Zeus machine. L’invincibile | Zapruder Filmmakersgroup

The video Zeus Machine. L’invincibile (2019) by Zapruder Filmmakersgroup, a collective composed by Monaldo Moretti, David Zamagni and Nadia Ranocchi, revisits the twelve labours of Hercules from a modern perspective. The mythological hero – embodied each time by a different character – finds himself immersed in key places in the contemporary urban landscape – such as gasoline stations and sports arenas – thus becoming a machine that expands and restricts the perception of duration, and plays with the idea of space and the way it is inhabited.

The power traditionally attributed to Hercules is unleashed through his relationship with modern machines, in a continuous reference to pop culture that has nourished the myth also through the various movies based on his story – one of which, Ben-Hur (1959) is filmed in the Cinecittà studios. 

Zeus Machine. L’invincibile invites the spectator to relate to the narratives that nourish mythologies, providing a new and revisited key to pass it on to a post-modern society. It also invites us to rethink the relationships that bind us to the contexts in which we live, to every place we visit, starting from the analysis of specific beliefs, all of which can be traced back to the concept of invincibility.

Zapruder Filmmakersgroup, Zeus machine manifesto, 2019
still
video 2k, audio 5+1, 74′
ph: Courtesy Zapruder Filmmakersgroup

Zeus Machine. L’invincibile is part of Quadriennale d’arte 2020. Fuori
curated by Sarah Cosulich and Stefano Collicelli Cagol
30 October 2020 – 18 July 2021

02/07/2021