrational expansion, chaotic, exuberant and spontaneous. Just like that of all modern cities.
Alessandro Bavari, 2000
---------------------------------
STATEMENT
METACHAOS is a multidisciplinary audio-visual project, articulated in a short film, a set of photography and mix-technique paintings. The purpose of the project is to represent the most tragic aspects of the human nature and of its motion, such as war, madness, social change and hate. An accretion of feelings that are metaphorically represented by specific visual forms, which are abstract conceptually, but concrete and tangible formally. The application of acid and monochromatic tints, besides the strong contrasts, makes everything intentionally more oppressive and tragic.
In order to obtain a more immersive and plausible version, the shot was taken adopting the camera live technique. The extreme and frenetic motion of the shoulder camera, similar to the subjective one, becomes a main constant, so that, along with the persisting cuts used to edit the video, create a bigger sense of instability and danger. In fact, thanks to the dissemination of Technology, it is possible to notice that the unconscious-esthetic potential of the shots available on Youtube, characterized by a pseudo-documentary and amateur approach, often offer an unexpected emotional involvement, which trigger an exhibitionistic-voyeuristic interchange between the author and the consumer.
The irrational gesture and action of the bodies, as if a collective form of madness controlled them, are inspired by artists like Bosch and Bruegel who, between the ‘400 and ‘500, produced an iconography where irrational images show sickly madness and pain.
The project has been realized using different techniques: live shots taken in discharged industrial sites, CGI animations, tracking and motion captures, besides various other analogical ones.
American Jeff Ensign, aka Evolution Noise Slave composed the original sound track, which has been progressively updated during the video production. The musical score was inspired by 6 separate pieces Jeff had previously created that were then combined into a hybrid. The composition was also based in part from a sonic interpretation of the ideas presented in Antonin Artaud’s the Theater and Cruelty overlaid on Bavari’s images.
SINOPSYS
Metachaos, from Greek Meta (beyond) and Chaos (the abyss where the eternally-formless state of the universe hides), indicates a primordial shape of ameba, which lacks in precise morphology, and it is characterized by mutation and mitosis.
In fact the bodies represented in METACHAOS, even though they are characterized by an apparently anthropomorphous appearance, in reality they are without identity and conscience. They exist confined in a spaceless and timeless state, an hostile and decadent hyperuranium where a fortress, in perpetual movement, dominates the landscape in defense of a supercelestial, harmonic but fragile parallel dimension. In its destructive instinct of violating the dimensional limbo, the mutant horde penetrates the intimacy of the fortress, laying siege like a virus. Similar to the balance of a philological continuum in human species, bringing the status of things back to the primordial broth.
Alessandro Bavari: Camera Tremula 1, Noise Melange, XYZ Ocula Depth
Fulvio Sturniolo: Camera Tremula 2
Jeff Ensign aka Evolution Noise Slave: Sonic Harmonium
Format: Pal Widescreen 1050x576 - Progressive
Duration: 8:27 mins
---------------------------------
Prizes
Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica 2011.
Special Award IED at Skepto International Film Festival.
Best Experimental Film at the 2nd Stortford Film Festival.
Best Direction Prize at the Cinemavvenire Video Festival.
1° Prize Art Lab at the Festival Internazionale del Cinema d'Arte.
Movie available at:
http://vimeo.com/16056709