The fact that Alchemilla is now a certainty within the Bologna art scene is confirmed with the installation created for Art City 2025. On Wednesday 5 February, at Palazzo Vizzani, In Our Real Life opened to the public, a solo exhibition by Dutch artist Jason Hendrik Hansma, curated by Gabriele Tosi. An immersive journey into the visual, between experimental cinema, meta-narration and video art. The focus of the research is not only nature, but something more.
Jason Hendrik Hansma. “IN OUR REAL LIFE”, installation view at Alchemilla, Palazzo Vizzani, courtesy Alchemilla
Quoting the exhibition description: «The distinction between nature and city dissolves. Rivers invade cellars, winds unhinge windows, fires burn doors. The earth dances and perhaps the Garisenda collapses. Closed places are scary. Jason Hendrik Hansma’s research explores the interstice and the liminal. Drawing from a wide range of references and materials, his work addresses architectural, cultural and physical standards by thinking about how artworks act outside of norms. For the artist, a photograph can be made over the course of months, an entire exhibition can unfold in transitional spaces such as corridors, thresholds or windowsills. In his work, language, and the loss of it, plays a key role in reconsidering the means we use to place ourselves in the world, with and through others». In the exhibition, the public will be able to see – for the first time in Italy and for the first time together ever – the two videos (Waves and Embers) made as part of In Our Real Life, a project that collects amateur films that capture natural elements such as water and fire crashing forcefully against architecture from all over the world. The sound component of the two videos, central to the emotional rendering of the work, is signed by the composers Kelman Duran and Ssaliva.
Jason Hendrik Hansma, “In Our Real Life (Waves)”, 2018 – 2021. Found video, sound, video still, courtesy of the artist
For Hansma, the work calls into question a perspective of control linked to the visual means that narrate reality. In his words: «Through manual scraping I collected videos from amateur sources that were uploaded online with a syntax of tags and metadata. This long operation led me to reflect on translation and the excess of naming in Walter Benjamin’s perspective, on the imposition of language as a means of control. These collections seem more like “flows” of participation with the “unnameable”, or with what “cannot be named” because it is crossed by a continuous transformation. Perhaps there are things in our lives that are too “real” to be assigned to a fixed category and a denomination». In Waves the Dutch artist collects videos of storm surges from all over the world: Saint Malo in France, Koh Lanta in Thailand, Montevideo in Uruguay and 50 other places come together in a montage that returns the individual events as manifestations of a single anomalous wave. Kelman Duran’s soundtrack amplifies the observer’s hypnosis in front of the sea that absorbs the architecture. To understand more we decided to meet curator Gabriele Tosi.
Jason Hendrik Hansma, “In Our Real Life (Waves)”, 2018 – 2021. Found video, sound, video still, courtesy of the artist
Sara Papini: How did the idea for this exhibition come about?
Gabriele Tosi: As always, it was born from a combination of variables. Jason and I have known each other for a few years, we did a group show together in Florence at Manifattura Tabacchi called Adesso No, and it was a discussion about technology used in an often inefficient way. On that occasion, we met and got along very well, and our dialogue has never been lost, continuing over the years. Some time ago, I learned about these latest works and we decided to exhibit them for Art City 2025 at Alchemilla, since at the same time Camilla Sanguinetti had asked me for a work to bring to the venue. And so we developed the project based on the place that hosts Alchemilla, starting from the fact that it is a young institution, based in a domestic place not only from an architectural point of view but also from an emotional one, being a space for exchange and meeting between people. In this period I also noticed that many artists are working on the theme of climate, approached in a way that could be defined as “meteopathic”, in the sense that it touches and discusses both a social and emotional aspect. This line of research that I have been undertaking for some time married well with Jason’s works and seemed suitable to enter into dialogue with Alchemilla.
Jason Hendrik Hansma, “In Our Real Life (Embers)”, 2021-2024, Found video, sound, video still, courtesy of the artist
Would you like to tell us something specific about the project?
Jason’s project is made up of two videos, almost two short films. There is no plot of its own. We are neither in experimental cinema nor in video art. The first video, entitled Waves, represents and portrays enormous waves crashing on coastal architecture. It is a work that brings together found footage researched over time by Jason and the overall effect is to generate a sort of rupture. The wave, even if always different, gives us the idea of being the same all over the world, the same wave that is going to crash in different places that in this way become a single place. They lose a geographical specificity to acquire a global one. The second video, Embers, is also made with the found footage technique, but the underlying idea is that of justice, because we are called into question in relation to responsibility and care towards nature.
Jason Hendrik Hansma, “In Our Real Life (Embers)”, 2021-2024, Found video, sound, video still, courtesy of the artist
How did you install inside Alchemilla?
It’s the first time that the two videos are exhibited together at Alchemilla and it seemed very interesting to us. The installation was very much about impact, and for this reason we decided to use only two rooms, the first one entering on the left and the last one where the fireplace is. In the latter we mounted a projection screen about four meters high and we used a rear projection to show Waves. In the second room we installed a fifty-inch monitor because Embers, the most intimate and sophisticated video, had to go on a television. An extremely important part is the sound, which was commissioned to two external DJ-producers who come from the world of clubbing and the tracks they created for these videos are extremely meditative. These sounds overlap inside Alchemilla in some spaces and it’s fantastic.
Info:
Jason Hendrik Hansma. IN OUR REAL LIFE
curated by Gabriele Tosi
February 5-9, 2025
Alchemilla | Palazzo Vizzani
via Santo Stefano 43, Bologna
Promoted by: Alchemilla
In collaboration with: Toast Project
With the support of: Mondriaan Fund
Thanks to: Zunarelli Studio Legale Associato
Within the scope of: ART CITY Bologna
Times: 6-9 February 11am>3pm
She was born in Genoa but currently lives in Bologna, the city where she graduated from CITEM with a thesis on video art. She works in the world of events in the production sector and is an assistant professor of Visual Studies at UNIBO.
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