Finite Rants
Fondazione Prada presents the online project “Finite Rants”, curated by Luigi Alberto Cippini and Niccolò Gravina, on both its website and via its social platforms from 25 June 2020.
Fondazione Prada has commissioned filmmakers, artists, intellectuals and scholars for the online project “Finite Rants”, which is made up of 8 visual essays, to be published monthly from this month on. The first volume is by German director and writer Alexander Kluge, Japanese photographer Satoshi Fujiwara, French director Bertrand Bonello, and Swiss economist Christian Marazzi.
In 1940 avant-garde director Hans Richter cited the film or video essay as a form of expression capable of creating “images for mental notions” and of portraying concepts. Prompted by Richter’s ideas, some later theorists identify specific traits in the video essay, such as creative freedom, complexity, reflexivity, the crossing of film genres and the transgression of linguistic conventions.
“Finite Rants” puts the versatility of the visual essay and its fragmentary, dispersive nature to the test and explores its relevance in contemporary visual production.
Quoting the words of the curators, “this project further develops Richter’s intuitions starting from the assumption that, due to the natural evolutionary condition of the cinematographic fact and its contamination with forms of information, visual material and capillary distribution of Image Capture supports, today more than ever it is necessary to search for what can be defined as ‘Formatless Dogma’, in support of a visual production without restrictions”.
“Finite Rants” and its aesthetic and theoretical stronghold lies in the experimental masterpiece La Jetée (1962) by French author Chris Marker. According to writer J.G. Ballard, “this strange and poetic film, a fusion of science fiction, psychological fable and photomontage, creates in its unique way a series of bizarre images of the inner landscapes of time”.
The visual contributions to “Finite Rants” have dissected and edited the social, political and cultural issues of our time, to express and record personal visions and poetics, whilst actively positioning the viewer in a role/roll of reflection.
Satoshi Fujiwara and Alexander Kluge’s visual essay Warewolves Playoffs oscillates the boundaries between cinema and photography. Director Bertrand Bonello reworks the last minutes of his 2016 film Nocturama and as part of an imaginary pan-European information broadcast, Christian Marazzi addresses issues related to the economic, financial and social implications of the current health emergency, emphasising the ambivalence of contemporary economic discourse.
