Rapture (silent anthem)

Date: 2009
Length: 10:00 min.
Format:  High definition video, 2:1
Specification: Colour, No Sound

Angelica Mesiti’s work Rapture (silent anthem) reflects on the spirituality and presence of ritual experiences in contemporary life. It’s a slow-motion video of young people in the crowd at a open air concert. The work transmits the quasi-religious atmosphere with various close-ups, capturing the worshipping eyes, ecstatic expressions and hysterical gestures of the teenagers, emphasizing their pure and primal emotions. The artist Mesiti manages to transmit the feeling of the collective state of the crowd, people ‘becoming one’ without capturing all of them in one frame. On the contrary, it shows their individual experiences, rhythmically and emotionally synchronized. Rapture is a silent video that takes an experience of a musical event out of its basic context, making the viewer focus on the visual content of the work, and underlining its emotional and aesthetic intensity. The view, pulled in and fascinated, unintentionally becomes a part of this collective moment, which turns into a endless rapture.

EV

Interview:

► 1. Your video has been chosen among over 1700 festival entries to participate in Videonale 13. How central is the video medium to your overall artistic production? Is it complimentary to other media you use or do you work exclusively with video?

I come from a performance background and have always worked in video and installation, however video has always been the central component in my art practice.

► 2. Is there a particular theme, concept or problem your art addresses the most?

At present I am interested in recording the everyday performance practices of others, particularly those practices that have a relationship to tradition, cultural practice, ritual, worship and folklore.

► 3. What artists do you relate to or find significant for your own art-making?

I am drawn to a range of artists and film makers whose work extends the boundaries of contemporary practice in one way or another. I am particularly interested in artists whose work engages the social through a range of situations and activities that results in complex set of ideas. These include Pierre Huyghe , Francis Alÿs, Tino Sehgal, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Yvonne Rainer, Jane Campion.

► 4. Do you think the video medium can address social or political issues better than other art media?

I think that the moving image is one of the most commonly shared forms of communication available to us globally and therefore presents itself as an ideally democratic form of response for artists. The medium's inherent relationship to mass televised media and entertainment can generate a subtext through which we experience it and I think this makes the medium a good tool for addressing social and political issues.

► 5. Art can be seen as a mirror that registers and reflects life or as a tool that transforms it. Which of the two positions is close to your own art-making philosophy?

I think my work is sometimes quite observational, so therefore I guess it reflects life. I often try to present subjects or images that are framed differently to how one is used to experiencing them- so I guess that's a kind of transformation.

► 6. How do you understand success in an art-making career?

My understanding of a successful art-making career is one that repeatedly produces work that generates a response from a wide range of audiences and perspectives. Consistently pursuing the boundaries of what we understand and offering new ways of seeing. A successful career is one that has an effect, ie. there has been an immeasurable improvement because it exists.
Success = longevity. Sustained relevance and effect.

► 7. What is the most difficult and the most rewarding thing about making art / being an artist?

Most rewarding thing about being an artist is getting the chance to make imagined things real, connecting with people nonverbally, collaborating with people one might not normally come into contact with.

Most difficult thing is trying to explain to people what you do for a living.

► 8. What are your upcoming projects?

Currently working on a video that documents rare and traditional forms of musical performance played by various people in Paris, Sydney and New Zealand.

► 9. What do you do when you don't make art?

Read, watch films, swim in the ocean, listen to music