The nights of Tino from Bagdad

Kaninchen-Haus in collaboration with Castello di Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum presents CONIGLIOVIOLA. THE NIGHTS OF TINO FROM BAGDAD. Technology by TIM | funded by Fondazione CRT | patronages: City of Torino – Dipartimento Interateneo di Scienze del Territorio del Politecnico e dell’Università di Torino – Goethe Institut – Story Code. In collaboration with GTT and AvipItalia | Within the festivals: Torino Incontra Berlino – Salone Internazionale del Libro – Salone OFF – Architettura in Città – In/Visible Cities

Starting from a literary text, a new video art work which transforms the city into a widespread cinema, thanks to Augmented Reality technology. 
An experiment in interactive storytelling that embraces literature, visual arts, architecture and film, intended to redraw the map of the city’s space.

The Nights of Tino from Bagdad is a new transmedia work by ConiglioViola. It is an experimental video art project, developed in Augmented Reality, which defines a new public art format. 
An open work, spreading across the city and which can be enjoyed not in one single place, but rather, invites the viewer on a tour across 30 outdoor locations in the city, on a quest to assemble and combine the fragments of this poetic tale.

www.tinobagdad.com

FROM LITERATURE TO VIDEOART

The work is freely based on a novel: Die Nächte der Tino von Bagdad written in 1907 by the German expressionist poetess Else Lasker-Schüler. A modernist Thousand and One Nights, narrating the story of Tino, a Bagdad princess and poetess, who gives up her life to render poetry immortal. This text makes use of a hermetic style and non-linear structure to poetically face quite relevant issues: the condition and role of women, gender identity, fascination and fear of the exotic, the role art and poetry play in society.

TEARING THE TEXT

ConiglioViola has taken apart the storyline to create 26 plates engraved on copper, each portraying an episode from the princess’s story. Each engraving has been printed on a large billboard poster and affixed at a different bus stop of the city of Turin.

THE “WANDERING SPECTATOR”

By using the map found on this website, the wandering spectator is invited to explore the city in search of these posters, depicting different landscapes seen through an Oriental window. By using TINO, the free App made specifically for this project, to frame these posters, each episode of the video work will come alive on mobile phone displays, directly overlapping the city’s architecture. In order to assemble Tino’s story, the wandering spectator must cross those places in Turin where the posters are found, unite them in any order, and thus create as many stories as there are itineraries. At the end of this tour anyone can rewrite the plot on the project’s web site, thus becoming a player and co-author and giving shape to a literary process theorized by Combinatory Literature and here transposed to real space, thanks to a significant use of new technologies.

A “WIDESPREAD FILM”

In order to define this “format” – able to compose a syncopated story over time and space and conceived, on the one hand to reconsider the city as a hypertext and on the other to use technologies to make real “that which literature from this past century already seemed to forerun and foretell” – the artists from ConiglioViola have coined the term “widespread film”.

The artists’ intent is to engage the viewer in a recherche with the city as a backdrop. It aims to reconstruct its meaning or narration: a model the artists dream about replicating and adapting new literary texts and new urban contexts.

A PROGRESSIVE UNVEILING

The first 12 posters of the scattered installation have been affixed at the bus stops of Turin on May 15th 2015, within the Salone Internazionale del Libro. This widespread exhibition has gradually continued to enrich itself with new works until late November, in concomitance with the main events related to the languages this project touches upon: literature, architecture, new media, visual art, and film.

A PARTICIPATORY (AND OCCUPIED) PRODUCTION

The production was run in a participatory manner within the occupied space of Cavallerizza Reale in Turin, between 2014 and 2015. In agreement with the Assembly, it was chosen to use the sit-in experience as an artistic incubator in order to experiment alternative forms of cultural production, based on the exchange of competences among people involved in the occupation.This has made this project possible notwithstanding the very low budget available for the production. The protagonists of this experience (mostly non-professionals) have been involved not only in the acting, but also in some technical ways: costume design, stage set design, electricity, etc.

FROM SHADOW THEATRE TO AUGMENTED REALITY

From the technical viewpoint, the backgrounds (both of the posters and of the videos) were created with the technique of engraving on copper sheets. The videos were made with a combination of techniques with digital animation, hand drawn animation, and acting on the part of real people. Performances with actors were shot over a green screen theatre.
Many scenes have been inspired by Shadow Theater and shot with manually animated objects.
Other important features of the videos are the absence of camera movement andthe fact that all videos appear through a matte box in the shape of traditional Arab windows.This is an attempt to restore the “exotic” setting that distinguishes the original work while trying, at the same time, to experimentally reflect upon the concept of the movie screen as a “window”, changing its normal shape.

www.tinobagdad.com