Two people exchange letters: Gianni reports on a multi-course meal, Rossana on her mother’s progressive decline. Both describe eloquently and in detail. Only the eyes move, the hair a little, and at one point a flash illuminates the picture. This is the scenario of the film “La Gola” by Diego Marcon, which is being shown in an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien. The two actors are hyper-realistic mannequins, their eyes were integrated into 35mm film using CGI.
At a press event on Thursday, Kunsthalle director Michelle Cotton spoke of an “immersive setting” for the show, which opens on Friday. The Italian artist had the idea of ”painting our white room red.” He transformed the ground floor of the art gallery into a theater or cinema – with a small island with seats in the middle. “The iconic cinema seats became an object in the otherwise empty space,” Marcon explained. In contrast to a visit to the cinema, the audience also becomes part of the setting.
The description of cuisine and illness in “La Gola” – the stories run parallel, the two protagonists always in close-ups – is accompanied by an organ composition, recorded in a cathedral in Bergamo. Marcon uses language and music to create dramatic tension. It begins with an overture and ends in a crescendo – both in terms of the tones and the content of what is described. “The music structures the film and the emotional temperature,” emphasized the artist. I wanted a melodrama with a classic linear structure, with a beginning and an end.”
To implement his vision, Marcon relies on different cinematic codes. He works with film images and is interested in the language, archetypes and genres of cinema, “but not in cinema itself, not in storytelling.” His work draws on cinematic vocabulary from genres such as musicals, melodrama, horror and slapstick comedy. Puppets, robotics, prosthetics and CGI create an eerie visual world that leaves many questions unanswered.
“La Gola” is shown with subtitles, Italian is spoken – a lot of it, by the way. “When I finished the film, I was a little worried that non-Italian speaking viewers would be put off,” Marcon said. He asked a friend what she thought about it. “She said that at a certain point she stopped following what the characters were actually saying. That’s an important point, I realized. They speak for the sake of speaking. That’s what the film becomes when you start talking about genres , like a porn, because it’s about the desire to speak.”
“La Gola” is “an example of the type of exhibition design that the Kunsthalle stands for,” said Cotton. “Commissioning new works, sometimes in partnership with other institutions, giving the audience in Vienna the opportunity to see works and artists that have not been seen in Austria before.”
(SERVICE – “Diego Marcon. La Gola” in the Kunsthalle Wien, Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna, 4.10.24-2.2.25, Tues-Sun 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Thurs 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.; a publication was published on the exhibition and a limited-edition record with the soundtrack, on November 19th the Stadtkino Marcon is dedicating a retrospective;
