ZAPRUDER
Filmmakerscollective
March 3 – April 30, 2025
Galerie Philippe Bober's inaugural show presents the Italian collective Zapruder Filmmakersgroup and the exhibition of 2 video installations which are part of the Italian Council winning project Allegory of Public Happiness (2020).
The collective's artistic practice, which the authors themselves define as ‘Set-Performance’, combines the performing arts with video and film production, and involves the creation of choreographies and sound scores in public sets, which are included among the shows scheduled at performing arts and theatre festivals, and where the spectators themselves often become part of the filmic image of Zapruder's video and installation works. Language and behaviour are the themes that bind the two video installations on show.
In Anubis is not a Dog (2021), the orders and calls that each owner/trainer addresses to his dog are amplified through microphones and broadcast over speakers. This unique, intimate and playful language gives rise to a routine/performance where dog and master dance in pairs, an artistic-sporting discipline called Dog-Dance. In Peng! (2021), 5 stuntmen perform a sequence of 5 movements punctuated by the musical score played live by drummer Paolo Mongardi. The main rule that determines the sequence has the biblical name of ‘turn the other cheek’, i.e. the one who is hit (the victim) will not have to return the blow to the one from whom he received it, but will go to hit the person closest to him. The score moves towards an escalation that evokes the strongest human drives, war and love passion. In the installation display, the work is articulated through a disjunction between audio and video. The video is placed on a huge monitor beyond the gallery window, below the painting with socialist themes, which stands out in the lobby of the building the gallery is part of, while the sound spreads through the gallery. On the walls, portraits from Zapruder's collection, the two cross-eyed hunters who make up Hunting Scene and allude to the collective's work, where divergent gazes are enclosed in the same frame, and make up the work.
David Zamagni and Nadia Ranocchi, aka ZAPRUDER, are Italian directors and authors of films, performances, installations, photographs and loud concerts. They have been working together since 1998 and are based in Roncofreddo, where in 2000, with Monaldo Moretti, they founded Zapruder filmmakersgroup, a collective meant to foster audiovisual research and independent practice. The name Zapruder refers to the man who filmed the assassination of J.F. Kennedy, but its origin is purely literary and comes from Ballard's novel "The Atrocity Exhibition" where Zapruder stops being a person's proper name to become a collective name that embodies the idea of chance, opportunity, the human beings' rendezvous with their destiny. One of the recurring topics in Zapruder's works is the “question of the film set”, an element that is explored and applied even outside the filmic sphere, to the extent of encompassing spectatorship in the idea of a living image. From 2005 to 2011, they have been using stereoscopic filming techniques to develop videos and installations named 'Cinema da Camera' where they combine the illusion of three-dimensionality with the idea of tactile vision and time sculpture. In 2011, their 3D film production was awarded at the 68th Venice Film Festival. In 2016, Zapruder won the MAXXI Prize for Contemporary Art. In 2020, they were awarded the Italian Council. Festivals and exhibitions where Zapruder's films and works have been presented include: Berlinale, Venice Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, International Rome Film Festival, Milano Film Festival, Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement Genève, Transmediale Berlin, Netmage Bologna, Artissima Torino, Miart Milano, Viennale, Museo MAXXI Roma, Steirischer Herbst Graz, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Gucci Garden, Art Fall, Ferrara, Quadriennale d'arte Roma, Centre Pompidou Paris, PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea Milano, Santarcangelo Festival, Live Arts Week Bologna.
Among the awards: Verkleitz Prize, Oberhausen filmfestival (2002), TTV Performing Arts on Screen Prize (2005), Lo straniero Prize (2010), Persol Prize 68th Venice International Film Festival (2011), MAXXI Prize (2016), Italian Council VIII (2020).