Two performers are asked to completely depersonalize, to work with dissociation of meaning, to create a different reality governed by random rules. In order to see the world they might try to stop the world. The core of the performance is rooted in a series of interviews, in which people with synesthesia, autism and transgender children talk about their sensorial bodily experiences. In “Aftertaste” the body becomes unformed, disjointed and made up of infinite particles of information, creating an impression of a constant coming back. The information travels with multiple speeds, forward and backward, through the bodies and the sound machines. “Aftertaste” premiered in eXplore dance festival #10 at WASP-Working Art Space and Production and was further presented at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, FIX Theatre Iasi, REACTOR Theatre Cluj-Napoca, Ambasada Timisoara, dotdotdot festival Vienna.

Tangaj Dance (RO)

Simona Deaconescu was born in 1987. She studied both Choreography and Film Directing in Bucharest. In 2014 she was granted the danceWEB scholarship by the Life Long Burning Network. Simona continued her artistic research through residencies offered by Gabriela Tudor Foundation, 4Culture, Battery Dance New York and Forum Dança. In 2016 she received The National Center of Dance Bucharest Award for her contribution to the growth of Romanian contemporary dance. In 2017 she was nominated as an Aerowaves Twenty18 artist with her latest creation: “Counterbody”. In 2013 she founded Tangaj Dance Collective, an independent dance company. Her works have been presented in festivals from Europe, Asia, North and South America. Simona has been teaching dance technique and composition since 2010 and in the last three years she started developing her own movement method. Since 2015 she is the artistic director of Bucharest International Dance Film Festival.

With the patronage of: Accademia di Romania a Roma

At a time when Arab countries are bleeding away their creative capital with the departure, emigration, or exiling of pioneering intellectuals and artists, one wonders on the future of their practices and legacies. We pose a question: can the institution of the ministry of culture be rehabilitated to serve this new diffuse community of art producers and serve a locus of cultural production outside of the traditional boundaries of the nation? Can the institution evolve to meet the needs of an artistic and cultural community that is, at least temporarily, extra-territorial? And can it help to rebuild shattered national ministries on artists’ terms? Built as an imaginary ministry that supports contemporary artistic creation of displaced and refugee Arab artists, ETMAC is Adam Kucharski’s brainchild in collaboration with HaRaKa’s performance theorist and artist Adham Hafez. It operates as a fictitious entity that runs programs, gives consultancy to institutions on issues of cultural policy and financial planning, and presents lecture-performances. Set between the worlds of institutional making, performance theory, and strategic financial planning, ETMAC is a unique interdisciplinary project. Currently the ministry studies the future of areas as diverse as America’s rust belt, Napoli’s downtown, and New York City’s East Village. ETMAC articulates the contemporary urban challenge as a complex mesh system produced by late capitalism, post-colonialist aches, looming natural and economic disasters, and the failure to accept cities as spaces of polity rather than playgrounds of capital. For Napoli, ETMAC sets up an ephemeral structure that looks into the dynamics of cultural representation, gentrification, and city heritage at times of displacement.

Hafez/Kucharski (US/EG)

Adham Hafez, HaRaKa’s performance theorist and artist, investigates choreography, performance and sound through live acts, installations, publications, screenings and performances. With work that was installed and performed in reputable venues and contexts including Damascus Opera House, Hebbel Am Ufer, German Dance Congress, Impulstanz Vienna, Cairo Opera House, and MoMA PS1, the diverse work reflects on historical ruptures, critical density, rituals, and the condition of being an Arab subject within myopic discourses. Hafez is currently a PhD candidate at the New York University department of Performance Studies.

Adam Kucharski is an urbanist, artist, and civic policy innovator working at the nexus of public space creation and civic institution building. Adam has been a leading voice for the role of strong civic institutions in the rehabilitation and regeneration of urban cores across the Middle East, and has advised on the creation of innovative urban policies for inclusive and resilient cities. Adam’s artistic and policy interventions in places like Cairo, Jerusalem, and Utrecht have focused on policies and programs that take into account citizens’ rights, equity, cultural production, and environmental justice. Adam is the founder of Kuchar&Co, a uniquely hybrid artist platform that mobilizes collaboration with artists, scholars, and urbanists to inform and advise urban and social policy. Adam has degrees from the University of Chicago and MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

With the support of: STEP travel grants, an initiative by the European Cultural Foundation with the support of Compagnia di San Paolo

   

With the patronage of the German Embassy in Rome

inspired by the play by H. Ibsen.

