‘Empirical Effect’ showing at Promenade Gallery

TIRANA, May 10 – Germany-based, Italian artist Rosa Barba is displaying the Empirical Effect, a movie framed by aerial tracking shots at the Promenade Gallery of the southern Albanian coastal city of Vlora. Juddering and handheld, they bring to mind military reconnaissance footage, or conceptual art strategies in which a particular feature of the landscape is circumnavigated at a sufficient distance for it to embody myth.
“The Vesuvius volcano has always been a protagonist I wanted to work with. To me it’s like a metaphor for the complex relationships between society and politics in Italy. It’s unpredictable, powerful, destructive and based in the middle of a densely populated area alongside the Mediterranean coast. No one is able to control this immense force of nature and yet it connects the inhabitants and their environments with an invisible tie. I wanted to construct fiction within a test evacuation of all the villages surrounding the volcano next to Naples, and working closely with some main actors who were witnesses of the last outbreak in 1944.” says Rosa Barba.
The 40-year artist lives and works in Berlin and has participated in dozens of international events.
The exhibition at the Promenade Gallery will be open to the public until May 20.