Interview with Rossella

Q1: What is the exhibition title you have this time?

The title is “Reperages”, which is a term comes from French filmmaking on scouting for a location for making movies.

Q2: Can you introduce the works to us?

Visitors would sit together for a while in a circle at the common space when they enter. Then they would be invited to go in a cubical space one by one, sitting in front of a big projection of a small series of looping videos. The video would be something in between still photography and computer video, with only slight changes and movements. The video shows mainly empty rooms or almost empty rooms with clear and simple architectural structures. That’s it. It also has something to do with the lighting and the sense of stillness.

Visitors can go there and do whatever they want but have to go through the process of sitting with other people before regaining their own space, as a confrontation of personal and public space.

Q3: How did you start making this series? What brings you to start doing it?

Looking at images of places that are squatted in my home country, I started seeing this recurring theme of crowded spaces where people are forced to live together.

It started as a reaction to this difficult situation, and thinking how do I feel if I am forced to live this experience? What kind of things would I want for myself? Culturally, personal space is very important in my generation, and losing it is one of the worst things imaginable. I started seeing these pictures and imagining myself there, envisioning it in a practical manner. I would like to reconstruct these kinds of places and bring back some individuality that is lost in the space.

Q4: What is the creative process?

Most of the process was about observing these environments. Most images are found from newspaper and charity organizations. They are images out there but belong to nothing. After accumulating a library of images, I selected images with recurring themes, for example, shape of the room and arrangement of space. Most of the works are already done when I generated the model because most of the works are about looking at the pictures.

In the end, I selected 6 spaces in the video to have varieties at the same time avoid clear repetition. These images are distinct but sharing something in common.

Q5 What is the creative consideration behind slight movements in your video?

Most people expect things moving in videos, but when it doesn’t, they start imagining other things and spacing out, maybe they even get bored. The audience is forced to be attentive, and such video creates this kind of space of between focus and distraction.

Q6: What would you like to offer the audience in NormalVille? Is the exhibition this time different from your previous exhibitions in other venues?

Each time I try to build the space a bit different with same structure to adapt to the space around it. The exhibition venue in Normalville is very spacious this time. When in another case I had to be more concentrated, but this time I can be more spread out, and to see how the arrangement works. Meanwhile, having a big room that is densely lived in also creates a strange contradiction.

I would like for the visitors come without expectation, and being immersed in this experience - from being with strangers like in a clinic, then being in the room. They can experience some places that are not familiar with them, and try to get something out of it in terms their personal experience.

Q7: Your works are dealing with space, and how do you see yourself being in an exhibition space, for instance?

Personally, as a visitor, I have problems with exhibition spaces as they are impersonal and with lots of precise instructions. Therefore I would like to go against this way of doing things and yet stay inside it. My intention is to invite people through the work to use their imagination to rewrite the way they see space and also their expectations connected to how this kind of spaces usually works.

Q8: What is your next plan after this exhibition?

I would like to expand on this theme of creating fictional spaces inside existing actual spaces, and try to see if they lend themselves to some kind of storytelling or different way of involving the audience, for instance by hinting at a narrative and yet not clearly disclosing it through any images, instead suggesting connections and readings through the structure of the space itself.