Anna Franceschini: La Jalousie

Anna Franceschini examines objects, artefacts and commodities, as well as the ways in which they are presented, questioning their role and status within the aesthetics of capital. At the heart of her practice lies an engagement with cinema through its fundamental components: movement, light, framing and editing. Kinetic sculptures, performances, ‘bachelor machines’ and photocopies become, in her work, forms of cinema produced through other means.

Franceschini’s ongoing research expands the notion of animation into the sculptural realm. Rather than considering cinema as a machine, she reverses this perspective to propose the machine itself as a form of cinema. Through sculptural moving images, commodities take on an almost animate presence, while mechanical apparatuses acquire a heightened sense of subjectivity through mise-en-scène.

Her ‘films without film’, composed of machines, objects and everyday utensils, offer a reflection on contemporary life as a landscape of spectacular commodities. Within the mechanisms of late capitalism, motorised incidents and animated remnants of industrial production are transformed into scenes of spectacle.