Francesca Leoni & Davide Mastrangelo

Colette Copeland
May 2020

The fourth in a series of conversations with artist couples delving into how they are
surviving the pandemic times.

Email conversation with Francesca Leoni & Davide Mastrangelo

CC: How has covid19 and the quarantine impacted your artistic practice both conceptually and technically?

FL: Davide Mastrangelo and I made our first videoart work about ten years ago when I had the measles and the doctor said that I had to stay at home for three weeks. Davide stayed home with me almost the entire time. Its not easy to be confined, but in our case it opened a door to a new way of expressing ourselves. There are many ways of living a quarantine if you are an artist. Some of the artists that I know decided that this would be a time for silence and for this reason they are not making work. We don’t think that way. We think that it is important to stay creative and keep on working, so we are researching and creating new projects. Since we don’t have a studio at home, we hope that soon we will be able to go out and film our work.

CC: Many of your video works contain masks both literally and metaphorically, including themes of stripping away the exterior mask and putting on a mask for protection. Although these works were made 6 years ago and refer to a personal context about intimacy and relationships, viewing them in our current situation speaks collectively to fear and resilience. How has the context and meaning shifted for you viewing these works today?

FL: I posted the work L(over)s on Facebook as soon as news about Covid-19 came out. Davide and I are always sensitive to environmental issues. When we made that video, we thought about a possible future in which the air would not be safe for humans. We also reflected over the quantity of waste that contemporary life generates such as the abuse of plastic and other materials that are highly pollutant.

The positive thing about the Coronavirus situation is that it gives us the chance to see the real impact of our daily life over nature, air quality and the environment in general. We would not be able to see that in such a clear way, if this quarantine didn’t oblige us to stay at home and consequently stop using our cars, flying with planes, etc…

We work with symbols and that makes our videos interpretable in different ways. The mask is a strong symbol, with many meanings, and we have used it in different works. In Person-A for example, we used it as the social mask, the one we put on in order to defend ourselves from the others. Of course, thinking about the current situation, it can be interpreted differently, since we are all wearing real material masks that hide part of our faces. The surgical masks that most of the people are wearing to go outside are just a more obvious side of the social mask. Ideally our works will make people question themselves to think about their own situations and actions and how everything is interconnected and has consequences, as well as providing a chance for change and transformation .

CC: Your intermedia festival normally happens in April. Is that postponed or are you transferring the program to online?

FL: Davide and I, as organizers and artistic directors of the Ibrida Festival have held the festival at the end of April since 2015. At first we decided to postpone the festival to the 11-13th of September, thinking that maybe by that date everything might be back to normal. We don’t know if the Italian Government will give the permission to reopen festivals and events by September. So we are already thinking about a backup plan. We will not postpone the festival, but will transition it to a digital/streaming platform. In case the situation doesn’t change, we will have the live shows open to a few people and will stream the event through a specific web site that will be available during the festival dates. We are determined to keep it going in order to help artists and technicians that have been out of work due to the pandemic. Art and culture must continue and this is our contribution.

CC: What are your strategies for staying sane and not getting on your partner’s nerves during these times?

FL: Since we both have independent as well as collaborative projects, we work on our own during the day in separate rooms. We get up, start the day, then walk as if we were going to different “offices”. Then in the late afternoon, we start working together. The real problem is not being able to go out and have some social distractions. We are lucky, because we have enough space that we do not bother each other. For those who are living and working in cramped spaces, we offer the same mindset as any shared office- be respectful of each other’s space, share, admire and listen to your partner. This will be a tough time for all of us, but working together and separately will build our work/love in the future.

I have to confess that this quarantine is making me experiment more….in the kitchen. Cooking has become one of my new stress releasing pastimes and of course Davide is also what we call in Italy a “Good Fork”. But since we are performers we also bought a new indoor bicycle, so we can also exercise at home, which is another important stress release pastime, and keeps us in shape with all this eating.

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Francesca Leoni and Davide Mastrangelo, both video artists and filmmakers have been working together since 2011 in the field of videoart and video performance. Their practice is based on the dynamics of relationships, intended as the encounter and collision between two elements (that could be people, symbols, elements, male female, forces, etc…) and also the relationship of the human beings with the contemporary society. Their separate work includes filmmaking. Both have directed short films and documentaries. Their works were selected in many national and international festivals. In Italy they won the Cosua’s award for videoart with the work “Androgynous”. They are artistic directors and organizers of the Ibrida Festival of intermedia Arts since 2015.

For more videos by Francesca Leoni and Davide Mastrangelo →
Ibrida Festival delle arti intermediali →