Jill
Bennett
2004
UNSW Press, Sprengel Museum Hannover: Sydney, Hannover.
in co-operation with iCinema Research Centre, UNSW
Hardback book of 150 pages with embedded DVD
Fantasmi presents a richly illustrated analysis of leading
Australian new media artist Dennis Del Favero's works from 1994 to
2004, by art historian Jill Bennett. Deep
Sleep DVD-ROM, the first
in the iCinema digital monographs series, is incorporated
into the Fantasmi dual book and DVD publication.
"One of Dennis Del Favero's most memorable works, Quegli
Ultimi Momenti, dates from twenty years ago. It screened the Australian
Centre for Photography in 1984 and, through the use of sound, text,
still and moving image, it vividly created the world of migration,
the creation of the diaspora, particularly its inevitable, unavoidable
sense of loss. The richness of awareness of what had been left behind,
and by contrast the unknown into which the protagonists were propelled,
remains profoundly moving. The installation, complex yet coherent,
with content masterfully allied to form, was, with the great benefit
of hindsight, illuminating the very core of so much of the artist’s
continuing concerns; of the impact on the individual of events both
beyond their control and beyond their conscious understanding. We,
as the viewer, become enmeshed in each of his works by a world that
we enter at our own risk, and from which we can never emerge unscathed.
The bulk of Del Favero’s oeuvre emerges from real events, involving
footage from a variety of media sources spliced together to form fractured
narratives that jar the nerves, and are presented on multi screens
that dislocate the conventional relationship between viewer and moving
image. There is no need to duplicate here Jill Bennett’s detailed
studies of each piece, but it is important to clarify their combined
role within the genre. Conflict, the meeting of demands, desires,
beliefs and impositions that are so utterly incompatible, is surely
at the heart of Del Favero’s creativity. Memory and loss are
two crucial additional foundation stones, as they intertwine with
the various ways in which ideology, passion, lust, impotence, greed
and power dictate human actions. Del Favero chooses to dwell on the
darker nature within, not to obscure, as with so much artistic endeavour,
but to reveal its revelatory and utterly disturbing continuity. This
representation of the ”discontent in culture” (S. Freud,
1930), which is normally suppressed or subliminated in art, makes
the art of Del Favero so relevant. Links from the present are constantly
drawn with so many past eras and manifestations, through reference
to music, art, the written and spoken word, and the history of ideas.
This remarkable overview of a most productive era encompasses the
realist based works Pieta, Coming Apart, Requiem,
Cross Currents, Angelo
Nero, Pentimento,
Deep Sleep, as well as the
fictional Sottovoce. They
constitute, when experienced collectively, the most disturbing and
moving representation of the crisis of communication that afflicts
our world today. There are indeed few artists alive so determined
and so capable of maintaining our vigilance."
Nick Waterlow, Director, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, UNSW, Sydney
Peter Weibel, Chairman and CEO, ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe
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