Category: Artists' Film International — Published:
To coincide with the digital launch of his film, Scripting anticlockwise (6 constellations) (2017), we spoke with Mexico-based artist Francesco Pedraglio about storytelling, silence and how his practice has shifted since working from home. Francesco’s work is currently screening as part of our global online season of Artists’ Film International, featuring animation and video from around the world.
Portrait of Francesco Pedraglio, Courtesy of Kettle’s Yard.
Where are you from and how did you become interested in moving image work?
I was born in Como, north Italy. I live in Mexico now. My interest in performance and storytelling brought me straight to moving image as something of an endless staging of live actions.
What inspired/influenced you to create Racconto antiorario (6 costellazioni)?
I was researching the trajectories of animals’ wanderings when looking for food, when under distress, when hunting. Something of an alphabet in its own right… already a silent language.
Francesco Pedraglio, An island facing another island (who lands and who doesn’t), 2019, hand printed fabrics stretched on 5 canvases. Curva Blu Open studio, Favignana, 2019. Courtesy INCUVA and the artist. Photo: Ilaria Orsini.
Francesco Pedraglio, An island facing another island (who lands and who doesn’t), 2019, hand printed fabrics stretched on 5 canvases. Curva Blu Open studio, Favignana, 2019. Courtesy INCUVA and the artist. Photo: Ilaria Orsini.
Where does the work fit into your wider practice and concerns?
I think of film as yet another form of staging a story/situation. But the rules of attention are hugely different from a live performance. So a text becomes a monologue, a monologue becomes a script. It’s all part of the same effort to see storytelling as a lens to decode mundane situations and interpersonal exchanges.
Spoken Sculptures, performance, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge 2018.
Francesco Pedraglio, Semna Temple, Sudan, 1849, Reenacted graffiti on wall, pigments, 2019.
During the current climate, how are you maintaining your art practice from home?
When I can’t do anything else, I can always write. So that’s what I’m doing during these months of confinement. In this sense I’m lucky. I don’t need much more than the page and some free time.
Are you exploring/experimenting with any new art practices during this time?
I set up a small pottery workshop in the garden. But mostly I’m learning the difficult art of earning some free thinking time when my son is asleep.
Detail: Francesco Pedraglio, Quoting – Spoken Sculpture #5 (a monologue), bronze, plaster, rubber band, spoken words, 2018.
Francesco Pedraglio, With regards to the care of horses: a love story, performance in three acts and one introduction, 2018.
