Recently, I had the incredible opportunity to exhibit my work alongside two other students in Naples as part of the VVV (Visualcontainer Vegapunk Videoart) Residency. Despite not knowing much about it before studying BA (Hons) Fine Art, I have become increasingly interested in video art during my degree.
I applied for this residency last December with a portfolio of my previous video work, and was incredibly happy to find that I had been selected, alongside my course mates Maria Aoyama and Lara Zimmern. The residency was run by curator Alessandra Arnò and artist Simona da Pozzo, with a focus on found footage and the idea of navigating a digital archive. We met regularly for the first six weeks, which took place online, to build a body of research, engage in collective discussion and critique the work as it developed.
My research began with one video: a deer that had broken into a video game server room. Reposted until it had lost context, the deer seemed more symbolic than literal. The work appropriates footage from video games, digital simulations of mycelium growth, and photos of poorly organised cables from the subreddit r/CableGore.
Maria, Lara, and I quickly became good friends and would meet up in person outside these meetings to edit together, discuss the work and catch up. One of the best parts of this experience was the community we built during it. I really looked forward to each weekly meeting and developed a strong rapport with Simona, Alessandra, and Maria and Lara. I found that, as the project progressed, I was becoming increasingly confident in talking about my work as well as being able to supply constructive criticism to my course mates. And my editing, research and conceptual skills were all really pushed as my video work was analysed each week.
Simona and Alessandra are wonderful as mentors. They are also both incredibly interesting to talk to, insightful and friendly. They really respected us as artists and wanted to hear a lot about our practice, development, and the way we think. I was so grateful for the time they could spend with us and our work.
We stayed in Italy for five days – we flew into Rome first and then travelled to Naples by train. We stayed in the artist residency space SuperOtium, an absolutely beautiful building with a lovely community of artists. It is also here that we exhibited our work alongside Panoramica*24, Alessandra’s curated showreel of contemporary Italian video art.
I had never visited Naples before, so this trip was very exciting. We engaged with a range of contemporary art, learned to network with contemporary artists, and got to absorb the historical, political and artistic landscape. Simona led us on a tour that covered a wide range of the Italian art scene, the political and cultural identity of Naples, and both the recent and ancient history of the city. She showed us her pottery studio, some projects she is collaborating on, some contemporary art spaces and organised a studio visit for us with the Damp Collective. This provided fantastic insight into what is like to work as a professional artist, how to present ourselves and our work and how to build artistic relationships.
We were able to screen our work at Panoramica*24 here as well, in an exhibition we titled Face the Music. Excitingly, we were able to use the BAD in Boscombe, where there is a fantastic cinema space. It was an incredible evening and we got to finally show our work to our friends and community here.
Overall, although this residency was hard work, it was a hugely exciting and rewarding challenge. The community and collaboration that came out of the residency were so important in developing my artistic practice. I feel that it really prepared me for life after art school, and I am very excited to keep making video art!
Want to see more?
Follow Will on Instagram @will.sibley.art and watch UN/FAMILIAR below.
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