Experiencing Interruptions?

The Hyperzoo

Short film produced during the MACRO ASILO’s Atelier in which Michele Giangrande participated from July 30 to August 4, 2019. In this occasion the artist created a metamorphic, experiential and performative installation that involved the entire museum audience.
Human zoos, also called ethnological exhibitions, were public displayings of human beings during the 19th and 20th centuries , usually in a so-called natural or primitive state.
Ethnological exhibitions have been criticized as highly degrading and racist.
We live in a society where we are always under observation and judgment, at the mercy of the people of the network and all this by choice.
No one forces us, on the other hand, we choose to "share" and let everyone know what we eat, what we drink, what we live, what we love.
A continuous and inexorable stream of private information which becomes public and that is spread in the ocean of online information, but that is there anyway, available to everyone, every day and at any time.
For sure features are not all so negative or dramatic, on the contrary, but what would happen if reality also complies with these dictates we no longer lived in real time? If in addition to virtual life, ever more important than the real one, even reality was subjected to certain mechanisms of "sharing at all costs" and "obsessive compulsive observation"?
Today this film, in the pandemic era, takes on a sinisterly prophetic aspect.

  • Michele Giangrande
    Director
  • Michele Giangrande
    Writer
  • Clan Sui Generis
    Producer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    The Hyperzoo
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    14 minutes 21 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 30, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    20,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Michele Giangrande

Michele Giangrande, artist, writer and designer was born in Bari in 1979. He has been a Decoration teacher at the School of Fine Arts of Catanzaro and a Painting Techniques teacher at the School of Fine Arts of Lecce. Currently he is a Decoration teacher at the School of Fine Arts of Bari.
A very versatile artist, provided with scathing irony, transfigures reality playing with the concepts of being and appearing. Since the first researches he has lent the objects chosen, mostly in common use, a new identity. For years he has been running a search which draws inspiration from what’s archaic, primitive, from rereading the past, through a systemic approach to painting, sculpture, handicraft, performance, cinema, installation and architecture.
Starting with his origins, the artist decides to go all the way back to folk traditions and Human History itself, ending with the first artistic expressions and, by doing so, gathering the fundamental sparkle of it and trapping it in his works.
Giangrande’s search is intended to be an attempt to detect in the remote past a present but forward-looking communication, through a playful and analytic journey which starts from his own memories going through, with accurate levity, the very genesis of the making.
He has participated in a number of solo exhibitions, collective exhibitions and group exhibitions. His works of art can be found in museums, in private and public collections in Italy and abroad.
His search has been subject of studies, of graduation thesis and of several conferences, including the most recent held at the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán di Mérida (Mexico) thanks to Prof. Giuliana Schiavone and to the technical support of Julio Cesar Beltran.
Many reviews for his work have appeared onto sector newspapers and magazines such as FlashArt, Insideart, Segno, Exibart, Artribune, ARTEeCRITICA, Espoarte, Arte Mondadori, Interni.
More than sixty are his publications in solo or group catalogs. In his path he met a number of art critics and curators, journalists and operators.
Currently Giangrande durably or periodically collaborates with several private and public institutions such as the Pino Pascali Foundation Contemporary Art Museum.

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