Vanina Saracino

Vanina Saracino (b. 1984, Italy, she/they) is an independent curator, film programmer, writer, and lecturer.
Her work focuses on theories and art practices that explicitly question anthropocentric and binary worldviews from an ecological perspective, with an emphasis on lens-based and time-based art practices. Her latest project is Other Minds, the fourth edition of the Screen City Biennial (Archenhold Observatory and other venues, Berlin, 2022 + Oslo TBC, 2023), curated with Daniela Arriado. Since 2021, she teaches at the Institute of Time-based Art – IZM, Universität der Künste (UdK), Berlin, with Prof. Nina Fischer.

In 2019, she co-curated the Screen City Biennial, Ecologies – Lost, Found and Continued (Stavanger, Norway), and edited the SCB Journal, Vol.2. She is the co-founder of OLHO (with Alessandra Bergamaschi), a project about contemporary art and cinema initiated in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (2015–2018). From 2013 to 2017 she curated monthly selections of artists’ video works on the experimental television channel ikonoTV, being in charge of collaborations with museums and festivals worldwide. Among these, in 2015 she initiated Art Speaks Out, a yearly exhibition project on ecology also shown at Istanbul Modern (2015) and at the Marrakech Climate Change Conference (COP 22, 2016).

She has collaborated with Kumu Art Museum and EKKM (Tallinn), Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi (Venice), TBA21 – Academy, Cinemateca Brasileira (São Paulo), Cinemateca do MAM (Rio de Janeiro), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg), The EYE Film Institute (Amsterdam), and Centro Párraga (Murcia), among others. Saracino has realized residencies at Artport (Tel Aviv, 2022), Q21 – MuseumsQuartier (Vienna, 2021), Fire Station Artists’ Studios (Dublin, 2019), CPR – Curatorial Program for Research (Reykjavik, Tórshavn, Tromsø, Boden, Luleå, Hyrynsalmi, Helsinki, 2018), GENERATOR – 40mcube/EESAB (Rennes, 2018), and was awarded research visiting grants by ProHelvetia (Switzerland, 2018), Goethe-Institut (NYC, 2018), The Danish Art Foundation (Copenhagen, 2018 and 2017) and Frame Contemporary Art Finland (Helsinki and Turku, 2019), among others.

Graduated in Communication Sciences with a thesis in the semiotics of photography, she holds an MA in Arts Management (GIOCA, Università di Bologna) and in Philosophy and Art Theory (UAB, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona). Since 2015, Saracino has been a member of IKT – International Association of Curators.

Works

Screen City Biennial

2022, Berlin, Germany

Metahaven, Capture, Archenhold Observatory, Albert Einstein Saal

Photo by Marjorie Brunet-Plaza

Tiger in Space

2020, at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM).

Participating artists: Martta Tuomaala, Karl Sjölund, Jeremy Shaw, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Eduardo Navarro, Iggy Malmborg, Julian Charrière, Kristina Õllek, Ana Vaz

Kristina Õllek, Powered By (2020). Installation shot. Photo: Kristina Õllek

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel

2019, at the Kino Artis. Organized by CCA, Tallinn, Estonia

Participating artists: Mark Leckey, Basim Magdy, Kristina Õllek, Agnieszka Polska, Semiconductor, Andrew Norman Wilson

Tidal Pulse

2018, AMIFF – Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival, Harstad, Norway

Enrique Ramírez

Earthly Mutations Films from the Near Future

2018, Salzburger Kunstverein, Sunset Kino, Salzburg, Austria

Participating artists: Manu Luksch, Michael Snow, Bjørn Melhus, Bady Minck, Fabrizio Terranova.

OLHO

2015–2018, Several venues

Participating artists: Adrian Paci, Agnieszka Polska, Ali Cherri, Ana Vaz, Anri Sala, Basim Magdy, Ben Rivers, Cao Guimãraes, Carlos Motta, Clément Cogitore, Enrique Ramírez, Gabriel Mascaro, Guido Van der Werve, Fiona Tan, Graeme Arnfield, Jesper Just, Jonathas de Andrade, Júlio Cavani, Laurent Grasso, Leticia Ramos, Luiz Roque, Marc Johnson, Mario Garcia Torres, Mika Taanila, Mihai Grecu, Naïmé Perrette, The Otolith Group, Pietro Fortuna, Regina Parra, Reynold Reynolds, Rivane Neuenschwander, Salla Tykkä, Sebastian Díaz Morales, Shingo Yoshida, Tamar Guimarães, Tanya Busse, Tuomas A. Laitinen, Yael Bartana, Yuri Firmeza

Fragmented Vision

2018, The New Gallery, Musrara – Multidisciplinary School of Arts and Society, Jerusalem

Participating artists: Elena Mazzi and Sara Tirelli, Saverio Cantoni, Lior Gal

The Impossibility of an Island

2017, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Participating artists: Ursula Biemann, Isabelle Hayeur, Michelle Claire Gevint, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Sara Tirelli, Fiona Tan

The Crisis of the Horizon

2018, Small Projects, Tromsø (Norway)

Participating artists: Agnieszka Polska, Emilija Škarnulytė, Jenny-Marie Johnsen, Simon Faithfull

ikonoTV

2013–2017, various venues

Participating artists: Regina José Galindo, Cao Guimarães, Sebastian Díaz Morales, Ubermorgen, Olga Chernysheva, AES+F, Wenfeng Liao, Nina Kurtela, Sara Tirelli and Elena Mazzi, Levi van Veluw, Jaques Perconte, Chris Coleman, Joe Hamilton, Nicolas Rupcich, Johanna Reich, Pierce Warnecke, Kurt Hentschläger, Mounir Fatmi, Laleh Mehran, Mateo Amaral, Claudia Hart, Daniel Canogar, Niklas Goldbach, Astrid Nippoldt, Thorsten Fleisch, Boris Labbé, Syntfarm, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, Thomas Köner, Quayola, Sergio Belinchón, Carlos Casas, Lars Jan, Irene Fenara, Ange Leccia, William Lamson, Markus Hoffmann, Lisa Weber, Michael Najjar, Enrique Ramírez, Romy Pocztaruk, Ursula Biemann, Janet Laurence, Simon Faithfull, Antti Laitinen, Carlotta Piccinini, Ma Qiusha, William Kentridge, Larissa Sansour, Isabelle Hayeur, Hehe (Helene Evans and Heiko Hansen), Oto Hudec, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Michele Spanghero, Francesca Leoni and Davide Mastrangelo, Jaan Toomik, Richard T. Walker, Flatform, Shingo Yoshida, Miquel Garcia, Lohner Carlson, Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker, Patrick Topitschnig, Stefan Panhans, Polina Kanis, Alexander Ponomarev, Ori Gersht, David Blandy, Shigeo Arikawa, Orit Raff, Olivier Dollinger, Liina Siib, among others.

Lost Dimension

2017, Harstad Kino, Harstad, Norway

Participating artists: Sebastian Díaz Morales, Graeme Arnfield, Agnieszka Polska, Nicolas Rupcich, David Blandy and Larry Achiampong, Christopher Kulendran Thomas and The Mycological Twist