We attended the opening of In Extremis, Sandro Giordano’s new exhibition , aka ___remmidemmi on instagram.
For the people that dont’ know who we are talking about, he is a Photographer from Rome but also a globetrotter.
He studied acting practiced in theatre and cinema, He also acted in movies directed by Carlo Verdone and Dario Argento.
In 2013 he started work on In Extremis, a project that brought him to international success.This is what he says about such project :
My photographs are “short stories” about a world that is falling-down. Each shot tells worn-out characters who, in a sudden black-out of mind and body, crash They are unable to save themselves, because of the fatigue of everyday’s representation of living, oppressed by appearance instead of simple existence.
Sandro recently embarked on another adventure, he realize produced a set of documentaries called Ghost Town for Rai5 where we can see Remmidemmi equipped with a torch, exploring abandoned towns searching for the most unusual spots.
The event was full of surprises: we assisted to an acoustic performance by Marianne Mirage and an artist’s live performance in which he crashed people from the audience like in his photos.
Between those activities we managed were able to interview the artist.
This is what we talked about:
You studied cinema, after that you worked in a number of productions. Were these experiences useful for your work?
I studied as a set designer and worked for 20 years as an actor. I think that my photos are very theatrical. I am not a cinema director, but I consider myself a photograph director: I see in Extremis like a static short film.
Talk about your discovery of ghost towns around the world?
A very big experience for sure. I’ve come to know the history, origins and the habits of a lots number of different populations, I consider it a training practice very important for my personal growth.
Traveling around such “cities” and personally touching its ruins is surely an profound experience. What do you think it was the most suggestive place you’ve seen? And why?
It was very exciting, at times emotional and also a bit sad, walking around ruins, entering in other people’s houses with all the fourniture still there. It made me think at the stories of the people who lived such places. It was like going back to the past and figuring lives that don’t exist any more. It was like to going back to the origins. Touching, especially in the Italian locations. The most impressive city was Pyramiden, It is a former USSR town next to the north pole. It was a powerful experience infact this place is very near to glaciers, with freezing temperature but with a Soviet style urban planning which it is very different from ours. I entered in a community with totally different habits from ours.
In Extremis is your most important project, it makes you travel around the world. How did it all start?
In extremis is my life, I live for that project. I take care of it in every moment in a day, it makes me travel and it make me meet different people and places. It is very rewording, maybe the most beautiful thing I have ever done. Being author of your own work makes you more responsible. It makes you grow and maybe for the first time, when I started this project I felt like an adult. Everything started years ago when I fell from my bicycle. I was eating a snack and than I realized that I did not protected my face with the hand because I was holding the snack.After a few month, one of my friends broke his leg in order to save his IPhone and he spent 40 days in a hospital. It was then that I realized that we are living in a very weird period, full of social diseases with people left alone where the only apparent solution to beat loneliness is buying a lot of useless things.This is the most worrying and sad aspect of our society. In my works I try to denounce this element in a funny and grotesque way.
Where do you find the inspiration for your shoots?
My biggest source of inspiration is everyday’s life: I Observe and study myself and the people as a basis for my society analysis. It also important to note that I was brought up with Charlie Chaplin and Laurel an Hardy’s movies where all sort of strange things happened to the characters, they fell down all the time and I remember that it made me laugh a lot. I do not know why but I think that falling on your face is hugely comic. It stuns you and you ask yourself: why did that happen?I think that physical crash is always comparable to an inner crash. I’m sure that falling happens because we are traveling along a wrong path of our existence. Whilst our mind does not understand that, our body sees and forces us to immobility, sometimes for some weeks in an hospital. These are the occasions where we can stop and think. We should always stop before crashing but that usually does not happen.
In your artworks we can see an enormous attention to every detail: from the props to the styling. How do you approach it? Do you work with a specific team or is it self-managed on the basis on your needs?
as we can say: the devil is in the detail. It is important for me to leave nothing to chance. Every element appearing in the photo is primary, because must describe the background of the subject; who is he? why did he he fall? I think it is vital to make the work understandable. It is one single shoot and I have to describe one world in a single picture. This is not easy but I think it is one of the most interesting things of the pre-production work. My friend Marco Longo helps me a lot in such reserch, we enjoy great synergy and immediately understand each other. I know he does a great job when I have to found the right object or clothes. I don’t have a fixed team. I used to have it, but in these years I have understood that I have to work on my own and when I need someone’s expertise I contact the right person for such task. I create my own technical production cast.
Interface Hub will host the exhibition Until April 8th.
