This sixth edition of the Altofest is the protagonist of a structural change, whose experimentation we have entrust to Company Réplika Theater, based in Madrid, which last year was in the program with a work inspired by the texts of S. I. Witkiewicz, a Polish fundamental author to understand the evolution of the theater in the XX century. We asked the Spanish company to revise their performance, El Éxtasis de los Insaciables – performed in the last edition of the Altofest, involving the inhabitants of via Pedamentina, donors of space for the Altofest since the II edition. We chose Réplika because they have fully grasped the spirit of the fest and have a great understanding of it. We recognised their ability of reading the festival dynamics, their rare attitude towards human relationships, and their great predisposition to dialogue. With this pilot project the Altofest get ready to become permanently a place of experimental sociality.

Réplika Teatro (ESP)

Réplika Theater is a company based in Madrid. There they manage a theatrical and multifunctional contemporary space, dedicated to the production and to theater training. The company was found in 1989 by the couple Anadón/Bielski, who entrust the guide of a new and young formation to the Son Mikolaj, today deputy director of the Réplika Theater and collaborator of the Scenic Art at the Institute of Polish Culture. The Compañía Joven de Réplika Theater deals with new theater forms and collective creation.

“Trapped sounds” is a conceptual sonic performance, designed by Khaled Kaddal, that aims to examine the conflict between the individual and the collective intelligence that is manifested in the massive production evident in our urban surroundings. We are witnesses of an era in which isolation is the strategy of the powerful. We suffer its effects and forms. We spend most of our time living a materialistic existence. Distractions and distortions cut us off from the truth of being. The project investigates these dichotomies (internal/external, individual/companies etc…), leaving out the dissonance between the intimate feeling and the obligation to act.

Is it possible to escape the homogenization?

Khaled Kaddal (EGY)

Khaled Kaddal is an Egyptian musician/sound artist. Through sound, music and mixed medias he creates installations and performances.
He conducts an investigation on the social and political structures of our time through the exploration of various sound phenomena.
Khaled was granted a scholarships by the British Council and The Arab funds For Art and Culture (AFAC). Currently, based in London pursuing a Masters degree in Sound Arts in University of the Arts London (UAL).

The house-atelier of Sergio and Teresa Cervo is located in the heart of the ancient center of Naples: a “basso”(typical Neapolitan house at the same level of the street)connected to a magical underground space that develops under the skin of the city, between the sacred of the basilica of San Domenico Maggiore and the profane of San Severo chapel.
A place of MAKING crowded with canvases, panels made of combined materials, sculptures, tables, lamps, chairs, jewellery.
The refined craftsmanship of these two artisans is expressed by the use of iron, leather, silver, wood, textiles, paper and soil.
Teresa e Sergio from 1977 create unique pieces in which the moment of the drawing and the creation are fused together in an indissoluble way.

Cervo Home Gallery (IT)

From Plato to Dante, from antiquity to our present, a question arises. A question I perceive as the most political of all: “what is love and how it makes us act?”
Bring to light the processes that our body activates when related with the other, through the sight, touch, hearing, to abandon oneself to the beauty of the encounter.
What if love is a Demon (neither good or bad, neither beautiful or ugly) and he is our only guide to the truth?

Miss Omonoia

by UrbanDig Project by Ohi Pezoume Performing Arts Company

Choreography Eirini Alexiou – Ohi Pezoume Performing Arts Company
Site-specific adaptation and performance: Emmanouela Korki
Composition / live music: Antonino Talamo.
Video, music: D. Vergados.

“Some time ago in Dourgouti, a neighbourhood in Athens, three women met and between them a strong bond was created. They came to Athens from different places and times, afterwards they were separated again. In this piece we will meet one of them, imagining this woman in her house we can listen to her desire to leave, to go to Omonoia. We will follow her voyage through deserts, seas, bodies, blood and solitude. Borrowed lives intertwined with personal memories and oblivion. You need to breath to lighten up and go far. “Miss Omonoia” is part of the new project “UrbanDig Omonoia”, developed by “Ohi Pezoume Performing Arts Company”, that is composed by a web of 17 actions in Omonoia square, in the center of Athens. The project aims to connect the citizens with urban public space through a collective action, the game, and live performance.

