MARCO BRAMBILLA

By Emily Siegfried

Biography• Born in Milan, Lombardy, Italy

in 1960

• Raised in Toronto, Canada

• Currently lives and works in both New York City, New York and Berlin, Germany

• First experienced his love for videography after creating his own movie at age 16

• Attended Ryerson University in Toronto, where he studied film

Early Career• Began his career in by working on commercials and feature films in Hollywood

and New York City for a brief period of time

• Demolition Man (1993) Brambilla’s directorial debut came when he was only 28 years old Film stars Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes, who play a police officer and a

criminal who are cryogenically frozen in 1996 and restored to life in 2032 where the world as they knew it changed completely

• Excess Baggage (1997) One of Brambilla’s final Hollywood blockbusters before shifting his artistic focus Plot of the movie revolves around a spoiled girl played by Alicia Silverstone who is so

desperate for her absent father’s attention that she fakes her own kidnapping, but ends up getting kidnapped for real

• In 1998, Brambilla broke away from big films and went back to the art world “I just had a sense that it wasn’t really fulfilling for me creatively and I went back to

making things that were more personal and that I was more passionate about. I didn’t feel like it was a filmmaker’s medium anymore in 1993. It was becoming much more of a producer’s medium.”

Visual and Installation Artistry• After leaving the major scene, Brambilla shifted his focus to creating

his own independent artworks

• Preferred medium is videography and is most known for his re-contextualizations of found imagery Vanity Fair described his work as “masterpieces of visual overload”

• Implements new technologies such as 3D, LiDAR computer mapping, and photo-realistic computer simulations to further enhance his work

• Brambilla has had his work shown all across the globe Had works shown in exhibitions in Sweden, South Korea, New York, China,

Toronto, and Turkey Currently has permanent collections in the Guggenheim Museum (NYC) and

the Corcoran Gallery of Art (DC)

• Recipient of the Colbert Foundation Award (2000) and the Tiffany Comfort Foundation Award (2002)

Wall of Death (2001)• Playing off of the popular circus act,

which typically involves motorcyclist driving on a vertical surface and performing stunts while relying on centrifugal force and gravity to keep them from crashing

• Footage was taken and later edited to loop The looping motions shorten as the clip

continues, which creates the effect of constant motion

• Brambilla revealed that the clip was shot from a mounted camera in the center and one that was on the rotating motorcyclist

• Utilizes methods not unlike a zoetrope!

HalfLife (2002)• A multi-channel video installation that

explores the relationship between real life and fiction

• Juxtaposes gamers at their computers and the game they are playing As the characters are killed off in the

game on the right, the player controlling them on the left is replaced

“A virtual cycle of life” is depicted

• Possibly one of Brambilla’s most gruesome and eye-opening works

• Demonstrates the effect that video games have the power to create The players are like zombies, while their

characters are firing weapons and sprinting from place to place

Megaplex Series• 3-part video series that takes

place in an alternate universe

• Combines various movie scenes that the general public is easily able to identify (but it sometimes takes patience to find within the collage)

• While he was no longer directing feature films, Brambilla’s new age of art incorporates famous movies

• Artistic goal is for the works to be seen as “more satirical, more critical of commercialism”

Civilization (2008)

Evolution (2010)

Creation (2012)

Power (2010)• Kanye West commissioned Marco Brambilla

to direct the music video for his song, Power

• Demonstrates continuous camera movement that begins with a close up of Kanye’s face and then zooms out to reveal more of the scene

• Characters and various creatures surround him and move in slow-motion, which creates a framing effect

• Video draws inspiration from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings

• Brambilla describes the video as “depicting a faux historical moment – an empire on the brink of collapse from its own excess, decadence and corruption” and “apocalyptic in nature, stating that the video exaggerated the message of the song”

RPM (2011) • Ferrari commissioned Marco

Brambilla to create a video advertising their brand

• Contains a variety of video clips which results in a 3D kaleidoscopic-esque film Majority were filmed at the Italian

Formula One Grand Prix in Monza, Italy Layered photos and footage from

Ferrari archives and broadcasts

• The video is presented from the perspective of a racer’s point-of-view during a race

• Oftentimes, the video is labeled as “a hyper-sensory psychological portrait”

Questions• Can you understand Marco Brambilla’s decision to leave

feature films behind to pursue his own creative passion?

• HalfLife was made at the beginning of the Internet age, but does the message of how technology effects us remain the same? Or has it changed with the creation of new media?

• What do you think about Marco Brambilla’s recent, more commercial works for big names such as Kanye West and Ferrari?

Sources• http://www.marcobrambilla.com/bio/

• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0104193/

• http://www.ganzomag.com/marco-brambilla-the-dark-lining-santa-monica-museum-of-art.html

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk1

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119086/

• http://the-talks.com/interviews/marco-brambilla/

• http://www.marcobrambilla.com/work/

• http://www.marcobrambilla.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ART-in-AMERICA.pdf

• http://www.marcobrambilla.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/LATimes-3.jpg