Zaelia Bishop and Emanuele Napolitano’s practice is based on observations of encounter, interaction and fusion between image and vision. Their projects examine in particular the relationship with everyday society, identities and connections between images and social behaviour. Documentation, collection, the exploration of the artefactual dimension, re-representations of images and spaces with various media, or creating a new presence for them, form Their practice. Zaelia Bishop and Emanuele Napolitano are interested in considerations of the possibility and impossibility of vision, or how images and visions in general can be practised any more today and exploring the life-span and cycles of an image and its topic.
In 2015 the work They Left Us has been selected in the in Shorts films Corner of Festival de Cannes 2015.
In 2016 they started Chasing Boundaries, a project of video-documentary to describe the art practice with a video art approach, and it’s another documentary form that defies the plot and the easily digested information and opens sensory receptors to new modes of perception.
This first chapter was shot in Israel where artists are currently responding to political, historical and religious issues by using dynamic and experimental artistic practices. Every interview is entwined with images of the city life and wild scenarios to highlight the connections between art, life, natural forces and human condition. The artists interviewed in Chasing Boundaries are specifically engaged with the process of re-describing what gets made now, dealing with what constitutes the image of the contemporary and with what the contemporary produce. The video was selected by the Short Film Corner – Festival del Cinema Di Cannes 2016 and it was presented at AlbumArte in April, 2016. Artists interviewed: Meital Katz Minerbo, Eyal Yehuda, Gal Weinstein, Assaf Abutbul, Maya Attoun, Nivi Alroy.
The second chapter was shot in Lithuania. In this second production, realized also thanks to the support of the Lithuanian Culture Institute and co-produced by AlbumArte (which also will follow the next chapters of the project), the two authors engage with interviews to artists based in Lithuania who are involved in rethinking the contemporary, both in its expressions and productions. These artists are the most interesting of the Lithuanian contemporary art scene – some even internationally, and they are well-prepared, curious, passionate, receptive. Lithuania, independent only since 1991, has still alive the memory of its recent past, as well as the difficult and relatively fast transition to the intellectual and artistic freedom. Artists interviewed: Laima Kreivytė, Julijonas Urbonas, Deimantas Narkevičius, Živilė Minkutė, Mindaugas Navakas, Linas Jusionis, Antanas Šnaras
Image: Zaelia Bishop / Emanuele Napolitano, Chasing Boundaries (still), 2016. Courtesy l’artista.