UNIDEE Research Residency | Fall 2018

UNIDEE Residencies is a programme of international artists’ residencies with the aim of supporting the practice of cultural operators coming from non-Western countries. The residencies have been conceived and designed according to UNIDEE’s methodology, which combines practice with theory, through workshops, seminars and a series of meetings, studio visits and trips tailored to the interests of each artist.
The two-month UNIDEE Residencies at Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto are developed in collaboration with institutional partners: A.M. Qattan Foundation (Palestine), Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation (India), Fundación Museos de la Ciudad (Ecuador), Yarat Contemporary Art Space (Azerbaijan).

Daniela Delgado Viteri (1987, Ecuador): scholarship issued jointly Fundación Museos de la Ciudad, CAC - Centro de Arte Contemporaneo (Quito, Ecuador) and IILA - Istituto Italo-Latino Americano cultural office in Rome;
Leyli Gafarova (1990, Baku), scholarship issued by Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Azerbaijan; 
Shayma Albess (1991, Jerusalem), scholarship issued by A.M. Qattan Foundation, Palestine;
Manjot Kaur (1989, India), scholarship issued by Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, India.

They presented their research projects on the 9th of November 2018, during “Emergent Geographies”.

OPEN STUDIO
Emergent Geographies 
Daniela Delgado Viteri | Leyli Gafarova | Manjot Kaur | Shayma Albess 
UNIDEE - University of Ideas
at Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto 
9th November 2018
h 6.30 pm - 9 pm

Daniela Delgado Viteri
SHORTCUTS 
3 videos, 5’ each

I asked a man what the Law was. 
He answered that it was the guarantee of the exercise of possibility. 
That man was named Galli Mathias. I ate him.
Oswaldo de Andrade, Cannibalistic Manifesto

Daniela Delgado Viteri is a documentarist who collaborates with non-professional actors who accept to follow shared performative processes. Delgado considers documentaries as an excuse for a collective expression in which participants are lead by self-imposed instructions and through absurd and visceral actions, e.g. asking them to take a journey towards an inexistent destination, or to impersonate a film character in their intimate sphere, or to gather to invent a new language.
Shortcuts is a series of videos of imaginary interviews with people taking shortcuts in their daily lives as a strategy to circumvent control mechanisms. For the characters in Viteri’s videos, shortcuts are alternative forms of rebellion and resilience, like joining political rallies for the free food and music, or taking money from tourists who want to see their exotic homes, or not being willing to die for their country, among other things.


Daniela Delgado Viteri (1987, Ecuador) is a filmmaker, graduated at Universidad del Cine (Argentina) and Fresnoy Studio National des Arts (France). She currently lives and works in Quito, Ecuador. Her films are the documentation of processes she often performs with groups of people in a participative way. Her films have been shown in festivals such as Rotterdam Film Festival, Rencontres Internationals and CPH-DOX. She has participated in residencies and exhibitions around the world. Including France, USA, Germany and Argentina. 

Leyli Gafarova
Culture of silence
multichannel video

Leyli Gafarova is a filmmaker and an active member of the cultural scene of Baku, where she co-founded Salaam Cinema, a platform for the organization of screenings and cinematographic workshops. Gafarova’s works are centred on everyday conflicts, interactions among people and Azeri political and social issues.
Shot in Baku, Culture of Silence captures a general feeling of a city which is divided by walls. While creating vivid scenes of life within these visionary urban confines, the artist seems to wonder what the position and the power of the camera are in such conditions.

Leyli Gafarova (1990, Azerbaijan) received her Master’s degree in film directing from the film academy RITCS in Brussels. Her films represent a search for a rudimentary form of narrative where she explores events of everyday life with great attention to character study, drama and intimacy. Her interests include post-soviet societies, urbanism and female/gender issues. 

Shayma Albess
When it enfolds you
video

Life is full of noise and death alone is silent.
Jacques Attali

In the last few years, Shayma Albess has worked on different ways to convey human experience through the instruments of narration and sound. This research has manifested itself in projects suggesting the creation of alternative imaginary realities and stories, modifying the modalities of reception and communication of experiences and collective knowledge. As a consequence, Albess asks herself how we would imagine a shared future and how we can understand and recreate it also including fragments of collective memory.
When It Enfolds Us explores the experiencing of sounds that signal the beginning of an event, and make its context visible. Which sounds are our ears attuned to? To what extent can our listening expand within and without us to save us from complicated situations? Through a series of interviews, Albess analyzes the moments making our listening so attentive that our skin, hair, hands, feet become ears in anticipation. From alarms to earthquakes, sounds can force our listening to move in preparation for a dangerous situation. 

Shayma Nader (1991, Jerusalem) holds a BA in Contemporary Visual Arts from the International Academy of Arts - Palestine (2015), and an MA in Global Creative and Cultural Industries from SOAS – University of London (2017). She was a fellow in the Home Workspace Programme (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan in its 6th round in Beirut. She participated in several exhibitions and residencies including Charita at LE18 (2018), Between Wells at LE18 (2017), HWP Open Studios at Ashkal Alwan (2017), The Local at Darat El-Funun (2015), See You in the Hangue at Stroom Den Haag ( 2014).

Manjot Kaur
It’s happening, while rotating and revolving…
installation

Manjot Kaur’s practice inquires the anthropological concerns of environment, identity and existence. The basis of her art practice is to understand the ever-evolving nature of life around us. Her work is an interface between science, nature, perception, and scale, inciting a discourse on the social, cultural and personal issues, through the careful representation of objects and narratives rooted in temporal, ephemeral, and entropy. 
For her multimedia installation It’s happening, while rotating and revolving… the artist explores what is usually perceived as opposites: nature and culture. The work is an interface between an installation, video, and sound; visualizing the microscopic images of flora and fauna, which are the living fabric of existence; dancing on the rhythm of the sirens of Acqua Alta in Venetian lagoon. The images become the representative of life, humanity, nature, culture, death, calamity and universality of human existence.
How does a siren affect human psychology? What feeling does it evoke? Does it propose a state of catastrophe and emergency?
The installation is about overflowing water on the floor, mirroring the situation of flood; on which the video projected is reflected. The sound of water from the river outside fills in the gap of silence in the sound of sirens, establishing a connection with direct reality. 

Manjot Kaur (1989, India) is a multidisciplinary artist, making Artist Books’, Video, Sound, Installation, and Performance, inquiring the anthropological concerns of environment, identity, and existence. She is the recipient of Professional Annual Award, Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi, 2018; 30 Under 30 Award, Hindustan Times Youth Forum, 2017; Sohan Qadri Fellowship, 2017; Professional and Student Annual Award, 2017 and 2012, Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi.
She has been artist in residence at Khoj International Artists’ Association – Peers18, New Delhi; Mythos – Land Art Biel/Bienne, Switzerland 2017; Gram Art Project - funded by FICA, India 2016; Harmony Art Foundation, Mumbai, India 2015; Global Nomadic Art Project, India 2015; and Tellusart, Sweden 2009. She has participated in Water – A video exhibition, Geumgang Nature Art Biennale, South Korea 2016; Cairotronica- International Symposium of Electronic and New Media arts, Cairo, Egypt, 2016; 28th National Exhibition of Contemporary Art, SCZCC, Nagpur, India 2015 and United art Fair, New Delhi, India 2012. She lives and works in Chandigarh, India.