In the release of her first collaborative project, a video titled SIG NUM X MACAO, Photographer and visual artist Martina Cora alongside two other creatives explore the center of cultures in Milan, Macao. This project acts as a tribute to everything that has made up this cultural center and encapsulates absolutely everything Macao has meant to anyone it has touched. Martina speaks on shifting her focus next onto her corporate work and creating new perspectives through the photography medium.

How did you turn photography into a career?
What career? Totally kidding, it’s still in the making I guess! I’ve always been drawn to reportage and documentary photography, mainly because I’m an observer and a pretty curious person. I like to find strange stories to tell. In photography for me, the best solution was corporate because I can easily maintain a detached point of view while empathizing with my surroundings and trying to depict it in an unusual way that can be more appealing to the eye.

What is your creative process when it comes to conceptualizing a new project?
I’m intrigued by the translation between different media and the difference created in between, I often put myself first as a medium (not that kind), and then try to convert it into a specific media (photography, video, installation, sculpture and so on), every time it’s different and unexpected and I don’t like to overanalyze it, but rather let it take form spontaneously and grow.

Are the pieces you create as corporate work just as personal to you like your other pieces?That’s a good question and I don’t know the answer! I think the approach is different, but at the end of the day, the result has the same value as a personal piece. Corporate work in my case it’s inherently linked to photography and so that’s the only medium I can use to express a specific concept. In some ways, it is even more challenging because you have to dance around it to make it work and so I often find it very stimulating. On the other hand personal work for me is like a really deep dive into my consciousness, I have to keep both up to make it both work.

You’ve mentioned you spend a lot of time with technology because of your work. Do you have a great appreciation for the opportunities technology can bring or is there resentment in the time you have spent with it?

I think I’m pretty ok with technology, it is a huge part of my life and pretty much of everybody’s life nowadays. I really like how we’re living in it at the same time it is growing and evolving, so that we can really feel like we have a role in all this, but I tend not to think about it a lot, I prefer being a user, literally.

How long did it take to create DORR in total?
SIG NUM X MACAO was a big deal because we had a month to develop the whole thing and it was my first time working in a team on a personal project that was initially just mine and then evolved into something bigger and customized on a specific place: Macao (not the city, the center of cultures in Milan). We divided our tasks, I was in charge of producing the visuals, Carlotta Menozzi recorded some vocals on the field and Andrea Reni developed the software that contains my visuals and Carlotta’s vocals. It puts them together randomly and creates a different combination of images and sounds every time. It was very emotional also because Macao was under threat to be vacated so it was kind of a tribute from us to the place, an attempt to give it a voice.

What is the meaning behind the video? There seemed to be a stable sense of progression throughout the film.
The meaning is the story of the place itself, everything you see and hear throughout the several combinations of video that came out, it’s a mirror of the place and of the people who lived/live in it. Every trace, sign, and piece of dirt creates an alphabet that ideally would speak to everyone, from a detail to the universe.

What is next for Martina Corà this year?
On this very Friday I’ll be leaving for Istanbul where they kindly invited me to take part in a collective exhibition where I’ll be showing both In Crescendo and a site-specific SIGNUM, I’m pretty stoked by this fresh news and can’t wait to be there. After that, I think I’ll take a break from my personal works and focus on some corporate.. the wheel, once again, turns.