First Tableau “I Sommersi” (lit: Submerged) – Mr. Håkon Werle and son, Gregers – the photographer Hjalmar Ekdal and daughter, Hedvig.

The idea of a Tableau is like with any painting; establishing a distance helps the viewer see more clearly. A “re-de-construction”. Cut up. Here is no linear development; reflecting how no art work, or human being even, are linear, so one by one events just happen, interchange, in this adaptation of The Wild Duck. The Wild Duck, a five act play by Henry Ibsen is a bizarre, intimately spiritual work, both ironic and repulsive. The comparison between what we were and what we are about to become is very cruel and frightening, and if you fall, you might not “be” at all! The final project is made up of two Tableaux. Our first residency for Fabbrica Europa concentrated on the first. Tableau II° – “In the Open” will be developed further in 2019 if not before… Background : Fifteen years before the stage action, a wealthy Industrialist, Werle had gone into business with the old Lieutenant Ekdal (in some State Forests) which failed tragically. However, Old Ekdal being the only accused in this ambiguous bankruptcy was consequently imprisoned, thus bringing disgrace on his family, including his son Hjalmar. The Wealthy Industrialist Werle has been ‘looking after’ the disgraced family on a personal and financial level for the past 15 years. However this benevolence has made the whole Ekdal family miserable and more like victims of his wealth and generosity. Also fifteen years earlier, Gina Hansen had had an affair with the Industrialist Werle. At the time she was a maid for the Werle family but to avoid any scandal she left them and immediately married Hjalmar Ekdal. She gave birth to a girl, Hedvig who was now fourteen years old. There is also the Old Friend of the family, Gregers, son of the Industrialist Werle, who returns to his family home after 15 years.

Federica Santoro / Luca Tilli (IT)

Federica Santoro is a director an actress and a performance artist. Her work as an actor and director includes plays by Sarah Kane, Shakespeare, Elfriede Jelinek, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, Henrik Ibsen. In 2009 she began an artistic collaboration with cellist composer Luca Tilli, their latest collaborations being “The Wild Duck” and “Mancano pochi minuti”. Her most recent collaborations include: performance art collective Artisti&Innocenti, She was awarded the Best Supporting Actor award for her work in Lucia Calamaro’s L’Origine del Mondo (2012) with whom she continued working in Diario del Tempo (2014). In 2016 she was nominated as Best Actress at the Premio Duse per il Teatro awards. She is a professional actor in Italian Contemporary theatre and she has acted with respected directors including Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Alfonso Santagata, Roberto Rustioni, Travirovesce, Lucia Latour and Lucia Calamaro.

Luca Tilli, cello player. Since 2005 his concert work has mainly featured avant-garde music in trio with Luca Venitucci and Fabrizio Spera, as well as playing on various festivals with Sebi Tramontana, Paul Lytton, John Edwards, Phil Minton, Massimo Pupillo, Lol Coxhill, and in the RAST trio with Mike Cooper and Roberto Bellatalla, Zu and David Tibet and Katia Labéque’s Ensemble B for Bang in the place of Giovanni Sollima. Since 2006 he has composed music for Butoh performances for various Festivals, including Soma and Trasformazioni (together with dancer Stefano Taiuti). In 2007 he played in the Daria Deflorian Theatre production “Bianco” and with other theatre companies including: Biancofango and Santa Sangre, (the Konya Project). Since 2009 he has been playing and performing in theatre productions directed by Federica Santoro.

Sublime Scum is a malleable and hybrid piece, integrating moments that resemble a concert, a TED talk, a modern dance, a seminar and even an evening at a café. Developed in the rainy dance studios of Brussels between 2016 and 2017, André Chapatte’s solo dance/performance Sublime Scum consists of minimal props and mostly contains languages of the body: songs, dances, remarks, speeches, odd interests, as well as attitudes and different kinds of corporal states. These all come together to form a loose narrative revolving around the common theme of ‘rejection’. The theme is presented as a social subject as well as a universal force, and as such there is an important role for the relationship with the audience in the show. Moments of interaction, questioning, and conversation intersect the singing and dancing, allowing for a serious subject matter to be seen from many points of view in a light hearted and somewhat surprising manner.

