Dummy tanks made of wood, canvas and sometimes even painted by hand, were used in both the First and Second World Wars, and up to the present, to deceive the enemy.
News of Invisible Things
On the anniversary of the Great War Rä di Martino presents at Museion “Authentic News of Invisible Things”, a new project inspired by dummy tanks and produced in Bolzano.
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- 25 September 2014
- Bolzano
And strangely enough, while pretend military vehicles are used in real conflict situations, filmmakers tend to opt for the genuine article. Rä di Martino draws on this intriguing short circuit between fact and fiction in her latest project, which includes two new videos shot in Bolzano, and an installation.
One video recreates an archive photograph of 1918 from the Imperial War Museum in London, which shows a group of civilians observing a dummy tank abandoned on the street. While the historic photo was taken in the French town of Lille, Rä di Martino's video shows a street in the centre of Bolzano, almost a century later, with a group of extras dressed in period costumes looking at a dummy tank.
The strange military vehicle does not seem overly out of place in the staged scene – the use of black and white creates a reassuring distance between the image and the viewer. The artist, however, sets out to do away with this in the second video, in which a genuine tank rumbles through the streets of Bolzano. This time there is no make-believe, no actors: the artist filmed the reactions of passers-by in the street coming face to face with a real-life war machine.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a journal with a text by Luca Lo Pinto, published by Museion
from September 26, 2014 until January 11, 2015
Rä di Martino
Authentic News of Invisible Things
curated by Frida Carazzato
Museion Project Room
Casa Atelier
via Dante 6, Bolzano