Since 2019, video artist and filmmaker Rebecca Salvadori has been experimenting with the convergence of performance, moving image, and live filming, drawing from her deep-rooted cinematic research within London’s experimental music ecosystems. Messengers emerges as a site-specific, multifaceted film-in-the-making, unfolding across multiple dimensions: a hybrid film experience that is simultaneously a self-portrait, a portrait of a group of artists, of different music scenes, of a city in a specific moment of time.
As part of cover me softly, the 2024 edition of the Beta Architecture Biennial, and in collaboration with the 19th edition of Simultan Festival Desire for the Useless, Salvadori will present a screening of Messengers, featuring footage of Kenichi Iwasa, Maxwell Sterling, GAISTER (Olivia Salvadori, Coby Sey, and Akihide Monna), Charlie Hope, Elaine Tam, Nhu Xuan Hua, and Henerico Rossi. The screening will be followed by a conversation between the artist, the curatorial team of cover me softly, and the audience.
Messengers is part of a large video archive of relations and experimental music documentation that Salvadori has built over the last 14 years (2010–24). Messengers was commissioned by PAF Olomouc, Festival of Film Animation and Contemporary Art in 2022 and has developed thanks to the support of Marsèll Paradise, Milan (2023), Norient Festival, Dampfzentrale Bern, Switzerland (2024), and in partnership with Tutto Questo Sentire.
