John Di Stefano

Volgar Eloquio is a performance-based video work depicting the typing of a poem by Pasolini, Versi del Testamento (11969), in real-time. The poem describes Pasolini's inner solitude as he walks through the streets of Rome.

Sfuge presents fleeting glimpses of Pasolini as he walks through New York City, appropriating moments from Agnès Varda’s film Pasolini (1967).

MURMURATIONS (ROME) is a video that comments on history's ghostly spectre in the everyday. The video employs footage shot at two sites in Rome, Italy: MURMURATIONS (ROME) documents the act of walking through these historical sites as a means of critically reanimating their political and ideological significance today. Additionally, documentation of the intricately morphing formation of starlings in flight—called murmurations— that descend upon Rome in the evening, is presented along with excerpts from a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 'Le Cenere di Gramsci' (1954). ​Commissioned by CIRCUIT - Artist Film & Video Aotearoa New Zealand with the assistance of Creative New Zealand for the Thick Cinema project curated by Mercedes Vicente

Ponte (Verticale) appropriates a scene from Pasolini’s film Accattone (1961) which depicts the protagonist’s precarious dive into the Tiber River in Rome. The image is slowed down and durationally extended. This results in a suspension of the body across the surface of a vertically elongated screen.

Tra synthesizes the narrative of Pasolini’s film Teorema (1968) by highlighting its interstitial moments. The act of running that appears throughout the film is isolated and deployed to expose the film’s subtextual currents.