Arxiu cos creació pensament
L'animal a l'esquena 2001-2010
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 CAMMINARE NELLA FRANA 
(Research Residence )

L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà)
From 20/06/2011 to 02/07/2011
Presentation :
On 01/07/2011 at 20:00 in L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà)

Leonardo Delogu


ico Walking in the landslide



This project stems from a recurrent thought, an unconscious knowledge that has determined a great number of choices in my life: All this will end.

I have always had an under skin feeling of the ending, not an anxious feeling but a very clear understanding that the world as we know it is not going to be our future world

However this perception of ending and of collapse does not scare me as much as it does anyhow move me emotionally. On the contrary such perception pushes me to act in a manner that privileges deep listening and awareness of gesture as opposed to an anxious frenzy of doing. Such perception of imminent collapse in sided by a growing awareness that the world itself is trying to push us aside, to prove that the time we are living now is a moment of transition and of ruin.

The world really is cracking up.

We are witnessing a growing number of disasters, catastrophes, devastated horizons, which add themselves to the ruins from the past, all the debris that we accumulate in our cities, in the abandoned sites, which speak about the end of their function.

Sometimes it seems that everything speaks about an imminent ending. Nonetheless I'm not interested in any apocalypse rethory nor apologia. I am rather interested in talking about a philosophy of resistance, of the vitality of those who resist.

History has indeed always followed this pattern. Civilizations would die, they would be buried by wars or natural and unexpected events. And then man would start again from scratch, from the debris.



These thoughts and pre-visions push me to investigate this border-line, this extreme perspective. I intend to analyse apocalyptic literature, from the Bible to more modern essays, studying the history of the aesthetics of chaos through art, philosophy and architecture. A necessary plunging into Thought, that will eventually be abandoned to freely plunge into the body which is the real place and time for creation.



First vision

of space, of action, of the internal mechanism



I have in mind a destroyed venue. A place wrecked by a natural catastrophe, such as an earthquake or a flooding. Debris, pieces of wood, electrical appliances, metal, stench of nature.



A bundle of signs that talk about the disaster, a visual composition determined by the aesthetics of chaos and mess. In this scenery bodies will start to move to populate the space. Their actions will not be those of survivors, I'm not interested in a narration/representation of the despair of survivors. Actors/ dancers / performers will incarnate solely the result of their presence and inhabitation of the space. Then we will ask ourselves how to react to the emptiness that was left behind. On how to start again. Which movements. Which signs. Which words. Which relationships.



Sound composition and sound spacing as well as light design and movement become two crucial aspects of the work. The visual impact, the elements on stage, perspective, volumes and specific signs are also a key aspect of the work. The final outcome will be the result of months of observation, listening, collection of images, sampling of sound and attempts to a composition.



Silence before the beginning

Sensing and listening as the foundation of creation.



Reciprocal sensing and listening will be the ground on which the setting and the performance script will be built on.

In my experience, sharply perceiving one's body and one's space of action os the unavoidable beginning of any theatre event. The latter to be free, needs an honest and courageous listening act at its beginning. Indeed this project plans to develop precisely from a detailed perception of the present, including time, space, and presence.



I would like to go beyond a standard performance structure, to create something that will really be unique each time it will be performed, as this possibility to be influenced by the surroundings and the audience, and therefore the chance to change each performance is something that inherently belongs to theatre and it is what makes this art so different from the others. However I would like to underline how I do not intend to turn my performances into jam sessions, as I intend to work on a precise script for each performance, which then at the staging moment will be free to adapt to the events and the perceptions that will occur in that very and specific moment.



Accumulation, subtraction and point of view modification

The creating process





Each member of the work will engage to create a personal piece, be it movement, sound, light, text and acting. Each one will embark on a lonely path to find material to gather together for composition purposes. Later on in the work all the material that has been gathered individually will be shared with the group, putting each one's founding and actions in the space, to observe all the possibilities and combinations that can emerge from these individual encounters.

For this purpose, it will be necessary to have an initial training moment to structure and share the belief that the actual performance will not develop from a mere composition of material but rather from the high perceiving and listening of the present of the stage.

Once again this will apply to performers as well as to light and sound designers, who will support those on stage responding and changing the design in which they act. The ultimate goal for this type of work is to create an ambivalent impression on the spectator, who will sway between being concious of what the performance is activating as well as living some moments of total credibility of what is happening on stage.





My intention is to proceed to a final staging through a path of moments of work, where to train the body and the mind for the purpose of the work. I have so far designated three moments of this path:





- creative residences

- open workshops

- filmed sequence



Residences:

Will be moments of pure research on the theme of the work, during which the core of the group will test materials found during the research phase. These moments will give the opportunity to freely engage with such materials, to try to define an initial structure. For 2011 there two residencies already planned:

Forte Marghera June

L'Animal a l'esquena July







Open workshop – walking in the landslide



These workshops will have a pedagogical value and will be the chance to share the gathered materiel with people outside the group who showed and interest for our subject of work. Such workshops will be addressed to actors, dancers, performers, visual artists who will be led into the fundamental principles of my work: listening, physical expressibility, the use of voice and of microphone, studying of stage presence and the improvisation space.

In the second part of the workshop I will introduce the specific themes on which this work intends to develop like the concept of disaster and the ability to create a new beginning, how to live silence before silence, which movements, which words, which relationships should be saved.





Video notes for an imminent ending:



This is a parallel project, which on one hand aims to produce video material to support the research into the work and on the other tries to give a different outcome to my research by creating a specific artistic product which can show a further insight into my work. Videos will be filmed after the sessions of work, in each city where the group will be hosted, in the attempt to export outside all the material that was gathered inside. The sites where the videos will be filmed will mainly be discarded venues, such as abandoned industries, dumping grounds, or marginal parts of the city, which will be he natural staging where to show a beginning after disruption. Performers will freely improvise and inhabit the chosen venue, and such sequences will be then put together in a video, which can either be considered a corollary of the work, or can be shown on its own in art galleries or in unconventional spaces.







"In the clear night of the nothing of anxiety the original openness of beings as such arises that they are beings - and not nothing.

Da-sein means: being held out into the nothing."



Heidegger


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