Meet Federico Ghillino | Video artist and writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Federico Ghillino and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Federico, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I do different things so I have different thought process, it depends on the practice. I usually define me as a video artist because I use video to create unusual images in a poetic way. At the same time, in writing, the aim is to uncover the subterranean part, that is always unpleasant. In general this is the process behind my practices: uncover the unpleasant that lives in us and it’s always uncomfortable for us and who is around us.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Talking about art, I started with poetry in my adolescence. Video arrived later and it was very important to me because I really needed something practical and sensory, something tangible. Nowadays, I’m trying to match words and moving image in a way, don’t know which one, it’s an experimental game. The main lesson I learned is a personal one: I understood that, for me, before the artwork (as literary as video) there are two questions:

1. What I need to say?
2. How do I want people to feel while experiencing my artwork?

Between this two question there’s the work: a poem, a short story, a short movie, an experimental video. Everything I create lives in between and it’s the bridge, it’s the communicative act, the gesture with which I want to reach other people to make them reflect, to bring them something I need to communicate. That’s my try.

Talking about my work, my main project is “Cronica familiare di Miranda e Costante e di molti altri che nulla hanno potuto”. It’s a narrative project with intermedia chapters. Every chapter tells a part of the story in a different way. Up to today, I published the short story “Sinottiche ventiquattrore” on the online magazine Formavera, than I published the book and web serie “Parabola di Fera Infèri che volle uccidere ed uccise” on the online platform Howphelia.com and I published the short movie “Ballata per Nerina che saluta” with Howphelia.com again. This short movie is currently in free online screening at the festival Maratona di Visione (https://www.maratonadivisione.it/).

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I live in my hometown Genoa, Italy. The city is an harbour one, but it has mountain behind it, so it’s built part on the seaside, part on the hills. When someone want to visit the city I start with a double view of the historical centre, a panoramic one from above, showing all the medieval building and the ancient harbour, and one from below, from Porto Antico, the central part of the harbour.

In the historical centre of Genoa there is my studio also! Palazzo Bronzo is an artist run space and a collective, driven by artists and professionals. We have a big two-floors studio with a gallery and event space, a co-working and a lab. We are an heterogeneous group, so we have lots of different practices and tools. We are in the heart of the city, in Salita di Mascherona, an ancient cobblestone street.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
The people that talked to me sincerely and showed me who they really are, it doesn’t matter if in a good or in a bad way. Who did it knows, I don’t need to credit them. Talking about art, the reading of “Voyage au bout de la nuit” by Louis Ferdinand Celine was point of no return. His frankness makes me feel helpless.

Website: https://linktr.ee/tbfrdc

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tbfrdc/

Other: https://vimeo.com/tbfrdc https://www.instagram.com/palazzobronzo/ https://howphelia.teyuto.tv/app/live/collection?s=fedjerico-ghillino-parabola-dji-fera-inferi

Image Credits
All the images are by me