André Chapatte (BE)

André Chapatte has worked as a conventional cartoonist, later expanding his interest in semantics and pictographs within the audio-visual department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. During this period he began taking to the stage to produce interesting narratives, and has developed his current practice around experimenting with stage design, performance, singing and dancing. He examines the paradoxes that lie between contemporary images, and through his performances, drawings, songs and stages, Chapatte observes subjects related to identity, the human relationship to nature, and aspects of a western lifestyle are often taken for granted. Captivated by the cognitive space between images, Chapatte searches for new and necessary symbolism, most times by overlapping conflicting ideas or disarranging elements of cultural positioning. He believes new meaning can be found in the friction between cultures, ideas and popular misconceptions, and that the path to enlightenment can be obtained with intelligent entertainment and accessible story-telling.

Spaces recall stories. Tiny people can come to life. Bouncing light bulbs evoke heaven, hell, or just human life. Throw the dice, make your bets, take your chance. The performance evokes the ‘what would you do… if’ question, and each time leaves it to the audience to decide how far they go in the experience. IF is a performative art format, where we look into human existence and co-existence in a broader way than we do whilst living our everyday lives. It offers a parallel universe each and every time. And each and every time the audience, as co-creator takes part in re-building the world. You are invited to rethink your identity, your choices when it comes to joining a community, your decisions on how to cope with societal challenges. At the same time, it is a game, it is a bubble where you can freely experiment and experience the widest ranges of life.

OthernessProject (DK)

Othernessproject is a group of international artists based in Denmark, coming from Norway, Sweden, Italy, Romania, Hungary. They were hosted in important festivals as Bådteatret, CPH / Actor Training in a Globalised World, CPH / International Time Perspective Conference, Nantes (FR) / Passage Festival, Helsingor-Helsingborg (DK-SE) / Bridges Festival, Cluj-Napoca (RO), Rahvusvahekine A-Festival (EE).

Rita Sebestyén is specialised in performing arts and philosophy, fascinated by combining practice and theory. She is interested in creating temporary communities brought together by strong artistic frameworks. She believes that the freedom of alternative worlds can inspire our everyday living. Rita worked out her own methodology to co-learn and co-create, and spread it through university courses, informal teaching, workshops, performances and research in Denmark, Sweden, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Portugal and Italy.

Sara Vilardo is an Italian performer/actress/theatre-maker based in between Brussels and Denmark. She has been collaborating with different artists internationally as well as creating her own works. Over the past years she has been specializing in performing site-specific and interactive projects. She believes in art as a political poetical act that has the ambition to move the consciousness, look at reality with an imaginative gaze and spread beauty in the world.

with the support of: Embassy of Denmark – Rome; Kultur Ministeriet Agency for Culture and Palaces

Sound travels through space. What actually arrives to our ears is a combination of the sound source and the space it went through. In the solo performance MUT, the saxophone becomes a flexible sound source that responds to the physical, acoustic as well as historical and personal characteristics of each space. Marc Vilanova uses a wide range of extended techniques that go beyond the normal approach to the instrument to treat the saxophone as a sound generator. By creating this unique language, the audience is able to deepen their listening. This way of approaching the instrument was inspired by his experience of living in cities where he doesn’t understand the language. When you cannot understand a language, you are able to hear the sound of syllables as they are pronounced, but as soon as you understand the language, your focus shifts to decoding meaning. His musical decisions are also inspired by this early focus on the sounds of the language.

Marc Vilanova (SP)

Marc Vilanova is a saxophonist and sound artist working at the intersection of art and technology, working with electroacoustic compositions, improvisation, and interdisciplinary collaborations with dance, theatre and moving images. He explores the interaction between human beings and machines, often with a focus on the relationship between sound and visual elements. He is a founder member of Tunnel Ensemble and The Strings Theatre Company. His performances have been presented in festivals around the world in Japan, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Iran, Taiwan, Russia and many countries in Europe, collaborating with artists such Fred Frith, Agustí Fernández, John Butcher, Émilie Girard-Charest or Alfred Zimmerlin. His research over the past four years has continued to investigate the instrument as a sound generator using extended techniques. He has lead workshops at the Tokyo National University “GEIDAI”, National Taiwan University Center for the Arts, Universidad de los Andes, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro “UNIRIO”, Sibelius Academy Helsinki, Hochschule für Musik Basel and many more. However, his work is not constrained by a conventional conception of performance. He has created several sound installations and video works that have been awarded with international prizes such as: First prize at the International Contest of Sound Art Performance in Zaragoza 2014, The Encouragement Prize from the Tokyo Experimental Festival 2016, Best Experimental Work at the IV European Contest of Audiovisual Creation CTL’59 or Jury Prize at the World Saxophone Congress – Strasbourg 2015 among others.

