Mapping and Dissemination of the Iconographic and Audiovisual Heritage of Italian Media Performance: Giacomo Verde’s Archive
Start date: 17 October 2023 End date: 16 October 2025
This project proposes a new framework and a model storage in form of an open access repository on line for those theatre productions that have technological components. The case studies is the Giacomo Verde’s archive, which is representative of Italian Video Theatre Movement (1980-1995); scholars from 2 Universities (UniMi, UniLink) and one from CNR-ISTI are involved in the different steps of the work: selection, digitization, archiving, metadating, re-enactment.
The project is split in two interrelated and parallel paths:
– 1.a theoretical one, where a series of artworks’ documentation will be selected and analyzed;
– 2.a practice-based research path, focused on the development of a on line repository for data sets, gathering and storing the metadata.
Primarily is the process of identifying a cataloguing methodology, a taxonomy for organizing findings and relative protocols, and models of digitization suitable to the inherent complexity of video works. The videomaker GIACOMO VERDE (sadly passed away in May 2020), pioneer of the video art and activist who explored in early 80’s the use of video in theatre, will be treated as case study. Our goal is to valorize his emblematic artistic practice and to provide a reference model for other VideoTheatre Archives; his fund consists of a large photographic collection, a vaste catalogue of technical drawings and notebooks yet unpublished, and over 600 cassettes and approximately 1200 hours of video recordings. This material created for video theatre connected with social and political thematics and including collaboration with important theatre companies, has been considered of “National Interest” by MIBACT and it is our special thesaurus and precious “endotement”.
In light of this, we need a radical rethinking of the archive itself aimed to two different but interconnected uses: the first one consists of a creation of a repository on line of thematic paths for didactic and research purposes; the second one is a creative and alternative datasets’ exploration in form as an immersive and participatory environment Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca.
