Marco Mazzi (born May 5, 1980) is an Italian multimedia artist, living and working in Tokyo, Florence, and Tirana. He worked as an editor in the publication of books of contemporary Japanese poetry, such as ''The Other Voice'', the first Italian translation of Yoshimasu Gozo's poetry.

Biography

Mazzi studied

Contemporary literature Contemporary literature is literature which is generally set after World War II in the English-speaking world. Subgenres of contemporary literature include contemporary romance. History Literary movements are always contemporary to the writer dis ...

at the University of Florence and visited Tokyo, where he studied Japanese avant-garde art and

visual poetry Literary theorists have identified visual poetry as a development of concrete poetry but with the characteristics of intermedia in which non-representational language and visual elements predominate. Differentiation from concrete poetry As the li ...

. He held exhibitions at the 798 Art District in Beijing (China), the Komaba Art Museum of Tokyo (Japan), the Torino “Artissima” Art Fair (Italy), the Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci (Prato, Italy) and the Yokohama Museum of Art (Japan). In January 2008 The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art of Tokyo held the first solo exhibition of the artist in Japan, screening his single channel video installation ''Voyager, a Journey through Time and Water (2005-2008)''. In October 2009 the Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea (MLAC, Rome) held Mazzi's exhibition "Seeing and Knowing, the Naturalization of Visio

curated by the Italian writer and art critic Lorenzo Carlucci. In March 2010 he took part in the exhibition "Il medium disperso" (MLAC, Rome) together with Keren Cytter and

Clemens von Wedemeyer Clemens von Wedemeyer (born 1974 in Göttingen, Germany) is a German video artist. He studied fine arts at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, with Astrid Klein. In 2004 von Wedemeyer produced, together with Maya Schweizer, a documentary movie: ...

. In 2008 Mazzi founded the non-profit organization "Relational Cinema Association" within the

University of Waseda , mottoeng = Independence of scholarship , established = 21 October 1882 , type = Private , endowment = , president = Aiji Tanaka , city = Shinjuku , state = Tokyo , country = Japan , students = 47,959 , undergrad = 39,382 , postgrad ...

in Tokyo. The project involves screening of films and videos by Francesca Banchelli, Eric Baudelaire,

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, Josef Dabernig, Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio,

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, Mark Lewis,

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. Mazzi was photographer in residence at The Department of Eagles (Tirana, Albania), together with Diego Cossentino, during the conference “Pedagogies of Disaster, a Continent Conference”. In 2013 Mazzi collaborated with

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for the project "The Venice Biennale Ideological Guide". Moreover, Mazzi was stage and still photographer for the leading Albanian artist Armando Lulaj during the making of the film "Recapitulation" (2015). The film was part of Armando Lulaj's installation "Albanian Trilogy", commissioned by the 2015 Venice Biennale's Albanian Pavilion.

The Albanian Survey

During the communist period, the Albanian regime erected a large number of so-called ' in virtually every village, town, and city in Albania. These concrete monoliths on the one hand functioned as monuments commemorating a variety of “heroes of the nation” and “partizans” but on the other hand also monumentalized the presence of the communist party in every part of the country. Their function as markers of social progress as well as commemoration is clearly shown in the 1984 Kinostudio documentary “Lapidari.” The ubiquity of these monumental structures and their relative opacity in the current cityscape – neither being demolished nor maintained, but having largely fallen into disrepair – reflect the common attitude regarding undigested communist past of Albania. Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oei's 2014-2015 project "Albanian Survey" involved archival research into the construction and topography of all in Albania and their historical context. The project intended to overcome a mere esthetic appreciation of communist architecture but rather provide a thorough documentation of a unique mode of communist monumentality, making them accessible as possible for future research through an online database and open access publication. Mazzi was photographer in residence for the "Albanian Survey" project and photographed over six hundred communist monuments and architectural sites all over Albania.

Filmmaking

In 2010 Mazzi shoot a documentary film ''Kiju Yoshida and a Vision of Fear'', in collaboration with

Kiju Yoshida , also known as Kijū Yoshida, was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. Life and career Graduating from the University of Tokyo, where he studied French literature, Yoshida entered the Shōchiku studio in 1955 and worked as an assistant t ...

, the acclaimed Japanese film director. Mazzi directed several experimental documentary features and single-channel video installations, such as "Records of Experience" (2011), "Tokyo Elegy" (2012), and "Hypothesis for an Ideological Journey" (2012-2020, featuring

). In 2018 the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art of Prato (Italy) screened the video by Marco Mazzi "Ricognizione (Aprile)]".

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20110722034703/http://www.arte.go.it/eventi/2008/e_0131.htm * https://web.archive.org/web/20120207091101/http://www.teknemedia.net/archivi/2008/1/18/mostra/27742.html * http://www.gliori.it/scheda_libro.php?id=337 {{DEFAULTSORT:Mazzi, Marco 1980 births Italian contemporary artists Photographers from Florence University of Florence alumni Living people