On 24 March, the British School at Rome presents the event “Catriona Gallagher in conversation with Léna Lewis-King and Luca Peretti: a dialogue and screening on experimental analogue filmmaking and eco-developing with plants” curated by On Site and hosted by Fondazione Giuliani.
Intertwining different areas of visual culture, from film to video, from photography to illustration, the relationship between analogue and digital is a central theme in contemporary moving image creation. The space of contact between analogue and digital opens up the infinite possibilities offered by the hybridisation of mediums and languages on the one hand, and reclaims the necessity of the preservation of analogue materials and technologies as a living source for contemporary creation on the other. Catriona Gallagher and Léna Lewis-King, in conversation with Luca Peretti and the On Site team, will present their own research and artistic practices that explore, in different but assonant ways, the territories of transition between analogue and digital, the creation and re-signification of the archive, and the city of Rome in which they have lived and worked for a period of residence. During the talk rare archive materials from the 16 mm medium will be screened, in addition to a selection of the artists’ projects.
The event will be held in English.
Catriona Gallagher (UK/IE) is a visual artist and filmmaker working between Northumberland, UK and Athens, Greece. Her work probes at the collision of manmade and natural worlds, navigating overlooked details in our physical surroundings and their mirroring psychological landscapes. She uses moving image, drawing, writing, and research processes to map physical and conceptual traces of human and non-human relations. Lines drawn with the camera recur in her films, her characters are blurred, and her editing is structured by diagrams. Places act as containers for the plants, architectures, and knowledge systems she explores. Weeds punctuate pavements, desire paths chart untold narratives, structures are eroded over time. She is a founding member of A – DASH project space and studios in Athens, where she worked between 2016-19. Her work has been exhibited in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Greece and France and her films have premiered at Ann Arbor, Laterale, New Holland Island, Sheffield Doc Fest, Aesthetica, Ribalta, and London Short film festivals. Recently, her work has been supported by Arts Council England and Visual Arts in Rural Communities, UK, and Creative Ireland and Roscommon Arts Centre, Ireland. In September 2022, she was awarded the Bridget Riley Fellowship at the British School at Rome.
Léna Lewis-King is a multimedia artist based between Lisbon and Rome. Framing her perspective from a feminist viewpoint, she explores filmmaking as an expanded medium that witnesses both the everyday magical transformations emerging between nature, technology, psychic and spiritual spaces – as well as the impact techno-capitalist acceleration has upon lived experiences. Lewis-King’s work has been exhibited at Rua das Gaivotas 6, Lisbon, Lisbon Art Weekend, Lisbon, La Galleria Nazionale, Roma, Journeys Festival International, Leicester, The Wrong Biennale, The Armoury Show, New York, Playback Tour (Across UK Venues), The ICA, London, SPACE Studios, London, Fitzrovia Gallery, London. She has shown in London Short Film Festival, FUSO Video Art at MAAT Museu, Lumiar Cité, The Roundhouse, BFI, Chisenhale Gallery, and Google Arts and Culture. She has been awarded the CASTRO Emergent fellowship, Roundhouse film fund, Random Acts film fund.
Luca Peretti is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick and an Associate Fellow at the British School at Rome. He co-edited volumes on terrorism and cinema (Postmedia books), Pier Pasolini Pasolini (Bloomsbury Academics), and on Italian cinema and Algeria (AAMOD, 2022). He works on Italian media, film history, and Italian cultural history. His work has appeared in, among others, Senses of Cinema, The Italianist: Film Issue, Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, Historical Materialism, Comunicazioni Sociali, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. He is on the editorial board of Zapruder World, Cinema e Storia, and L’Avventura. He wrote and coproduced the film Mister Wonderland (dir. Valerio Ciriaci, 2019) and collaborates with newspapers and magazines.
We thank Graziano Schiano for the materials.