What is love and how does it make us act?

Emmanouela Korki – Ohi Pezoume (GRC)

“Ohi Pezoume” is a company of performing arts focused on local and cultural developments through artistic practices shared with the community.
Emmanouela Korki works as a freelance performer, choreographer and teacher. From 2015 she is collaborating with “Ohi Paizoume”. As a performer she has worked also with A. Marathaki, Duende Ensemble – J.Britton , Nostalgia company – T. Ralli, G. Simona, M. Klein – V. Kotsalou, S. Hatzaki – Athens and Epidaurus Festival, G. Katafigi, H. Monteiro, Athens Video Dance.

The Operappartamento

The Operappartamento is a residency and a production award. Since the second edition of the Altofest, it is assigned to one of the artists in the program, inviting them for the next edition to create exclusive work. A project that is intimately connected with the space given and its inhabitants.
The Critical Panel (TCP) assigns the creation of OPERAPPARTAMENTO 2016 to the company Ohi Pezoume (GRC). The dancer Emmanouela Korki, in creative residency at Casa Limongi, will give life to a site-specific Operappartamento, on behalf of Eirini Alexiou and the company Ohi Pezoume.

The motivation expressed by TCP: the correspondence between Eirini Alexiou’s artistic and curatorial path and the Altofest format, makes this artist an excellent interpreter of the spaces and their emotional temperature.
Eurydice is a touching intervention, exploiting the local atmosphere and physical elements in order to create relevant dramaturgical signs within a coherent system and several languages.
Therefore, the Artistic Direction of the Festival is glad to invite Ohi Pezoume Performing Art Company for a creative residency in one of the spaces of the festival, to create an OPERAPPARTAMENTO that will debut in Naples in July 2016 during the VI edition of the ALTOFEST.

This is probably the first time in Lithuania that three artists have cooperated to create a performance that looks at the Lithuanian contemporary dance scene with a self-irony glance, quoting cliché movements, phrases, even costume details. “Contemporary?” is focusing ironically on the processes of dance making. What does contemporary dance piece consist of? What does it talk about? Which objects are necessary and which are optional? Does audience understand what it is all about? Do we need to explain the meaning of the piece to the audience? The answer is – just do it.

What does a contemporary dance piece consist of? Does the audience understand what it is all about? Do we need to explain the meaning of the piece to the audience?

Arts Printing House (LTU)

Mantas together with his long time stage partners, Agnė and Paulius participated in the program for young artists – “Open Stage’13”, hosted by Arts Printing House and presented an ironic contemporary dance performance “Contemporary?”
Agné Ramanauskaitė – dancer, actor, teacher and choreographer – received her professional degree at The Lithuanian Theatre and Music Academy (MA in acting-contemporary dance, 2009).
Mantas Stabačinskas – one of the most famous Lithuanian dancers, teacher and choreographer. In almost sixteen years of his professional career Mantas collaborated with many different choreographers from all over the world. For eleven years Mantas has been a part of Aura Dance Theater (Lithuania).
Paulius Tamolė – is a dancer and well known Lithuanian theater and television actor, choreographer. Paulius began his professional actor career at the National Drama Theater (Lithuania) in 2005. Since then Paulius has collaborated with the well known theater directors such as Jonas Vaitkus, Oskaras Korsunovas, Jana Ross and etc. In 2008 Paulius has been nominated for the theater award as the Best Young Artists of the year.

“Secret Sound Stories” is a guided path, intimate and personal, for individual spectators. The sound of a story transmitted through wifi headset, which offers a new way of seeing, to relate to the space in which the listener is immersed together with other spectators.
A delicate merger between poetry and music to face/confront the existence. If there are one or more truth, they are identified by the absence, not by the substance.
In a world catapulted toward the abundance, the sound is what is nearer to the subtraction: it does not accumulate, it exists only for a moment and then it vanishes leaving a trace in the memory. The sound is what remains of the story, stimulating the listeners’ imagination and the opportunity to create their own story through a positive relationship with the space that surrounds them. If people listened, they would change.
The project was born from an Alan Alpenfelt idea after being asked, by the commissioner of the 9th Biennale dell’immagine di Chiasso, to “amplify” the visit at the photographic exhibition through radio and sound.

