MOVIES — Moving Images Arts

MOVIES aims to enhance the ability to critically evaluate one's own work, as well as to acquire skills in creating audiovisual works, including writing grant proposals for artistic productions. The seminars and workshops are led by curators, scholars, and artists who are active in festivals, research centres, museums, and foundations.

The postgraduate programme is aimed at emerging artists and creators working with moving images who wish to specialise in the production of artist films, multimedia installations, and complex audiovisual performances. The training pathway includes a project work or internship, carried out in collaboration with a master’s partner, a chosen institution, or an artist’s studio. The programme concludes with an exhibition of the new works developed during the course.

The fifth edition of MOVIES will last for one year (January 2025 – December 2025) and will comprise four modules. The first module will develop a basic theoretical pathway, while the second and third modules will focus on workshops with artists. The fourth module will be dedicated to the internship or project work and the thesis. Classes will primarily take place on Fridays and Saturdays, except for sessions with international guest lecturers, which will span four consecutive days.

Starting from the context of contemporary audiovisual production, this module delves into the relationships between moving images, visual arts, and the performative and sound arts. The topics covered in the lectures will range from pre-cinema devices to current installation forms, thereby mapping out films and videos as experimental, political, and performative practices capable of deconstructing the notions of framing, projection, and narrative. In this module, lecturers will explore these themes through screenings, seminars, workshops, and discussion panels with students. Additionally, the module offers theoretical-critical and practical approaches useful for investigating the relationships between sound and image, and between listening and viewing, with the aim of developing awareness in sound production and making appropriate choices in audiovisual production.

Submodules
• Moving Image and Visual Arts
• Moving Image and Performative Arts
• Sound production in Contemporary Arts

Class schedules
Friday and Saturday

Questioning the cinema hall as the privileged meeting place between the work and the viewer, this module will reflect on how artists can exhibit by engaging with architectural space. Through workshop activities involving dialogue, writing, and graphic presentation, this module will also provide critical tools for engaging with the world of curatorship, to optimally present an audiovisual work. Additionally, this module will include a focus on the funding and distribution opportunities available to emerging artists, such as grants, competitions, research fellowships, residencies, and participation in festivals, solo or group exhibitions. The lecturers will share and discuss their experiences, focusing on practical activities that will be collectively reviewed and discussed.

Submodules
• Ephemeral Architecture
• Curating the Moving Image
• Graphic Design ant the Moving Image

Class schedules
Friday and Saturday

Students here are called upon to share their own research and production methods on an individual basis with the guest artist lecturer at the postgraduate’s course. Each such session will last four days, during which there will also be presentations and screenings by the guest artists, with a round table discussion to follow. Furthermore, this module includes appointments with local institutions engaged in active production, exhibition and conservation practices in the field of contemporary art.

Submodules
• Workshop 1–5

Whorkshop schedules
Wednesday to Saturday

From the beginning of the course students are requested to develop a personal project of artistic production that will be displayed collectively at the end of the year in a Venetian space. The feasibility of the project and exhibition proposal will be discussed with course coordinators in group sessions once every two months. The formal and conceptual themes and contents of the project may also be shared and discussed with the artists during studio visits. At least one development phase of the project will have to be carried out in collaboration and dialogue with a partner institution of the Postgraduate’s course or an external institution (including artists’ studios, subject to agreement), for a minimum of 250 hours.