Hanna Hildebrand: "Omega Transit" at la rada
Hanna Hildebrand, Omega Transit
The Locarno festival is back - as always starting on a Wednesday - and la rada, space for contemporary art in Locarno, also opens its new exhibition on that unusual date. Wednesday August 4 at 6 pm, Omega Transit, a solo show by artist Hanna Hildebrand will be inaugurated in the spaces on the second floor of via della Morettina 2.
Hanna Hildebrand, of Italian-Swiss origin, has been making a particularly imaginative multidisciplinary film project since 2018 called Omega Transit.
In the border town of Chiasso a few years ago a shopping center with a futurist shape was built and opened, the Centro Ovale, which soon after, however, became empty.
Ticino is a borderland where migrants of over a hundred ethnic origins arrive. Hildebrand has chosen to collaborate with a group of boys and girls from these communities to build an experimental film project, which can be considered in the style of the science fiction genre. It is divided into episodes, each relating to a phase of a journey that is above all an experiential journey, but also one of rebellion against a status quo that sometimes reappears, even in the phase of escaping.
The Oval takes the role of spaceship, reprogrammed to travel to a new world where the travelers encounter a new spiritual reality.
After the first two episodes, presented in 2018 and 2019, Hildebrand will exhibit, in the form of a multimedia installation, some steps of her processes of film writing and editing of often essential images, as well as the dialogues, representative of a multiplicity of languages and cultures.
With Omega Transit, Hildebrand takes on the approach of low budget and low-fi film-making, based on process and improvisation. This aesthetic approach and ethos are a conscious choice. Simple special effects in video, storyboard drawings and available materials are tools for imagination in her total art work (Gesamtkunstwerk).
The results of this project are particularly fresh and inspiring, and show a new subject of the rich Swiss film production, an artist who looks directly, sometimes apparently naive, at the film object, celebrated here in Locarno as in Berlin where Hildebrand will soon present an artistic work related to virtual reality.
During the festival the exhibition will be open every evening, from 5 pm to 10 pm, always with free admission, and on Friday 13th the electronic composer Franziska Lantz – creator of the soundtracks of the three short films - will also arrive from London for a live music set at la rada that will begin at 7 pm. Finally, from Sunday 15 August until Sunday 5 September, the exhibition will be visible at the usual times of la rada, that is, from Friday to Sunday, from 3 to 7 pm, and by appointment.
The exhibition is curated by Riccardo Lisi.
The exhibition program of la rada is made possible by: Göhner Stiftung, DECS Republic and State of the Canton of Ticino / Fondi SwissLos, City of Locarno, Tognetti Auto (Gordola), Migros Percento Culturale. The Omega Transit project was supported in the realization phases by Infogiovani of the Canton of Ticino, by Pro Helvetia and by the Cantonal Integration Program. A special thanks to Centro Ovale and Swiss Red Cross Sezione del Sottoceneri.
la rada, via della Morettina 2, Locarno - www.larada.ch
Free entry opening: Wednesday August 4, 6pm
Live music set: Friday August 13, 7 pm with Franziska Lantz
Opening times: from August 5 to 14: every day, 5-10 pm
from August 15 to September 5: from Friday to Sunday, 3-7 pm
