Screening: ALTER

Index welcomes you to ALTER, a dialogue between and beyond two films, conceived by ALTER an Italian curatorial collective, composed of Guido Balzani, Andrea Ceresa, Martina Sara D’Alessio and Ester Maria d’Avossa.

The project invites those brave enough to listen, to hear the crescendo of whispers emanating from the deepest fissures in Western society. Economic, environmental, health, and political crises; despite the comforts of modern civilization, the contemporary world reveals itself as unexpectedly fragile. From these rifts, two films emerge: 37,5+ (Trentasette emmezzo più) (2020) and Surplus – Terrorized into Being Consumers (2003). During the event a limited-edition fanzine will be available in Italian and English. It includes a curatorial essay by the collective, an interview with Erik Gandini (Dir. Surplus, 2003), and a conversation with author John Zerzan, one of the central voices in Surplus, whose anarcho-primitivist philosophy offers a radical lens through which to reimagine modern civilization. The publication was made in collaboration with international artistic collective GK01.

In collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Stockholm.

Program

18:15 Introduction by the curatorial team of ALTER
18:30 Screening of the two films
19:30 Discussion with the directors and the curatorial team of ALTER

Films

37,5+ (Trentasetteemmezzo più) (6 min, 2020), ALTER
A short documentary created in isolation, a pastiche of the media language – particularly Italian – characteristic of the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is a sclerotic diary of alarmist reports that culminate to resemble the cacophony of air-raid sirens. The documentary was presented at several festivals, including The Next Generation Film Festival and the Asolo Art Film Festival.

Surplus – Terrorized into Being Consumers (52 min, 2003), Erik Gandini
Gandini’s 2003 “docummercial” (a hybrid documentary-advertisment) focuses on the concept of surplus to expose the contradictions of contemporary society. The work deliberately employs the emotional language of advertising in order to undermine “consumer confidence,” and was awarded the Silver Wolf Award at the IDFA 2003.

Biographies

ALTER is an Italian curatorial collective composed of Guido Balzani, Andrea Ceresa, Martina Sara D’Alessio and Ester Maria d’Avossa. Their collaborative practice focuses on contemporary crises – social, environmental, and existential – through artistic encounters that expose the fractures of the present. As guests of Index Foundation, the collective presents the self-titled event ALTER, its first international iteration in Stockholm.

GK01 operates in the liminal space between the internet and physical reality, the ethereal and the material. Exploring contemporary communication media – memes, screenshots, and smartphones as artistic tools – they develop new visual languages. Their work centers on the creation of communities, networks, and visual identities. Its members remain fluid, constantly shifting across Europe, blurring the lines between presence and absence, authorship and anonymity.

Erik Gandini (1967, Bergamo) is an Swedish-Italian documentary filmmaker and professor at Stockholm University of the Arts. Known for Surplus – Terrorized into Being Consumers (2003), Videocracy (2009), and After Work (2023).

John Zerzan (1943, Salem, Oregon) is an American anarchist philosopher and a leading voice of anarcho-primitivism. His writings, including Future Primitive (1994) and A People’s History of Civilization (2018), question the foundations of civilization and the alienation produced by technology and modernity.