Thomas Sankara once said : “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas”. “Au-delà de l’humain” celebrates this ideology and the sacrifice of the fervent fighters who fought against social injustice and all kind of oppression, and who defended freedom. This performance is inspired by the initiation rituals belonging to the Bamiléké ethnic tribe and their “cult of the skull” to communicate with the ancestors… “Au-delà de l’humain” is a ritual performance that pays tribute to cultural heroes of all times.

Zora Snake (CM)

Zora Snake is a dancer – choreographer and a performing artist from Cameroon. Founder of the Zora Snake company in Yaoundé. Artistic director of a new dance platform in Cameroon « Modaperf International Festival ». Won the “Popping” dance competition in Cameroon several times. Snake describes himself as “a man, a dreamer, a dancer, a creator, a resistant, a revolutionary, a boxer, an anti-conformist, a warrior of artistic ideas. The choreographer’s creation is based on hip hop dance and the political origins of this dance, that appeared after the division between white majority and black minority in the USA between 1950-1960 in the Bronx ghetto. For Snake, the stage is not a place for performing, it is a sacred place, it is a boxing ring, it is life for a new art in Cameroon and in Africa.

With the support of the Institut français Italia; Ambasciata di Francia e Francia in Scena

Spettacolo programmato in collaborazione con La Francia in Scena. La Francia in Scena, stagione artistica dell’Institut français Italia, è realizzata su iniziativa dell’Ambasciata di Francia in Italia, con il sostegno dell’Institut français, del Ministère de la Culture e della Fondazione Nuovi Mecenati.

A theatre game, during which the audience set out on a journey to the Structure and gives life to an instant dramaturgy, made of choices and personal relations, in the closest micro-world, where intuition, dream and imagination thrive. In the game-journey, spectators become Users: they make use of, perform, oppose, comprehend, familiarize, try out, and eventually, try on the situation. We build upon the word “experience”, from the verb “to experience, try out, explore, try on, practice”. The concept of the performance is based on the mechanism of adopting and performing social roles; it tests the boundaries of power that roles and situations have over an individual. Some sociologists describe social structures as a system of connections between social positions and places we occupy in the social space, and not between specific individuals. If we look at the social world from this perspective, our imagination will inevitably hint at the idea of taking someone else’s place.

Michał Stankiewicz (PL)

Michał Stankiewicz is a graduate of the School of Journalism at the University of Warsaw, specialisation: Reportage. He works at the crossroads of theatre, game theory, visual arts, performance and virtual reality. In the theatre, he is interested in designing a situation in which autonomous events can go towards the spectacle. Based in Warsaw.

With the patronage of Istituto Polacco di Roma

“I was almost 13 years old. My dad came back home and told me that the time had come to take care of Gianni. Gianni was a giant. Almost 2 meters high, but to me he seemed 3 meters high, and in my memory it is all like in a black and white movie. Gianni seems today like a far-away memory, but he was far-away also back then. He was the uncle with manic-depressive issues who scared me so much. He had the look of someone who knows things, but he kept them for himself and did not tell us anything. He smoked and kept everything for himself. He did not know peace, Gianni. Each centimeter of his skin sweated of hope to be well. He had long been searching to be well. But who doesn’t want to be well? In 2004, in a box of old cds, I found 3 tapes. 3 tapes that Gianni has marked with his voice, screaming out his desires, singing his happiness, telling his sadness. For 10 years I listened to them and I thought about the strange destiny that united us. A year before I was born Gianni registered words that I, and only I, would listen 20 years later. And suddenly, every time he comes back next to me, big and tall, 3 meters high, in black and white.” (Caroline Baglioni)

La società dello spettacolo (IT) Caroline Baglioni /Michelangelo Bellani

Caroline Baglioni graduated from the Centro Universitario Teatrale di Perugia. In 2007 she worked on Purificati by Sarah Kane, directed by Antonio Latella. In 2010 she directed collectively Febbre by Sarak Kane. After graduating in Science of Anthropological Goods, she joined the company La Società dello Spettacolo and worked on several productions. In 2012 she was selected for the dramaturgy course taught by Antonio Latella and Federico Bellini at the occupied Teatro Valle and her text inspired by “Mephisto” by Klauss Mann was published on Dramma.it as the text of the month. With the Compagnia dei giovani of the Teatro Stabile in Umbria she worked under the direction of Danilo Nigrelli, Antonio Latella, Liv Ferracchiati. With the monologue Gianni she won the prize Scenario per Ustica in 2015, the prize Premio In-Box blu in 2016 and the prize Premio Museo Cervi in 2017.

