© Fini from video “Fair and Lost”
I’m wearing electrodes and I try to wear makeup. Involuntary muscle contractions caused by electric shock are very strong so that I cannot control my hands and the makeup spreads all over my face. We hear the chorus of “Nabucodonosor” by Giuseppe Verdi, which has a very strong symbolic value in the history of my country, bringing along the ghosts of old struggles for freedom that no one remembers anymore—“my country, fair and lost.” The hysterical, uncontrollable movement of the hand represents the disease of social habit, which reveals its fragility when the system appears on the point of collapsing: the deep conflict between a conscious behaviour and external social conditioning. Even crying is involuntary, caused by the black pencil and mascara entering my eyes since I cannot calibrate the movement of the hand. A mechanical cry that is automatically transmitted to the audience, in a sort of empathic conditioned connection, unconscious and therefore completely useless.
“WITH A HELMET – fair and lost” a video by Francesca Fini (2012)
© Francesca Fini
Biography
Francesca Fini is an interdisciplinary artist mainly focused on new media and interactive media, video and performance art. Her live projects, always addressing social and political issues, are mixed with lo-fi technology, homemade interaction design devices, live audio and video. Primarily interested in video and live art, she also creates artworks assembling performance art ‘relics’ or manipulating video stills.
With a deep training as a digital artist, she worked for 15 years in the field of television authoring and production. In 2000, she met American artist Kristin Jones and they started a very long collaboration on the project “Tevereterno,” creating installations for the city of Rome. With Kristin Jones, Kiki Smith and other artists she attended the 2008 River to River Festival in New York, projecting her animation “Moon Loop” on the trees of the Hudson River.
Among the Art events in which she took part in the last few years, we would mention the 2011 WRO Biennale in Poland, ADD Festival at MACRO Museum in Rome, the finals of Laguna International Art Prize in Venice, CINEMED Film Festival in Montpellier, Taormina Film Festival, Berlin Directors Lounge, IKONO TV Film Festival, FILE Electronic Language International Festival in Brazil, Cologne Off and Magmart Video Art Festival, which she won in 2010, 2012 and 2013.
LINKS AND CONTACTS:
web site – www.francescafini.com
blog – http://francescafini.tumblr.com/
facebook – https://www.facebook.com/francescafiniperformance
videos – http://vimeo.com/channels/francescafini