黑料不打烊

Past and present, history and amusement, reality and spectacle are conflated and distorted in Federico Solmi鈥檚 monumental media work, The Great Farce (2017). This immersive video is made up of nine video projections spanning the entirety of The Block Museum's largest gallery. In the multiscreen work, painting, drawing and motion-capture images are stitched together using digital technology to create a surreal universe.

Featuring a cast of time-traveling world leaders with a feverish madness for power, Solmi鈥檚 animation turns a frenzied, fun-house mirror to grandstanding historical figures. The Great Farce presents a sprawling send-up of empire-building as an enterprise, and a scathing commentary on our contemporary culture where spectacle and celebrity may be distractions from more sinister machinations, and where the speed of things contributes to the blurring of myth and truth.

Originally commissioned for the 2017 B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt, Germany, The Great Farce is one of Solmi鈥檚 most ambitious works  in terms of technical complexity, physical scale and scope of content. The work can be presented as an immersive gallery installation with nine projections, or a sculptural 鈥減ortable theater鈥� with embedded video that represents the content, spirit and aesthetic of the larger installation.