Carceri d’invenzione

Video loop, 40 sec., sound, varying sizes, mixed media, 2021.

This short film evokes the work of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri d’invenzione, a series of engravings of imaginary prisons with prodigious dimensions and labyrinthine forms.

The camera moves in the direction of an interior courtyard, flying over corridors, arches and staircases, it tries to advance to the center but by an arrangement of interlocking or entangled shots, it always returns to its starting point. The outside is thus found inside and the beginning is the end. This prison, like that of the 18th century engraver, is above all mental.

This video loop, this travelling ahead, shows a space that repeats itself like a fractal figure. We find the structure of the whole by enlarging a part of the model.