Do you ever stop to listen to…?

V XX ZWEETZ (CHE)

The experience of the company V XX ZWEETZ, founded in Switzerland in 2013, was born from the deep correlation/connection with the sound and the radio as the main source for understanding the world. It then hit the theatre, expanding their cultural and artistic reach to photography and documentary.
The fil rouge that connects all their productions is the sound.
Its main objective is to increase awareness of social problems, historic and existential.
In 2016 are among the 7 best productions of Rencontre du Théâtre Suisse.

Feeling the space around not being able to see, guided by voices that suggest the movement, the direction. EYE LIE is a multi-sensorial dialogue between the audience and the performer in which the perception of sound and space varies altogether with the movement. This develops itself within pre-established structures on schemes linked to vocal inputs, not depending on a predetermined choreography as it is called. The artist, blindfolded, can just perform the movement’s orders that she hears. The sequence of vocal commands is re-organised for each performance. Therefore the sound and the choreographic composition becomes a surprise for the artist herself. The audience is invited to take part in the process of score composing, encouraging the performer with short instructions.

What does happen to the body in motion when the spatial reference comes only through audio commands?

Valeria Caboi (PRT)

Valeria Caboi, performer and choreographer, after having met Ohad Naharin Batsheva Dance Company and the Hofesh Shechter’s Company, turns her research toward the non-traumatic movement. As preformer she worked with Elisa Monte Dance Company (U.S.A – Pergine Spettacolo Aperto), NineBobeNote (The Place – UK), FattoreKappa (Singapore Arts Festival-Napoli teatro Festival), Arthur Pita (London – UK), Guido Tuberi (Balletto di Sardegna), Companhia de Dança do Norte (Portugal), PIA (Portugal). As choreographer she was the author of GestAzione (PrimoPremioMarteLive2010) and curator of Red T-Shirt Project (Italy, UK, Portugal), of the Swedish project Open Lab Halland 2015(Svezia), and of Eye Lie (co-productionC.E.M e Inimpetus).

A “laid out table” with nails, rubber bands, and pieces of iron; a handcrafted instrument. A work fully developed with the awareness that a process of distraction can cause damage even between interpersonal processes, and that a conscious and free from prejudice listening can produce a state of grace. Cage writings on the sound and listenings were his source of inspiration. To ignore the “Forms” and plunge into transformations.
In Giulio Escalona tool bag you can find: recordings of ambient sounds, voice samples, bulbs, radio, DIY tools, VHS and some delay; odds and ends used for assembling things like “rarefied sonic landscapes”. A sort of primitive music in the era of technology. Music for wood, metal spikes, and other things inserted one into another.

Can you be more listener and less specatator?

Tasto Esc (ITA)

La Capra, when is not La Capra, is Giulio Escalona (but the opposite is not true).
Born in 1985. Becomes Psychologist, works as music therapist, and invents strange instruments, which he doesn’t always know how to play.
In 2015 he began to perform, mainly with the pseudonym Tasto Esc, with video and audio, always with scrap metal and electronic circuits, noise and anything else without too many frills (either in audio or video format).

A car. Three spectators. A driver. All around the city. The music inside.
“I was taught that percussions must be played only in contexts where they are contemplate. I think this is a choice that leads to a homogenization of the instrument, neglecting the history, culture, and the suffering of those who forge it, only for a trivial spirit of social acceptance”.

What moves you?

Antonino Talamo (ITA) / La Belva e le Bestie (ITA)

Musician, Drummer, Live Instrumentalist and Studio Recording.