Michelangelo Bellani graduated in Philosophy at the Università di Perugia with a thesis about Pasolini and Debord. He published the essays L’estetica della presenza and La carne dell’io o la scrittura dell’invisibile in “Davar”, by Anna Giannatiempo Quinzio, Ed. Diabasis. With C. L. Grugher and Marianna Masciolini he founded in 2007 La società dello spettacolo and has directed it since then. The productions of the company were well received in national and international festivals (Premio Independents ArtVerona 2014, Premio Scenario per Ustica 2015, In-Box 2016, Premio Museo Cervi – 2017). Michangelo worked as assistant director, actor and director for documentaries, short films, and independent films for Rai and Mediaset. The documentary Sòccantare that he co-wrote and co-directed received the prize Premio Umbria in celluloide at the PerSo Film Festival 2015. For 3 years (2015-2017), he conceptualized and co-curated the international festival Performing Santa Caterina and since 2016 he has been the artistic curator of the Festival L’altra Mente, dedicated to mental illnesses.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss psychiatrist, founder of the psychothanatology). We rarely think about the end of us: the very idea often arouses anxiety and superstition, making considerations about this natural event harder. Many initiation paths start right with the realisation of our own mortality. A clear and peaceful consciousness, that makes our remaining time more precious. The world does not end with us: life goes on, as inexorable as the end. Being conscious of its fugacity means on one hand to prepare ourselves to leave what we care about, on the other to consider what will remain of us. For more than a year, we have been working on After/Dopo, a project about the end and what remains. Our passage leaves clear traces: families, properties, contracts, relationships, images, memories, secrets, elements that will live longer than us. For Altofest 2018 we decided to create a special step of the project, Tracce (Traces), where people’s passage creates a path, a space for transformation and reflection.

Effetto Larsen

We started our activity in 2007, as a working group founded by Matteo Lanfranchi, actor graduated at the “paolo Grassi” School of Drama. We create research projects about performing arts, considering theatre not as a goal but as a tool. We always focus our work on human relationships, observing them from different points of view. Over the years we developed an extremely original research path, widening our horizons from the theatrical tradition: we investigate the human being and its interpersonal relations, founding elements of everyone’s lives. Our working methods, our point of view and our activities are constantly evolving. Free from any kind of constrains, we like to open up to other disciplines, places, people, relentlessly confronting the reality around us. Since 2013 we have been focusing on site- specific and participatory projects at international level. Awards: Network In Situ / Mnemosyne; Network Open Latitudes / Functions; Bando arte e scienza – La Diagonale Paris-Saclay / STORMO® rEVOLUTION; Premio Scrittura di Scena Lia Lapini / Innerscapes; Biennale Giovani Artisti d’Europa e del Mediterraneo / Aggregazione; Primo premio concorso di Drammaturgia Urbana Borgo Teatro / TUO/OUT; Secondo premio Festival Internazionale di Regia Fantasio Piccoli / Lo sguardo di Amleto; GAI-Movin’Up / Dukkha – azione privata; Menzione speciale SubUrbia / Dukkha – azione privata

I am an old soul in a concrete jungle. I carry ideas of Masculinity in a body that seeks to be gender free. I dream of romance and wake up with Tinder. ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ is a dance-theater piece that reflects upon the search for a relationship in modern Berlin. It is a self-portrait of a man in a transition between old and new, geographically and conceptually. It opens a window to a story of a generation, torn between old ideals of masculinity and romance, and the new possibilities of post-modern society. The movement is highly physical, non-narrative, an exploration of an emotional world that surfaces in the darkest hour of the night when one is the most exposed. It is much like a poem to which one keeps adding lines – with every encounter, every lost battle, every new revelation.

