Cinema Impero
Cinema Impero takes its name from the eponymous movie theater located in the center of Asmara, Eritrea, and built in 1937 during the Fascist regime. The video centers on a metanarrative that weaves together different spatial and temporal planes and various linguistic elements: materials drawn from the historical archive of Istituto Luce–Italy’s state-owned film company–and from the artist’s own private archive, recounted and interpreted by two voices and two intelligences. One artificial and one emotional. Cinema Impero is a black box, a device that encompasses cinematic, theatrical, and algorithmic languages. The work was originally presented as part a performance conceived for one viewer at a time. Placed at the center of historical macro-narrative, the individual spectator was confronted with a space of warm proximity to the artist, an intimate space of otherness shared between narrator and listener.