DIEGO BRUNO

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in Dublin, Ireland has collaborated with HIAP for eleven years, supporting a total of 17 artists and curators from Ireland and Finland to undertake new work through the exchange programme. Diego Bruno’s seven-week residency period in Dublin was based around production and post-production for a new film and publication.

AA: The film that you worked on while in Dublin, focuses on investigating a specific location. What made you want to work on this project in Dublin, which is not the area the film concerns itself with?

DB: I received the invitation to go to Dublin 2 weeks after completing the shooting for the film. It felt a good idea to go to a unrelated context that, on the other hand offered the time to focus on the editing of the material. I suppose, that unfamiliar surroundings, new set of references around the material I was working with, was envisioned by me as the possibility to push the editing, the material and the whole film towards formal explorations that I wanted to work with, surpassing the informational.

AA: Were your working routines different during your time in Dublin? Some artists report more productivity yet an increased ability to relax while at an artists’ residency.

DB: I did have more time to work than what is my routine in Helsinki. Specially the afternoons, as in HKI I spend them with my son, there I had the opportunity to keep on working.

AA: Was you work influenced by the time you spent working in Dublin? If yes, in what ways?

DB: Yes, it was, the editing process got accelerated to deep levels of productive reflection on the material. I am sure that showed on the final work. That was possible due to the intensive time work I was allowed to enter.  Another particular influence was an archive at the Trinity College to which I had access, and which became very relevant for the piece.

AA: Do you plan on returning to Dublin? Perhaps showing your work there

DB: Yes, I wish, and there are some conversations about it.

AA: How do you feel you benefited from the exchange?

DB: The time and focus given to the work process was of intense benefit. There was specific material I gather in Dublin itself for the film, that became relevant as well. But also, I got to know other artists and curators, engaging in dialogues of great interest, and with whom we did already collaborated on some occasion, after the residency.

AA: What are you currently working on? Are you continuing to develop any of your ideas which may have first come to you while in Ireland?

DB: Right now, I work on two new film productions and a publication. They are meant to be first presented in Berlin and Stockholm. The works revolve around ideas of legislation, the law, riots, crisis of representation and madness. I can’t say the ideas came from Ireland, they are rather a development of a constant investigation, thinking and practice.