FORO/FOSSE [2015]

Mixed media installation: Four-channel digital video projection - 00:22:00 looped - colour - 4:3 | Six-channel audio | Other materials: plywood | installation dimensions: variable

 

VIEW: https://vimeo.com/145028846

​

FORO/FOSSE is a video (four-channel) and audio (six-channel) installation that juxtaposes footage shot at two historical sites in Rome, Italy:

​

• The first is the Foro Italico, an extensive sports complex inspired by the Roman forums of the imperial age and lauded as a preeminent example of Italian  Fascist architecture. The site is paved with large-scale mosaics celebrating Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

 

•  The second site is the Fosse Ardeatine, an ancient Roman catacomb where, during World War II, 330 Italian civilians were massacred and mass-buried by  German occupation troops as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted against the SS Police.

 

The historical events that defined these two sites have long since passed, and only a lingering murmur exists of them in the contemporary world. The installation documents the act of walking through these historical sites, focusing on the direct and experiential engagement of moving through these spaces as a means of potentially reanimating their political and ideological significance today 

​

​

"John Di Stefano uses a sculptural installation to distort projected video images of fragments of fascist and monumental architecture in Rome, which reflect on the culture of materialization and fetishization of powerful or destructive forms of ideology, politics, or humanity."

 

Gary Sangster, curator - Tactical Imaginary (2015)

​

SHOWN

SCA Galleries (Sydney)

​

WRITING

Gary Sangster, 'Critical Intent', Tactical Imaginary. SCA Galleries, Sydney, 2015
 

​

This installation is related to MURMURATIONS (ROME) [2017]

​

FORO/FOSSE is part of the PASOLINI PROJECT - a project inspired by Italian filmmaker and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini

​

​

INSTALLATION VIEW: SCA Galleries (Sydney)