His playful virtuosity mixes sounds and rhythms, improvising passionate scores through the intersection of various sources, from electronic to tribal, involving the audience in a totally amazing and unexpected present moment. His music is a crossroad for the musical languages coming from the South of the World. Collaborates with Peppe Sannino, Pietro Sinigaglia, Gloria Clemente, Kal Dos Santos,Iacopo Pellegrini, Gilson Silveira, Armanda Desidery, Rino Borriello, Galo Cadena, Roberto Lagoa, Corrado Cordoba, Nunzio Toscano, Annalisa Madonna, Fabio Gallucci, Antonio Pinto, Angelo Ricci, Michele Maione, Gianluca Campanino, Alberto Falco (MOMODUO 2010), Paolo Licastri, Giulia Capolino, Guido Schiraldi, Luca Cioffi, Francesco Manna, Duccio D’alò, DIONISO FOLK BAND, Fabrizio Alessandrini, Mario Sapia and others.

Our House is the acoustic exploration of an apartment. A mapping and a sonic redefinition of a place. The sounds are events in a constant reconfiguration. The listening and research of the sounds that surround us stimulates an attentive gaze, and provide information on the nature of the objects that surround us, on the relations and their constant becoming. The research, carried out together with the tenants, translates itself into an interactive work, a real musical instrument, an open device to compose music, a way for playing with the sounds that usually escape our perception. The apartment planimetry, equipped with sensors, allows the viewer to interact, mix and rebuild its own personalised soundtrack of the space.

Have you ever listened to a house, a road, a city as you would listen to a symphony, an opera?

Polisonum (ITA)

POLISONUM is a sound research project about places. It is about reinventing the urban space, deconstructing it, breaking the structures and routine, connecting all the things that escape the human eye. The project was born from an attempt to use urban environments in a playful way. The idea is to build new sonic spaces, whose main features are the short duration, the permanent mutation and the mobility to observe, perceive and live in the city. Polisonum has been recently selected for the THE INDEPENDENT, a research project focused on the identification and promotion of the spaces, and the independent thought . A project started last year by the MAXXI museum ­Museum of 21st century Arts of Rome.

#1. Darsi alla Macchia (mediterranea)

After its debuts in a laundry, in Reggio Emilia, this photographic project arrives in Naples where artists and public will be invited to dirty their clothes with their favorite Mediterranean stain (oil, wine, coffee…). The picture will document what happened and will be sent to anyone who attendended. Take to the Mediterranean bush (in Italian we say “Darsi alla macchia” and it is a play on words, because “macchia” means both dirty and stain) is an unconditional declaration of love towards the Mediterranean basin nowadays so painful and sore and it is also a symbolic action of civil brigandage. The brigand is not an outlaw, but someone who does not choose roads already taken, who does not like well-trodden paths and looks for fertility where it is more abundant. Because he knows that trodden paths are the ones where nothing will ever grow.

#2a   –   Our Lady of Balloons

Our Lady of Balloons walks through the space like a vision, a temporary suspension of everyday life, a tear in the continuum, an impetus upwards, a revelation that the human condition is like a chalice, with the earth under your feet and the sky in your hair, where the earth and the sky blends together in our breath. She challenges the governing gravity with her lightness. If you come across her and you speak to her she will give you the possibility to choose at random one world among a hundred, each one bears a different definition from her Little Poetic Vocabulary she has been writing for the last three years.

#2b   – The Poetic Money Laundering / a little action of civil regeneration

Money circulates so fast. What if we recycle it as a means of communication, triggering little daily revelations directly in the hands of people while they are paying? Changing banknotes in blank notes, stamping them with a poetic action, using for this purpose some words from my little Poetic Vocabulary, and afterwards making them circulating like an antibody. Superposing a value on a price, a lightening of conscience on the glittering of gold, the Art creativity on the inexorable rules of the market. A little rite that is also an invitation, a wish, a bet, an inspiration and a confident impulse towards the unknown hands that the banknotes will meet in the future and with which they will build that future together.

Which is the greatest thing Arts can do for you? Be unreasonable and brave in the answer

#1 Are you willing to take to the bush (get dirty?) Are you worried to not be able to remove the stains anymore?
What do you think about what is happening in the Mediterranean Sea in the last few years?
#2a What do you think is possible and what impossible? How do you explain a coincidence when it happens in your life?
#2b What does money mean to you? Do you really believe that a tomato can have a price? Can you really put a price on one hour of your life and believe it?

