SHOW of the Week: Why Fondazione's 'Nebula' Is The Best Curation of Art Film Yet

Never has a foundation's title been so synonymous with its exhibition contents as Fondazione In Between Art Film's Biennale di Venezia 2024 presentation Nebula; a mesmerising display of art film curated by Alessandro Rabottini and Leonardo Bigazzi that features eight new site-specific video installations. Set in the 16th-century church and hospital Complesso dell'Ospedaletto, each film is grounded in its metaphorical interpretations of fog (Nebula translates to 'cloud' or 'fog' from Latin), as seen via a set of moving images where visual orientation is reduced, encouraging us to rely on our other sensorial tools. This experience is at its most prevalent in the exhibition's almost pitch-black winding hallways which gradually unfold as you embark on your cinematic pilgrimage, guiding you from room to room. The only light available comes in the form of a cinematic-style lightbox swinging from the ceiling, an object that also doubles down as the sole marker of where you are in your journey as it signals which room you're about to enter.

Once you're enveloped in each room, it's just you and the film's projector (maybe a couple of other visitors too). Phones are strictly not allowed, adding to the location's all-encompassing aura which counts spaces like the church of Santa Maria dei Derelitti, the helicoidal stairs, the frescoed concert room, the old pharmacy and even a never-before-seen wing of the modern care home. The exhibition itself marks the second chapter in a series of presentations organised by the Fondazione, the first of which debuted in 2022 under the shaded title, Penumbra.'It is an honour for us to return to Venice and the Complesso dell'Ospedaletto' noted the Fondazione's president Beatrice Bulgari in a press statement. 'It is also an opportunity to broaden our ongoing reflection on the role that moving images can have in our society as a creative means of expression.'

Although guided by different metaphorical and literal interpretations, the psychological, socio-political, technological and historical are blended to become one, as each and every film is united by the idea of 'fog' used to convey the insurmountable. Make no mistake, these are not narrative-based films, despite their borrowing and taking from different themes, and dialogue is kept to a bare minimum in most screenings. Instead, these are raw cinematic experiments aimed at challenging our own perceptions of what film can or even should be as the explored ranges from the vastness of the landscape as the site of either loss or salvation to the architecture of memory and the labyrinth of consciousness. Right from the very first room, it's clear politics is weaved into the exhibition's DNA as proven via Basir Mahmood's short film Brown Bodies In An Open Landscape Are Often Migrating, tackling the dangerous journeys many migrants embark on in their search for safety by giving insight into their seemingly never-ending peregrinations. Heartbreaking yet poetic, this work - which couldn't be more literal in its approach to conveying the migrant experience - is displayed across a dividing split screen that contrasts each migrant's trauma with the beauty of the Santa Maria dei Derelitti, a location whose altarpieces actually provided direct inspiration as seen in the dramatically foreshortened framing used in Mahmood's film. Bear in mind, this is only room number one, there are seven more to go and yet you're already lost in the art film trance.

Other films referenced include Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado's Acumulação Primitiva - a pensive look at the lengths capitalism is willing to go to in pursuit of money (and destruction); Diego Marcon's Fritz (a film existing on the fringes of childhood and adulthood); Ari Benjamin Meyers' Marshall Allen, 99, Astronaut, (centred around Allen himself, an avant-garde jazz musician); Christian Nyampeta's When Rain Clouds Gather; (rooted in conversation drawing from the works and ideas of black and African writers and filmmakers); Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme's Until We Became Fire and Fire, Us, (rooted in the very history that makes Complesso dell'Ospedaletto, particularly honing in on it being a shelter for the destitute for four centuries); Saodat Ismailova's Melted Into the Sun (interweaving myths, rituality and dreams within the tapestry of everyday life) and last but not least Nebula, a film immersed in an atmosphere suspended between dream and reality by Giorgio Andreotta Calò.

'In Venice, fog is the liminal space in which water and sky merge with each other', noted both curators in the show's press release - not only highlighting the relatability of presenting the films in the location they did but also reflecting on one of fog's many iterations: 'It is a meteorological phenomenon that proves how fallacious our sense of perspective and understanding can be'. Whether these films are immediately understood or not, abstract or not, they are united in their exploration of disorientation while relishing in the art of video and what it can offer. Creative expression should never be packaged into a one-size-fits-all, and if any exhibition was to be judged on its comprehension of this motto, Nebula would take home first prize, no questions asked.

Nebula is an exhibition commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film on the occasion of the Biennale Arte 2024 and will be open to the public at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto in Venice until 24 November.