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©2025 elleemme studio
Kaiserpanorama
location
year
status
collaborators
Crotone, Italy
2024
completed
Giada De Martino - curator
Installed inside the Torre Aiutante of Castello Carlo V in Crotone, KAISERPANORAMA is an exhibition that reactivates an obsolete optical device to explore the boundaries of eroticism in cinema. The project, curated by Giada De Martino and designed by elleemmestudio, unfolds as a visual and spatial essay on desire, intimacy, and representation.
The title refers to the original Kaiserpanorama, a 19th-century stereoscopic viewing machine that allowed multiple viewers to simultaneously access exotic images and, occasionally, some of the earliest erotic scenes. Echoing this circular apparatus, the exhibition invites visitors to re-engage with the erotic as a cultural, cinematic, and philosophical construct.
elleemmestudio’s design transforms the medieval tower into a contemplative loop. A circular layout guides the public through archival photographs, films, and text fragments, balancing historical material and critical discourse. The space is intentionally raw, allowing the emotional and symbolic layers of the content to emerge. The scenography merges exhibition and graphic design, integrating light, seating, and visual rhythm into a coherent narrative flow.
The show features a documentary selection of on-set photographs by Angelo Novi, capturing iconic moments from Last Tango in Paris (1973), 1900 (1976), and Love Circle (1969). Works by Antonio Benetti expand the gaze to One on Top of the Other (1969), while a video installation of Stripe Girl (1974) by Lino Del Frà introduces a feminist and experimental lens to the theme of female pleasure and mass consumption.
KAISERPANORAMA is more than an exhibition, it is a research platform where cinema becomes the terrain for aesthetic and intellectual provocation. It draws a bold line between eroticism and pornography, between sensuality and spectacle, embracing eroticism as what Georges Bataille called "the affirmation of life, even in the face of death."
Through space, images, and structure, the exhibition challenges perception and invites collective contemplation. It is both a tribute to and a reinvention of the erotic gaze.