Claudia Fabris (ITA)

Claudia Fabris was born in Padua in 1973. She plans spaces, installations and performances that create relations and synergies between the words and the visions, hearing and taste. Her artistic research finds its fulcrum in the body, involving the audience in different perceptive levels.
She strongly believe that Beauty and the silent wonder that Beauty creates can reconnect each man with the intimate and sacred space of his soul where each transformation and rebirth take origin, strength and nourishment.

DOPOLAVORO, born during the Verdecoprente Festival in 2015, is a historic, social and anthropological exploration of the small town of Alviano (1600 inhabitants), near Terni. An opportunity to reflect on our “place” of residence, work and leisure. A deep research on the complex theme of identity and Place. In particular, “Dopolavoro” wants to investigate and analyse the relationship between the sense of belonging and putting down roots of a community, and the places in which this community resides and/or recognises as its own.
The project is also aimed to discover if the community (cities or neighbourhoods or villages) are or are not “places”.

What do you do in your “free time”?

Compagnia Pietribiasi / Tedeschi

The theatre company Pietribiasi/Tedeschi was founded in Reggio Emilia in 2012. Its interests range from video-installation (Kinect and animation video) to Social Theatre. It has developed its own research between scientific and humanistic thought. Its productions include, besides DOPOLAVORO#MemorieDelSuolo, PUNTO TRIPLO (2015) a multimedia performance about the triple point of the water in thermodynamics; BIOS (2014) a multimedia performance inspired by the writer Julio Cortázar’s work; FREEZE (2013) a drama inspired by the psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing’s work.

A mass of cardboards is the primary condition to transform and live the stage. To build is the urgency which moves the performer into the action of transforming the materials: dynamic that modify also his human condition. The very intimate moving structure, that first is protected and than destroyed, is echoed by the possibility to free itself in space and to give form to the movement.
Papelão is a reflection on the necessity of solidify the images of the mind, to live them temporarily, to perceive them with the body, and then give them back to the dance.

How can the landscape change through the movement?

Lara Russo (ITA)

Lara Russo develops her works around the interaction of the body with the matter, and the element of risk and unpredictability that the matter introduces in the choreographic composition.
Her path evolved between Barcelona and Berlin and then moves on in Italy.
She joined the I.F.A Inteatro Festival in 2013; she won the prize GD’A Giovani Danz’autori with the show Allumin-io; was finalist at the festival ‘Dominio Pubblico’ with LEGAME; received a special mention for the competition Danzè, Oriente Occidente; won the scholarship for Ecite, teachers meeting of C.I. Ponderosa 2014, Germany; in 2015 she won the contest Dna Appunti coreografici a Romaeuropa Festival with the show Ra-me that debuted at the Venice Biennale 2016.

Giusto il tempo di un tè will interpret the moments and spaces of transition of the Altofest’s agenda. Perceptive segments will join the places that host the talks in the programme, tracing an urban route that will be recounted through the recordings of ambient sounds, narrative glimpses, and visual cues. Anyone who wants to participate, can send this material, via smartphone, at a fixed station. A WORKSTATION that can be visited at any time, set up during the days of the fest at its headquarter in Via mezzocannone.
These data will be collected and reprocessed during the fest, to give a processual shape to the audiovisual composition, CLELIA BALLA, presented for the Altofest closure.

How an experience related to a space can be told?

Giusto il tempo di un té (ITA)

Giusto il tempo di un tè develops itself as an artistic lab widespread in many areas around Naples, dedicated to the experimentation of a cognitive, processual and relational practice aiming to share ideas and knowledge.
The lab is composed by a twine of spaces, times, and individuals. It’s structured as a cycle of encounters, in different locations and on specific topics , to whom artists, art historians, architects, designers, journalists, and choreographers take part to.
The hypothesis consists in imagining fluid modalities of storytelling and alternatives to narrative structures and relational mechanisms.
All the production – videos, texts, images, ideas, reports – is communicated following the wide spreading logic, through specific platforms: Vimeo, Pinterest, Whatsapp, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook Soundcloud.

