Rosa Barba, The Hidden Conference, 2010-2015

2010

Medium

Three 35 mm films (color, optical sound)

Edition

Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs

Status

Open to Offers

Collect24 Art ID

C24-157777

The Hidden Conference is a three-part film projection shot on 35 mm film over the period 2010 to 2015 and shown on projectors modified by the artist. It comprises three separate filmic investigations into museum storage facilities, interrogating the status of artworks when they are not on display and are therefore rendered in some way invisible. The first film, entitled About the Continuous History of Things We See and Don’t See, was shot in 2010 in the stores of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin; the second, A Fractured Play, was shot in the stores of the Musei Capitolini in Rome in 2011; and the third and final instalment, titled About the Shelf and Mantel, was filmed in Tate’s off-site stores in London in 2015. The two earlier films have both been presented as single screen installations in various venues, including MAXXI, Rome, in 2010 and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, in 2012. The artist has stipulated that any of the three can be shown either individually or as a group. In The Hidden Conference the stored artworks from each museum’s collections are filmed using a continually moving handheld camera. At other times the works are themselves mysteriously moved on invisible wheels, becoming quasi-characters in a fragmented filmic narrative. When shown altogether, the sound recordings of the three films (which feature dialogues that recall excerpts from famous films, noises, environmental sounds, rhythmic sequences and periods of silence) constantly overlap, producing a never-ending and – given the different length of the three films – always changing soundtrack. As is frequently the case in Barba’s films and installations, this ‘soundscape’ plays a central role in pushing the apparently scientific and documentary approach of the films towards fiction. The stored artworks’ condition of apparently silent and hidden coexistence is enlivened by their movements, murmurs and conversations, and the three screens create a unique environment, in which sculptures and paintings from different eras and places are connected through an evolving choreography into which the spectator is visually and physically drawn.