Last days to visit the video art exhibition Tungsteno at CareOf, Milan
Text by: Gianmarco Gronchi
Until May 19, 2023 the exhibition Tungsteno. Memories and False Memories from Careof’s Video Archive, curated by Marta Cereda, is on show at no-profit organization CareOf in Milan. The project is an opportunity to rediscover Careof’s heritage through an unprecedented and immersive display.
Tungsteno. Memories and False Memories from Careof’s Video Archive takes its cue from the autobiographical novel by neurologist Oliver Wolf Sacks (1933 – 2015) entitled Uncle Tungsten. Memories of a Chemical Childhood, in which the author also recounts, among many episodes, the story of a bomb that fell near his birth home, in great detail. A totally invented recollection of an experience the writer believed he had lived through firsthand. Drawing on the rich heritage of Careof’s Video Archive, which has more than 9,000 titles and is recognized by the Ministry of Culture as being of national historical interest, the exhibition thus aims to explore the theme of cryptomnesia, or the creation of a false memory that is nevertheless considered an original creation. From Franco Vaccari to Marinella Senatore, from Luigi Viola to Micol Roubini, from Adrian Paci to Moira Ricci: covering a time span of fifty years, the exhibition presents the works of twenty-six artists who from the 1970s to the present day tell – through “found footage,” vintage images, “home movies” and the creation of “fiction” – how memory, as well as the archive itself, cannot be considered granitic, but rather living, fallible, magmatic matter, and how the creative act functions according to the same logic.
With this project, Careof reconfirms its desire to conduct research on its heritage with the aim of enhancing its richness and heterogeneity, including through new exhibition modes. Thanks to an installation designed by Hypereden, the public will be able to enjoy an immersive experience and a totalizing fruition.
Careof
Careof is a nonprofit organization for contemporary art, founded in 1987 and based in Milan, inside Fabbrica del Vapore. It is a center for research and production on the moving image, an exhibition space, a library, a photographic archive and a video archive, recognized of historical interest by the Ministry of Culture. The ever-expanding video archive collects more than 9,000 titles and returns a privileged view on artistic evolution from the 1970s to the present.
