Update
Here are some images from the Momentum Arts Festival 2017.
The Range Art Gallery, Littlei & Culture Monks, in association with Francesca Fini Performance Art, India & Italian Embassy Cultural Center, are pretty excited to present to the art lovers of Kolkata, the 2nd edition of Momentum Experimental Arts Festival, 2017.
We’re going minimalistic this edition & will some stunning and cutting edge video art from Italy & India & electronic music experimentation.
The dates are Feb 18 & 25, 2017. The festival will be on from 6 pm onwards. We’re hosting this the Range Art Gallery. Lower Range, Kolkata. Do contact 8697919308 or 9830046963 for any help.
Momentum Experimental Arts Festival is an attempt to create a platform for local and international artists & art lovers of Kolkata to experience a space which possibly is antithetical the normative perception of the language of art and aesthetics. In the process , we hope that a new sensibility will emerge informed by the various experimentation underway in arts & performance, in the previously unsaid which is now been expressed , by artists with new vision and technology. We also hope that this festival will lead to a critical discourse on new age aesthetics to emerge and merge with the city’s rich cultural heritage, which is not elitist and accessible to most, while striving for excellence in structure and form.
Momentum Experimental Arts Festival is a collaborative outcome between Littlei & Culture Monks has been supported by Range Art Gallery since its inception in 2016.
Littlei has for the past many years been the pioneers in the field of electronic music and curators of innovative events based around electronic music, much of which have been a radical departure form the norm in this city. Littlei with its vision of culturing imagination has influence the contemporary & technology driven art community of Kolkata in many ways.
Culture Monks , which is a collective of artists have been working towards creating a new form of aesthetics to emerge in performance through an interdisciplinary and cross cultural approach. Culture Monks has attempted pursued a radical approach in its presentations and engagements in the making of a culture of possibilities.
We are very grateful to Range Art Gallery, who are a leading art gallery in Kolkata, who have promoted many a young artists to realize their dreams.
This year we focus on video art by artists from Italy, who have carried on the rich tradition of unshackling arts from the inertia and continuously set new frontiers. The section called ‘Italian Wave’, has been curated by Francesca Fini, who herself is a performance artist. We also have a section on video art by Francesca Fini herself. We will also dip into the world of electronic music as it searches for new connections with mysticism and myths, through the ‘Global Mytics’, project of Darren Sangita. We will also witness performances by artists from Kolkata who are collaborating with the world in evolving the paradigm of arts in the city.
We are grateful to the Italian Embassy Cultural Center, who have enthusiastically supported for this cross cultural exchange to fructify.
We do hope to hear from you about the festival, your thoughts, writings, images, criticism, feedback.
Looking forward to a brand new experience!!
This is what we’ve have for this year :
Feb 18, 2017 | 6 pm onwards
FRANCESCA FINI – selected videos (2011 /2016)
Francesca Fini is an Italian artist working with new media, experimental cinema and performance art.
Global Mystics by Darren Sangita – Ambient dub performance.
He’s one of the pioneers of the scene that has made his way over to us here in Kolkata and I can’t really help myself but say a few things about how important he’s been to the music most of us listen to and how lucky we are to have him perform here.
Here are a few pieces of trivia…
Darren used to manage the legendary Goatrance label Dragonfly Records in the 90s, with his work featuring on seminal albums like The Kumba Mela Experiment’s East Of The River Ganges. He also had projects with both Greg Hunter aka. Dubsahara and Ott. as Spectralite and Cyborganik. The Spectralite album ‘Temple Of Stars’ has become a cornerstone of the experimental ambient dub sound. Darren pioneered the label Sangita Sounds which merged Hindustani music with dub and downtempo and preserves rare recordings from musicians from all over the world. His downtempo album as Ashirvad with Mathura Das was a huge hit internationally and was on the shelves of every CD store in India, where it was reissued by Times Music. His solo work in parallel extended into surreal ambient realms under his alias Noodreem. 20+ years later Darren keeps travelling the globe with his latest show ‘Global Mystic’, which was presented at Ozora Festival official in 2016.
Feb 25, 2017 | 6 pm
ITALIAN WAVE
a selection of video works from Italy
curated by Francesca Fini
Curatorial note by Francesca Fini
ITALIAN WAVE a selection of video works from Italy curated by Francesca Fini My work as a videoartist has allowed me to know over the years, through festivals and exhibitions – in Italy but especially abroad – many Italian artists with whom I share materials, suggestions, methods and destinies. Recurring names that I often find next to mine in exhibition catalogs, Facebook events and press-releases. People that I meet for the first time – as it happened even too often – on the other side of the world. Then I smile and feel a sense of familiarity and respect; here is someone like me who carries on her/his work with absolute stubbornness, often against everyone and everything. The videos that I have chosen for this Italian selection within Momentum Festival in Kolkata, are the works of the most interesting Italian artists that I have known over the years. These videos tell – with different languages ranging from videoperformance to 3d animation – the infinite possible ways to be alive in this battered world, to renegotiate our relationship with the others, with your bodies, with the landscape, with that sense of loneliness and separation which comes from the constant questioning we all share in Art.
The Italian Wave program – in order of appearance
* Francesca Romana Pinzari I ain’t superstitious
* Elisabetta Di Sopra Legami
* Eleonora Manca Reverse Metamorphosis
* Alessandro Amaducci I’ Am Your Database
* Igor Imhoff Kurgan
* Gianluca Abbate Panorama
* Chiara Mu – Decresce (Decrease)
*FRAMELINE by Debora Vrizzi
a lonely bride walks through an empty church
The meaning of kurgan is grave. In fact, here reigns feeling like a gravestone in a Scene deliberately hyper-realistic, made with a technique in 3D. In this context materialize the characters, ghosts, or rather of simulacra, who immediately opposed in a fight to the last ‘particle’.
I Am Yor Database , 2014 : by Alessandro Amaducci
Presence: Freaky Bones
You have only one life. In the videogame of life the final battle has begun, and the winner is already decided. Database of life, database of death.
Legami, 2010 : by Elisabetta Di Sopra
A heart becomes symbolic place of emotions. Pierced by a red thread it represents all ties. We baste it with the people we love. Every time is an attack to the heart; love is unbreakable from suffering and the human condition to be vulnerable, prevents us from separating them.
Reverse Metamorphosis :by Eleonora Manca
The suggestion given by the jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii, potentially immortal (it is reported to have a “reverse metamorphosis”, as it is able to revert to the stage of sea anemone, reliving backwards each stage of its metamorphosis, to develop again into jellyfish) was here chosen in order to highlight the life cycle of every being. At the same time, it supports a sort of “yearning” for what we were about to meet in our “journey”. Thus, a path of metamorphosis, into the heart of the energy of what we were going to “become”.
FRAMELINE :by Debora Vrizzi
Frame line is a space between two frames, a line separating feelings from rationality, it represents the empty and still space of waiting. By revisiting Penelope’s myth, I want to underline the conceptual and physical density of emotions, the turmoil caused by a failure. Penelope weaves her hair like the spider its own net; the wind, now melting into the water, moves her dress in a seducing dance for the emptiness.
Culture Monks 