Curated by Sara Fumagalli and Valentina Gervasoni

The GAMeC - Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo presents, for the first time in an Italian institution, the video trilogy When Dreams Become Necessity by Driant Zeneli (Shkoder, Albania, 1983).

When Dreams Become Necessity includes three short-lived videos that document as many performative actions carried out by the artist himself. In all cases, Zeneli tries to fulfill three desires, three dreams that are probably impossible to realize, suggesting that the inevitable failure is only the gateway to possible alternatives.

In the first video, The Dream of Icarus Was to Make a Cloud (2009), the artist attempts to create a cloud by flying a paraglider; in the second, Some Say the Moon Is Easy to Touch… (2011), he launches into a bungee jump in an attempt to touch the moon, on the night when the satellite is at the minimum distance from the Earth; in the last one, Don't Look at the Sun while You're Expecting to Cross it (2014), Zeneli decides to cross the sun by traveling on a cableway after the comet Lovejoy has crossed the sun's atmosphere, leaving it intact.

In the three videos, the performative actions end in a short time, revealing the underlying illusion. Most of the images are dedicated to the preparation phase, loading the time before the action with tension and expectations, and placing the accent on the commitment and willpower necessary for the realization of enterprises considered impossible.

All the performative actions - jumping into the void, flying with a paraglider, launching at full speed hooked up to a cableway - involve a certain degree of danger and courage. The shooting modality itself, with the hand-held camera, helps to create an immersive dimension, to give the sensation of being physically present next to the artist when he is about to perform his actions.

These aspects once again underline the resolve and determination necessary to achieve utopian goals, but perhaps, even more so, indispensable to accept the possibility of failure. The trilogy When Dreams Become Necessity, as a whole, constitutes a reflection on failure, intended not as an end but as an opportunity to imagine still unexplored paths and welcome the stimulus of new challenges.