Film faculty David Michael DiGregorio has been working in collaboration with visual artist and director Sung Hwan Kim this past year on a commission for the Venice Biennale [57th International Art Exhibition at Venice, Central Pavilion]. The show runs from May 13, 2017, through November 26, 2017. The exhibition is called "Viva Arte Viva," and is curated by the director of the Biennale, Christine Macel, Chief Curator at the Musée national d'art moderne—Centre Pompidou, Paris.
The installation work, comprising film, drawing, architectural elements, sound and music, is entitled Love before Bond, and was in development since autumn 2016. Some of the participants in the film were former and current UNIS students. Love before Bond stems from Kim's interest in his millennial niece's adolescent angst by using explicit references to African-American literature, notably of James Baldwin. Kim writes: "As a Korean-American female, my niece tries to find herself in an existing narrative of the marginalized. This, presently in the USA, is the narrative of people of color, which, for a teenager, is as alien as anything else—so it is for a young man of color."
The film's soundtrack also includes voices of students and others captured during a summer workshop, entitled "Angst and the City," conducted at UNIS in July 2016 with current UNIS students, alumni, and outside participants. For this workshop, Kim was invited to lead with DiGregorio, focusing on issues through the entry point of a single track-and-dolly film technique. In addition to audio and video recordings made during that summer workshop, the students worked together with the workshop leaders on a Tumblr blog, which includes the films, exercises, and the questions and analytical thinking with which they were all engaged.
To learn more about David's work please visit.
In addition to being featured at the Biennale, he will also be performing a concert in Milan at Pirelli HangarBicocca on July 6. For more information click here