Issue 00 — Spring 2025
/8
Mammafotogramma
on the movement within the image
In a time that moves fast, Mammafotogramma studio takes us through their practice — frame by frame — where the stop-motion technique is not simply a language but also a magnifying glass, a magical ritual, and a method of investigating reality. From the inner workings of a mechanical bird to the concept of friction, we journey with Gianluca Lo Presti and Giulio Masotti through their personal history of cinema.
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GALLERY
You’re a hybrid team cutting across multiple disciplines and are insatiably curious, and passionate about your practice. Your atelier is like an ever-changing film set. A space where time unfolds, experiences overlap, and a new story emerges with every visit. Your studio defies the classic “boxes” of contemporary art, moving instead toward open and nonlinear formats.
MF When we started working together in 2008, animation was a technique we only knew in theory. We come from the worlds of cinema and architecture — two very different practices, but both rooted in the careful, painstaking construction of a vision.
We approached stop-motion lightly — we followed a basic desire to set inert matter in motion and give it the illusion of life. And the deeper we went into the process, the more we realised that this technique, for us, became something more: a way of investigating the world.
Since then, we’ve never stopped, and continued our frame-by-frame journey.
In one of our earliest works, frames were printed on paper, hand-cut, and reanimated one by one. We still remember those days in the studio, as we tracked the contours of each silhouette with our eyes. That’s when we understood the importance of slowness.
Taking time to make things to truly understand the emergence of form. And stop-motion is an unforgiving technique: it teaches you to think with your hands, to put your physical body into every step of image making. It’s a meditative but also formative practice, one that forces you to respect the complexity of the material you work with. In this sense, frame-by-frame had become more than a choice of technique, but a statement of intent.
Stop-motion is an unforgiving technique: it teaches you to think with your hands, to put your physical body into every step of image making.
In your work, the moving image isn’t just a visual effect — it’s a form of inquiry. From stop-motion to multimedia installations, it seems you are developing a language that cuts across space and the senses, at times even across species. What does it mean for you to transform movement into form?
MF It has always been more of a conceptual question than an experiential one. Alexandre Alexeieff said that half the time we spend watching a film, we’re watching a black screen. The projection that takes place inside us, more than in front of us, is where we direct our attention. It all starts from a visual illusion: cinema as a series of static images that simulate flow. And in this void — in the space between frames — meaning takes shape.
We believe that in the hum of an always-on present, this awareness can bring something radical to our lives. It’s this pause that gives shape to movement — like a spiral spring that sets the gears in motion in our studio.
From this inner and dreamlike space, we moved beyond the screen. We began to work with movement not just of images, but of objects, of the viewer, of space itself. That’s how our first interactive installations were born: by setting the real world in motion, one scene at a time.
The latest project we’re working on is a mechanical forest, inhabited by animals: as we speak with you, multiple pieces of gear — soon to be covered in fabric — are scattered in every corner of the studio. Working on it has felt like returning to the origins of cinema, when complex movements, like flight or running, were studied in an effort to grasp what had never been fully seen before.
Half the time we spend watching a film, we’re watching a black screen. The projection that takes place inside us, more than in front of us, is where we direct our attention.
The history of the moving image is a story of obsessions and desires — like wanting to slow down an instant — or of technologies that reveal what can’t be seen with the naked eye. How has this influenced your practice?
MF We’re fascinated by the earliest gestures of cinema — those that weren’t yet narratives, but attempts to see the invisible. Take Eadweard Muybridge and his experiment with the galloping horse: one of the first attempts to capture and “freeze” movement. The intent wasn’t artistic — it started from a question: is there a moment when all four legs of the horse are off the ground?
To find out, he lined up twenty-four cameras along the racing track, each triggered by a thread the animal would activate as it ran past. The result was iconic, a sequence of images that became foundational in the history of image making.
The horse did indeed lift off the ground — but not as painters had imagined until then: its legs didn’t stretch outward, but folded beneath its body.
Then there was Étienne-Jules Marey — a wizard inventor known as “the fool of Posillipo.” He wandered around Naples with his chronophotographic gun — which he built himself — ‘hunting’ birds: not by shooting bullets, but catching images. He was trying to understand their flight. Poetry and scientific research converged beautifully in his photos — they were incredible and pioneering aerodynamic studies.
At its core, our work always starts from the same impulse: a need to see more clearly.
Each project begins as an idea, takes form as an object, and eventually becomes movement.
Today we build mechanical installations, complex worlds. But the spirit remains the same. For us, making is a process of investigation, never an end in itself.
In the studio, we study different natural forms — plants, animals — refined by millions of years of evolution. We try to replicate them, or at least question their essential form and qualities, using human tools. And every time, we’re struck by how extraordinary they are.
We’re fascinated by the earliest gestures of cinema — those that weren’t yet narratives, but attempts to see the invisible.
You often upend the idea of authorship — as if something were speaking through you. What was the most valuable lesson you have learned from working in this way?
MF In a studio like ours, authorship isn’t a matter of signing a name. It’s true — we often feel more like mediators than creators, more like ventriloquists than directors. We stage worlds — animated sets, abstract films, complex environments — that connect images, materials, and space. And in these worlds, a film or an artwork belongs to the idea itself more than to those who make it.
This way of working is also a learning practice — and it is founded on a concept we care deeply about: friction. It’s something that we encounter in every project, from beginning to end. From the moment a pencil touches the paper to when pieces of gear interact for the first time inside a machine.
Working with matter and movement means constantly dealing with simple but decisive forces, like gravity or resistance. Every gesture, every connection between parts, carries weight and consequence.
This is true also of the way we interact as a team in the studio. And of course it also applies to the political and social dynamics we navigate as citizens.
Working at our scale — small, slow, but very concrete and complex — you start to see just how much of the world escapes our understanding.