Dissertation
The variational mode: three cases about documents, artworks and animation
My artistic practice deals with documents and, more specifically, with the use and the exploration of their narrative potential.
- Author
- Riccardo Giacconi
- Date
- 01 November 2019
- Links
- Read more on Riccardo's research on the Research Catalogue
- Visit the PhDArts website for more information
This dissertation is about three different cycles of artworks I produced as part of the research project. The notion of animation inheres in each of the three case studies: – Case 1 focuses on my artworks about Simone Pianetti (1858-?), an Italian mass murderer who escaped and disappeared, and who then became a puppet character, animated as a stock character.– Case 2 focuses on Augusto Masetti (1888-1966), an Italian soldier who shot at his superior officer and declared not to remember having done it, as if in a state of ecstatic possession, as if animated by an external entity. Mainly using publications and workshops, I produced a series of artworks related to legal, medical and anarchist records on his case.– Case 3 follows the appearance of a puppet character in Colombia, el espiritado, and its supposed connections to the Masetti case. I describe a series of artistic works I produced, starting from a puppet script about the self-destruction of a village, which can be read as a commentary on puppetry, anarchism and animation.