L’ECLISSE redux is an exhibition that utilizes Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1962 film L’eclisse as a means through which to explore postwar urban development and contemporary life in Siena, Italy. It is the result of a project fellowship awarded by the Siena Art Institute. Bureau for Open Culture is charged with engaging students, which transpires through a series of public seminars that take place over the course of six weeks, operating temporarily out of the former space of a street-level gallery at Via del Poggio 2 in the center of Siena. The space is simultaneously a studio, exhibition and learning site where 24 film stills from L’eclisse are selected, printed and installed. The stills are framework and guide for discussing broad topics such as alienation, architecture, economy, love and urbanization as related to Siena.
Antonioni’s filmmaking techniques, character development and narrative structures are analyzed within this context. The film is an object—a spine—along which visual responses in photography, collage, writing, video, painting, drawing and performance accrue during the exhibition. The seminars are free and open to the public with readings available in advance at the Events page.
L’ECLISSE redux is a platform that inverts the typically private activities of an academy into a mode of public performance, exposing and making available for free the often costly production of knowledge inside higher education institutions. The work recaptures the original function of the exhibition as a public sphere that used objects as a primary means to produce knowledge among a group of committed individuals.
The book and film I was happy then is produced as a result of this exhibition.
The redux series draws on the influence of critical cinema in shaping our perspective and understanding of the world by re-positioning historical films within the framework of contemporary exhibition, research and collaboration. The series utilizes film as a departure point for the presentation of existing work in a range of media and supports the production of new work by performance, dance, video and sound artists.
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