A pair of lips
Divine, spent
a blinding glitter
a fallen neon sign’s light
a divine image of a star projected on a ruffled screen
losing oneself within the flight, within the vortex
to be riding high
to collapse
the decay
letting go into the intimacy
gradually disposing of the self.

Little Star defines itself in a pop imagery, referring to music and films’ idols from the 1950’s and 1960’s: the outset of the rock and roll and the great Hollywood stars.
In an emotional sway between brio and decline, the body recovers only by placing itself into the space. It finds a place where recognize and declare itself, to get lost again.

Who is the Star, in your life?

Francesca Antonino (ITA)

Dancer and performer, she improves her education in Paris and Amsterdam. She was selected for Scritture per la danza contemporanea, a training with Raffaella Giordano. In June 2015 she was selected for the Biennale College in Venice by Salva Sanchis, for his work Islands Revisited. She is involved in C.U.T.E., a Laura Pante’s project, selected by Choreographic Collision 7. She is a founder and member of Agostino Bontà, an associated collective Sosta Palmizi. She is involved in Ballo 1890_Natura Morta, a Virgilio Sieni’s project.

An exploration of the urban space through the creation of a tailor-made dress.
Defining anew the shapes, interacting with the environment: who lives it, its architecture and its social structure. Abito is a textile participatory installation that calls the neighbourhood inhabitants and the spectators to the construction of this action, to intertweave to redefine the spaces. The urban fabric is a dialog between codes and social structures, a variable and multiform organisation of the community. The fabric is an intertweave of threads, the characteristic of the material varies according to their structure and percentage. “The fabrics are living fibres, if natural, are plants.. as the paper. If we think of the flesh and to sever, put, exit, play, what comes up to mind? I think the birth beyond the love for the flesh.
Grab, hold, resist, pins brings to my mind the passion, the impatience and then the newfound calm, because the eye of the tailor, like the embroidery machine ones is always a step ahead in the vacuum of the moment. Sew in public spaces is to bring home, build a place”.

How can a neighbourhood be organised?

Federica Terracina

After decoration studies at the Fine Arts Academy of Rome, Federica Terracina get interested in the textile installation. She studies historical costume in Paris. In 2015, she creates the independent brand “Incredible Fox & Co”. In contrast to the production of poor quality fabrics, based on the logic of exploitation, she proposes a reflection on the ecology.
The interaction with the space is the key of his research, both in painting and in textile installations. The first person who introduced her to this path was the master Michele Cossyro, then over the years other suggestions arrived.

The United Nations High Commissioner Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) annual report of June 2015 attests that in the last year about 60 million people have been forced to migrate to escape war scenarios. The participatory performance m2 wonders pragmatically about the unit of measure from which it takes the name, the square meter. It ends revealing the possible nuances between human and inhuman that such unit takes on a daily basis. The audience is the real essence of the installation. It’s the matrix of the action that orchestrates itself through instructions conveyed by a hostess and a steward, in a collaborative game among strangers. Starting from esteems gathered from real cases used as example, the performance develops itself around the unit rate of 1:20 – 1:5 – 1:10 between the circumscribed surface and the people involved. In the referenced squares, following the rules of the game, 5, 16, and 9 people would proportionally fit in the space.

Does the context define if hundred people are too many or too few: hundred people to do what?

Dynamis (ITA)

Dynamis is a group of artistic research, a community study dedicated to the performing arts. It’s based in Rome at the Teatro Vascello, a valuable space for its daily research. If the pretext is theatrical, the level of research moves continuously on different extents, enriching itself with collaborations apparently and canonically distant from the field: pedagogues, illustrators, enlightened teachers, hackers, ufologist, dj, students, pirate film makers, ONLUS working with political refugees, magazines and friends.
Including collaborations: The MAXXI Museum, MACRO, Fondazione Romaeuropa. Winners of the prize Movin up, they’ve been hosted at the Festuge Festival for the 50 years of the Odin Teatret.