Alessandra Ferrini on addressing colonial and neo-imperialist violence through practice-based research
The Centre for Visual Cultures at Royal Holloway, University of London is delighted to host this talk by Alessandra Ferrini, a PhD candidate University of London and Research Fellow, British School at Rome.
In this lecture, artist-researcher Alessandra Ferrini (PhD candidate at the University of London and Research Fellow at the British School at Rome) presents two interwoven bodies of works critically engaging with the Italian ‘archive of coloniality’ and its structuring violence. Emerging from the practice-based PhD research Gaddafi in Rome: Dissecting a Neo-Colonial Spectacle, the first body of works focuses on the Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between Italy and Libya signed in 2008 by Muammar Gaddafi and Silvio Berlusconi and, specifically on Gaddafi’s ensuing visit to Rome in 2009. Taking the Italian media’s reaction as a starting point, it puts forward a series of tactics for the dissection of a twenty-first century media event that spectacularised neo-colonial relations between Italy and Libya, while contributing to the reinforcement of border necropolitics and to the manipulation of colonial trauma in both countries.
But how can this violence be addressed to foster a process of accountability from an Italian-European perspective without recreating violent frameworks and tropes?
In focusing on the genocide perpetrated by the Italians in Libya (late 1920s to mid 1930s), the second body of work investigates practices of censorship and resistance, while devising approaches to avoid the spectacularisation and circulation of images of violence. Reflecting on the practices of writing and publishing as forms of resistance, by interweaving individual’s efforts to bypass the ban on the documentation of the genocide, the presentation will put forward a proposition for an accountability-based framework that departs from the evidentiary paradigm, while offering an insight onto the specific challenges and potentialities of practice-based research in addressing such complex and sensitive issues.
About the Speaker
Alessandra Ferrini is a London-based artist, PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London, Research Fellow at the British School at Rome. Experimenting with the expansion and hybridization of the documentary film, her research questions the legacies of Italian colonialism and Fascism. She has exhibited internationally, including: Manifesta 13 Les Parallels du Sud, Sharjah Film Platform, Villa Romana, 2nd Lagos Biennal, Istanbul Biennal’s collateral at Depo, Manifesta 12 Film Programme. She is the winner of the Maxxi Bvlgari Prize 2022 and was the recipient of the 2017 London Film Festival’s Experimenta Pitch Award. Her writing has been published on the Journal of Visual Culture, Harun Farocki Institut, by Sternberg Press and Manchester University Press.
Image Credit and Description: Video still from Alessandra Ferrini's Gheddafi in Rome: Notes for a Film, 2022. In the image, a picture of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shaking former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's hand is superimposed on a blue, computer-generated background.This will be an online event hosted via Microsoft Teams.
This will be an online event hosted via Microsoft Teams.
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