Looped single-screen film, sound, 6 min 31 sec, 2012
The film shot on Super 8 was recently filmed at the Zoology museum in Bologna. The museum was founded in 1860 part of the University of Bologna and is the largest and most significant in Italy. Rows and rows of cabinets filled with strangely shaped animals. It traces its roots all the way back to the very first cabinet of curiosity and the collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi, who allegedly coined the word Geology and is undisputedly one of the fathers of natural history.
The film follows Arancio’s fascination with the human’ s preoccupation to bring order to the world around us and the aesthetics related to the systems of classification used for this purpose. With this work the artist presents us with a subjective vision of the ornithological collection created by Zafagnini-Bertocchi in the first half of the 20th Century. Through the juxtaposition of deep gravitational rumbling sounds by LA cosmic cult music project Expo 70 and Arancio’ s precise editing, still close ups and slow camera panning, the film exposes the sinister and uncanny nature of the displays, resulting in an ambiguous temporality, a visionary experience that transcends and transforms the original scientific illustrative purpose of the cabinets.
