[Thirteenth] Harun Farocki Resident: Beatrice Zerbato

The call for applications for the 2026 Harun Farocki Residency took place in the spring. The jury, consisting of Bianca Bozzeda (Kultur Ensemble Palermo), Clio Nicastro (HaFI), and Stefanie Schulte Strathaus (Arsenal Film Institute), selected Beatrice Zerbato and her project “Puzzle Therapy” (working title). Beatrice Zerbato will spend three months in Berlin this summer working on the further development of her project. The Harun Farocki Residency is a collaboration between Kultur Ensemble Palermo (Goethe-Institut Palermo and Institut français Palermo), Arsenal Filminstitut, and Harun Farocki Institut.

Biography

After earning her degree in film studies from the University of Turin, Beatrice Zerbato worked as a photographer, archivist, and independent researcher for various institutions and projects. Her research explores archives as active tools that not only preserve stories but can also create new relationships and political imaginaries. Since 2023, she has lived in Palermo, where she co-curates Nuovo Orfeo with founder Beatrice Gibson, an independent project dedicated to cinema and experimental music. Nuovo Orfeo conceives of the film program as a research method and as a space for knowledge production outside institutional frameworks, focusing on non-commercial, forgotten, censored, or little-known works with a feminist orientation.

Short Project Description

“Puzzle Therapy” (working title) is a research project dedicated to experimental cinema from the 1970s to the 1990s, with a particular focus on feminist practices and works that have been excluded from mainstream narratives. The project originated within the framework of Nuovo Orfeo, a program for experimental cinema based in Palermo was founded in 2021 by artist and director Beatrice Gibson, and is being developed through research in the archives of the Arsenal Filminstitut in Berlin. By utilizing the program as a research method and the archive as a space for encounter and the exploration of new paths, the project culminates in a series of public programs and screenings, accompanied by a publication that examines artistic practices and curatorial approaches to the moving image and expands the dialogue between independent program initiatives, institutional contexts, and archival structures. The working title “Puzzle Therapy” is borrowed from the 1976 short film of the same name by Annabella Miscuglio, which serves as a starting point and provides a curatorial framework as well as an initial cinematic reference for the project’s orientation. By evoking a nonlinear, fragmentary, and assemblage-based method for representing and understanding reality, the title is intended to reflect the research process itself.

The Harun Farocki Residency is a collaboration between Kultur Ensemble Palermo (Goethe-Institut Palermo and Institut français Palermo), Arsenal Filminstitut, and Harun Farocki Institut.