ogino:knauss

ogino:knauss is a collective signature adopted since 1995 by Manuela Conti, Michele Lancuba and Lorenzo Tripodi. The project started as Mutant Cinema Laboratory in a self-managed social centre in Florence. The parallel education as architects of some of its members and the political action in defense of threatened cultural spaces contributed in creating a wide field of activity including the critical relationship between image and spatial production and the participative use of media. ogino:knauss realizes films, performances, installations, events, exhibitions, books, graphics and websites, and collaborates with activists, artists and academics. Since 2006 its operative base lays in Berlin.

After the short film “Box for Micro- Esperimento Italiano” (16 mm, col. 1997) the production of the collective is increasingly contaminated with practices as experimental music, remix, vjing, photography, cartography and graphic design. Its main activity turns into the exploration of fringe and conflicted spaces, expanding the situationist derive practice with the use of new media and the production of live events. Prototype of such an approach is Extreme Urban Ratio (2000), an urban crossing of Florence from edge to edge re-presented in form of multi screen video concert. The following season of urban explorations will be gathered in the anthological project Triplicity, developing also innovative interactive DVD solutions. The successive project Urban Skin focuses on the practice of urban dermatology, that is the analysis of signs manifesting on urban surfaces as a way to capture deeper inner tensions. Since 2006 Ogino Knauss has been entering a new phase of explorations of global suburbia with the project Re:centering periphery, aimed to interpret the contribution of modernist ideology in creating the conditions in which most of the global population lives today, and the everyday practices challenging and transforming these spaces. The first documentary film Doble Forza has been awarded as the best international documentary at the Istanbul Architecture Film Festival in 2008 and at Sezze Videofest. In 2013 the second episode Dom Novogo Byta has been released.