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Barbara Agreste
(Italy)
 
::Bio::
Barbara Agreste was born in Pescara in 1971, she first approaches art-making in the Art Lyceum of her town, and after completing the course she goes to Milan to attend a scenography course in the Academy of Arts. Very soon she decides that the cultural atmosphere in Italy is not in tune with her idea of freedom of expression, and at the age of 23 she leaves it for London where for some time she works as a performer for "Rawhead Dance Theatre". In 1996 Barbara enrolls in Kent Institute of Art & Design taking as her subject of study “Film & Video Production”. After graduating in July 2000 she has access to the MA course in Fine Art at Central St. Martins College of Art & Design in London where she is awarded the Master of Arts in September 2004. Since then Barbara has continued producing films and paintings, exhibiting and attending film festivals in UK, Italy and abroad. Barbara lives and works in London although her visits to Italy are very frequent.
 
 

 

 

 

 
   

::Synopsis::

  
The Tower Trilogy has three titles that originated in Italian: "La Torre, Le Formiche, Lo Specchio" and they translate this way in english :
"The Tower, The Insects, The Mirror". 

This animation is made with 16 mm film, and DV video, and it is very abstract although some figures appear now and then on the screen. It is a work in which I explore the state of hysteria. 

It starts with "La Torre", a 3D animation presenting a claustrophobic space in which some objects rotate on themselves on a chequered floor. This piece is expressing a sense of prisony and oppression, from which a first stage of hysteria appears identified with the worms crossing the room. 
The theme of hysteria manifests more directly in the struggle of the second section: "Le Formiche", in which a succession of images of shaking hair, falling flowers, black paint on canvas, and frenetic body movements inhabit the screen.  
The third part of the trilogy, "Lo Specchio", revolves around the theme of death and purification in a settings very similar to the first piece "La Torre", just this time the atmosphere is different because the struggle and the tension are now gone in the room with the chequered floor. Also the light has changed, from night it has become daylight, and while dead flowers keep falling together with fragments of mirror, everything else is unmoving waiting for the outburst of rain, the sole element that can clean and restore hope to the sense of anguish of the entire film.