Yotam Peled (DE)

Yotam Peled was born in 1989, in a Kibbutz in the north of Israel. At the age of 21, after finishing service in the Israeli defence forces, he began dancing, and later on pursued higher education in contemporary circus, theater and dance. In 2015 he was selected to dance in “Think Big” project, and following that he relocated to Berlin. Since then he has been working as a freelance performer for several choreographers and companies in Europe, among them: Cooperativa Maura Morales (Dusseldorf), Compagnie Yann L’heureux (Montpellier), Troels Primdahl (Aarhus/Berlin), Jill Crovisier (Luxembourg), Mitia Fedotenko (Montpellier). He performed his solo piece called “Boys Don’t Cry” in festivals and venues in Israel, Germany, Italy, Japan and Vietnam. He was recently selected to create a piece for 9 dancers in “THINK BIG”, a project that is a collaboration of the Staatsoper and TANZtheater International festival Hannover.

With the support of: STEP travel grants, an initiative by the European Cultural Foundation with the support of Compagnia di San Paolo

   

With the patronage of the German Embassy in Rome

Takeya is a study on speed, with the sole intention to reach the end. It begins by a person sitting down for a long time. The breathing gathers, ripens, detaches from any impatience. The interest is in the relationship between physical and mental speed. Within expansions and accelerations, the sense of an extremely short interval of time is perceived, which reveals imagery, stories and evolutions. This journey made of immediacy is achieved by way of patient and meticulous adjustments. All of the action takes place in a restricted space where external events penetrate, and where there is no need to move. It is a phenomenon of inertia, a game that shatters the irreversibility of time.

Chiara Frigo (IT)

Maker and perfomer Chiara Frigo develops her work in the field of contemporary dance and performing arts. Graduated in molecular biology, in 2006 her first creation Corpo in DoppiaElica was awarded the third prize at the Festival Choreographers Miniatures in Belgrade. Takeya was awarded the first prize at GD’A Veneto Anticorpi XL and was selected by the dance network Aerowaves. Since 2010 she has been engaged in international projects such as “Choreoroam”, “Tryptich” and the most recent “Act Your Age”, that sparked a research into the world of entertainment with the creation of Ballroom and West End. She collaborated with quebecois choreographer Emmanuel Jouthe for When We Were Old, which premiered at Festival Tangente/Theatre L’Agora in Montreal and was presented at DNA Romaeuropa Festival. Her latest pieces are Stormy, a choreography conceived for Balletto di Roma within the Bolero/Trip-Tic project, and her new solo Himalaya, presented in August 2017 at BMotion Festival in Bassano del Grappa.

Urban Spray Lexicon is a theatre performance born out of anthropological research on the writings that appear and disappear from city walls. It is a new dramaturgy where the collected writings are stored in poems: a way of preserving the ephemeral. It is an artistic operation where visual signs are transformed into performative gestures, where theatrical language operates in close contact with visual and sound arts and where the dynamics of an urban landscape become scenic material. The focus is on the thin bright line which divides and connects the public and private spheres, or rather, on those who live and struggle in this border area. There are products intended to preserve of the walls, which function by forming a protective film over the area of application, so that when a new graffiti appears, it’s enough to rinse it with water. Behind the writing life: small acts of heroism without result, as Céline once wrote, perhaps, or another poet of assault. During Ateliersi’s artistic residency at the Altofest 2018, Ateliersi will collect and explore the writing on the walls of the city of Naples as an integral part of the performance, as it proposes, on this special occasion, a Neapolitan chapter of Urban Spray Lexicon.

Ateliersi

Ateliersi is an artistic production’s collective from Bologna, Italy which operates in the field of theatre and performing arts. It deals with artistic production (performances, dramaturgy, editorial projects, actor’s training) and with Atelier Sì’s cultural interdisciplinary program. Ateliersi’s creation sets out theatrical works and artistic interventions, where performative gesture forms an organic dialogue with anthropology, literature, musical production and visual arts, facilitating a communication of thought capable of intercepting anxieties and perspectives, which coagulate meaning around the world’s subversions. Ateliersi’s artistic work is characterized by a multidisciplinary and innovative approach focused on a pronounced performativity towards the contamination between theatrical and other artistic languages.

