Cl茅ment Cogitore: Ferdinandea
The Galerie Elisabeth & Reinhard Hauff is excited to present the 5th solo exhibition of Paris and Berlin based film and video artist Cl茅ment Cogitore's, Ferdinandea, which dives into the mysterious and little-known history of a small volcanic island that emerged between Sicily and Tunisia in the Mediterranean in 1831. The island, which was immediately claimed by Britain, France, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, sank back beneath the waves just six months after its appearance. Ferdinandea was first presented at the MADRE, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples, in 2022. Cogitore could think of no better city than Naples, the former capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to stage his fictional "re-emergence" of the island. He approached Kathryn Weir, the Curator of the MADRE, and in the catalogue she produced for the show, Cogitore explains that he saw his film and project as a narrative and kind of historical investigation, sometimes romantic, other times metaphysical or absurd, but always fascinating 鈥� a form of fiction that would imperceptibly take over from the historical facts. In the MADRE show, large displays of 16mm film footage, video and photographs from a scientific expedition the artist undertook to the sunken island in preparation of the exhibition project are interacting with nineteenth-century illustrations, maps, and letters to immerse the viewer into the total mystery of the birth of a specific place on earth, now long gone. Cogitore re-awakens foreboding and forgotten circumstances around the island's rise and disappearance, using observation, metaphorical insight, and imagination to demonstrate what the story of the sunken island might have been back then, and might also tell us about visible and invisible, present and absent, remembered and forgotten, land and water. The show at the Galerie Elisabeth and Reinhard Hauff will focus primarily on the videos and photographs.
"Who owns the earth? Who owns the planet?" asks the philosopher Emanuele Coccia in his essay The Meteorological Life of Earth in the exhibition catalogue. There is not a single square centimeter of land above sea level on this earth which isn't "owned" by some country, and heavy fight between nations precede all claims to territorial right. The planetary condition is a condition of migration, it is the earth that migrates, it does not cease to migrate. And this migration is a form of perpetual movement 鈥� a drift.
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The Galerie Elisabeth & Reinhard Hauff is excited to present the 5th solo exhibition of Paris and Berlin based film and video artist Cl茅ment Cogitore's, Ferdinandea, which dives into the mysterious and little-known history of a small volcanic island that emerged between Sicily and Tunisia in the Mediterranean in 1831. The island, which was immediately claimed by Britain, France, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, sank back beneath the waves just six months after its appearance. Ferdinandea was first presented at the MADRE, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples, in 2022. Cogitore could think of no better city than Naples, the former capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to stage his fictional "re-emergence" of the island. He approached Kathryn Weir, the Curator of the MADRE, and in the catalogue she produced for the show, Cogitore explains that he saw his film and project as a narrative and kind of historical investigation, sometimes romantic, other times metaphysical or absurd, but always fascinating 鈥� a form of fiction that would imperceptibly take over from the historical facts. In the MADRE show, large displays of 16mm film footage, video and photographs from a scientific expedition the artist undertook to the sunken island in preparation of the exhibition project are interacting with nineteenth-century illustrations, maps, and letters to immerse the viewer into the total mystery of the birth of a specific place on earth, now long gone. Cogitore re-awakens foreboding and forgotten circumstances around the island's rise and disappearance, using observation, metaphorical insight, and imagination to demonstrate what the story of the sunken island might have been back then, and might also tell us about visible and invisible, present and absent, remembered and forgotten, land and water. The show at the Galerie Elisabeth and Reinhard Hauff will focus primarily on the videos and photographs.
"Who owns the earth? Who owns the planet?" asks the philosopher Emanuele Coccia in his essay The Meteorological Life of Earth in the exhibition catalogue. There is not a single square centimeter of land above sea level on this earth which isn't "owned" by some country, and heavy fight between nations precede all claims to territorial right. The planetary condition is a condition of migration, it is the earth that migrates, it does not cease to migrate. And this migration is a form of perpetual movement 鈥� a drift.
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