The MAN presents the Modern Times exhibition, a video exhibition that goes beyond the confines of the museum to also take place along the city’s pedestrian street and in the auditorium of the Satta Library, in the belief that the action of a museum is never forced within the its perimeter but always and in any case projects itself outside. In the intra and extra muros movement, that oscillation takes place which we hope demonstrates that contemporary language, and more than ever that of moving images, has assumed a pre-eminent role in our time.

Through a selection of video works and films by visual artists and filmmakers, the Modern Times exhibition, whose title is a tribute to one of the masterpieces in the history of cinema, investigates some aspects of this renewed centrality of vision. The works on display offer a variety of observation points, demonstrating the fact that, in recent decades, video and film production has grown and diversified, involving different areas of experimentation, thus becoming an integral part of contemporary artistic research.

If the use of different narrative typologies marks the return to the oral form of the story, the temporal stratification, the editing by the artist of repertoire or archive material, underline the introduction of mixing techniques borrowed from music and able, in the current integrated digital system, to unify different forms of communication. The use in some cases of the documentary style, the reference to the imagery of the first historical cinema screenings, the return of the video performance and the theatrical gesture, concern the relationship existing between the spectator and the work. The metropolis is once again a place to be told, for its emblematic quality as a cultural model that defines the notion of contemporaneity. Telling stories through moving images has become the constitutive symbol of our knowledge which develops and is structured around the always fundamental need to build stories, an irreplaceable and still alive need.

MAN _ Giles Perry, Stephen Dean, ZimmerFrei, Marcello Maloberti
Shop Windows _ Alice Anderson, Mircea Cantor, Stefania Galegati, Claude Leveque, Jonathan Horowitz, Domenico Mangano, Eva Marisaldi, Christophe Girardet and Matthias Müller, Sisley Xhafa, Nico Vascellari, Marinella Senatore, Vibeke Tandberg
Satta Library Auditorium _ Olivo Barbieri, Alina Marazzi, Christian Merlhiot, Rä Di Martino, Laura Erber, Pavel Braila

Edited by Maria Rosa Sossai