“I sing to use the Waiting, […] To Keep the Dark away.”
E. Dickinson

Elementare is a temporary bonding between the audience and the artists, called to share together the duration of the night. In a space equipped for sleeping, a temporary community arises from the desire to live together an unknown space, a momentary lapse expanding throughout the hours of the night. A chant to the night, to the time of suspension and subversion, a celebration of the wait where the dawn becomes a symbol of crossing. Six voices slowly consuming, a presence without definite boundaries between artists and audience, words that turn into declamations, silences, lists, echoes: these are the primary elements through which a shared poetic space is fabricated. While a vocabulary slowly arises, almost in the form of a community prayer; while a symbolic fire lightens up the space between “us” and “them”, Elementare gives voice to the desire of declaring: we are here. What drives us to sing throughout the night? The risk, the length, the effort, the accord that precedes agreement , an invisible thread, the gathering, the transformation, the hospitality, the wait, the awakening, and the silence.

Amigdala (IT)

Founded in 2005, Amigdala creates site-specific productions that blend performances, visual arts, sound research and writing. The performative installations have a strong connection with the venues they are situated in, and arise from a deep analysis of each place’s characteristics and from a relationship with its present or former inhabitants. Amigdala’s works are devised for small groups of spectators in an intimate and immersive atmosphere: they aim at changing the audience’s perceptions of the place and setting up mechanisms for involving the audience in a radical yet delicate way. Amigdala’s productions activate several layers: soundscapes creation, public history and anthropology, original dramaturgy and musical compositions, urban crossing. As a result, starting from a rigorous aesthetic research, each work weaves together individual and collective interpretations of the history of a place, and fosters personal experiences and biographies through the recreation of emotional links between people and their landscapes.

Antonino Talamo – (IT)

Gilles Clément writes in “Nuages” : Dis-trahere, in other words move elsewhere, bring one far away from reality. When does that happen ? How can we go beyond this threshold ? The Virgin Mary of housekeeping is an unstable cleaning operation which final outcome will be an installation, the result of an exercise conceived for Altofest Napoli 2018. The starting point is this intuition of Duchamp : if a sound has an extended duration then it becomes something else, it hardens, like a sculpture, and it is like if it would materialize. What interests us is the idea of using words like objects, creating a connection between our languages. The structure of Altofest allows us to come into the life of the space donors citizens and from there starts our practice. The Virgin Mary of housekeeping comes to your house with the intention to live a moment of care. She thoroughly fixes and cleans the room of your choice. Once the cleaning is done, the rite of purification is completed with the composition of a photographic memory “tableau vivant”. This way, we travel from everyday life to the world of imagination.

Terracina/Avallone

Mario Avallone
Composer, field recordist and experimenter. Mario Avallone’s music can be described as electro acoustic and acousmatic. Federica Terracina (Incredible Fox) An independent artist born in Orvieto in 1983, and a student of Michele Cossyro at the Academy of Fine Arts in Roma (Decoration Department)

Federica Terracina
studies historical costumes in Paris at the “Greta Costume” Istitute Paul Poyret. Phenomenal abstraction influences all her pictorial research. She has worked and collaborated with various companies, performers and photographers, among them: Santasangre, TeatrInGestAzione, Davide Adamo, Margo Chou from FAI-AR Marseille, Xavier Girard, La Belle Image fanfare, Antonino Talamo. Her work has been presented internationally, during Valletta 2018 European Capital of Culture; Altofest International Contemporary Live Arts, Napoli; Macro, «Factory Pd’A» Museo contemporaneo testaccio, Roma; Outdoor Urban Dal 2015. Since 2015 she has been the author of the graphic interventions that can be found in the “Foglio del Fest”, the esthetical guide of Altofest written by the OCr (Critique Panel). In September 2018, her book “Epanadiplose”, written in collaboration with Julie Bonnafond (editor “Les Editions Abordables”), will be released.

Time, Betrayal, Legacy, Present, Generation: 5 words make up this project, which invites you to make a phone call and Listen. Stay on line, find time, know when to stop, breathe, and empty your mind in order to welcome the words of another. To listen also means to host. Instructions: make a phone call at the specified date and time, speak the chosen word, and listen.

Liuba Scudieri

Liuba Scudieri
Between 2000 and 2013, story-teller and anthropologist Liuba Scudieri has collected hundreds of stories, directly from the mouths of those who carried them. In Marsiglia she wrote, performed and produced « Tre donne al Mare » (“Three women at Sea”), an epic narrative performance based on the oral heritage of the Mediterranean cultures.