8-30 January 2019 – Macro Asilo, Ambiente # 2, month-long residency at Macro Museum, Rome.
Relational Art and Installation.
Participants: Simona Cassano, Veronica Cosimelli, Rosanna D’Amato, Giuditta Greco, Francesca Inglese.
In collaboration with: Macro Asilo, the Sant’Alessio Regional Centre – Margherita di Savoia for blind people in Rome, Pietro and Alberto Rossini Foundation, Mad Decode International School and Sogno nel Cassetto tea shop.
“As Marcel Proust reminds us, our minds are helped by sensorial memory. When I think of Chiara Mu’s work, I don’t try to find in the drawers of my mind a rational element that can identify a particular art piece. The thoughts related to Mu’s work are immediately connected to that area of our brain that processes sensory perceptions, thus associating them with the limbic system, that is the part involved in emotions – and in all those reactions connected to the most epidermal part of the emotional sphere.
Listen to Me at MACRO Museum feels like a work that doesn’t appeal to the rational sphere but wants to awaken the famous memories out of order, in fact the epidermal ones.
The dim light that characterised Listen to Me distracted us from any visual element. The predominant aspect was therefore a feeling of warmth, one that is traditionally tied to our childhood, to that period of protection that is usually linked to very early infancy, to the mother’s womb. So, wanting to outline the predominant character of this art piece, it is a disconnected and tortuous effort precisely because it pertains to the phenomenological prism of sensorial memory. Chiara Mu’s strongest talent is in helping us to discover perceptions that we recognise as our own, but which nevertheless we couldn’t have grasped by ourselves.“
Benedetta Carpi De Resmini, Art Critic, Latitudo Art Projects Director and Senior Curator.
Presented as a “tactile journey in the imagination of those who do not perceive images but use other senses to see and communicate with the world”, the project involved 5 performers who were blind from birth. We investigated together the imagination of those who do not know the image but do have intense imaginations and we transformed it into a symbolic, tactile and bodily language. This process took place in Ambiente #2 of the Macro Museum through a regular workshop, closed to the public, during the first half of the month.
Then from January 18th to 30th, the performers dialogued with one visitor at a time, exploring the tactile elaborations we worked on together which became multiple performances open to everyone daily. Visitors agreed to pass through a curtain into the installed space, respecting the imposed silence and letting themselves explore a mutual exchange of touches with the performer’s body which, alien at first, became very soon unexpectedly intimate. The performers acted upon the viewers bodies in the dim light, letting them experience the phenomenon of gaining a sense of self-awareness through perceiving another body, letting go of control and opening themselves to a deeper, emotional listening.
video / video-extract (video-story)
credits:
Gianfranco D’Alonzo, Gianni Piacentini, Cecilia Casorati, Micol Di Veroli, Paolo Martore, Paolina Baruchello, Manuela Gavagnin, Alessandra Monaco, Claudia Di Manno, Jennifer Panepuccia, Anastasia Guantini, Emma Di Ienno, Enrico Di Ienno, Eileen Stevenson, Simone Valente & MonkeysVideoLab, Claudia Pecoraro, Cecilia Pecorelli,
Giorgio De Finis & Palaexpo
Presented as a “tactile journey in the imagination of those who do not perceive images but use other senses to see and communicate with the world”, the project involved 5 performers who were blind from birth. We investigated together the imagination of those who do not know the image but do have intense imaginations and we transformed it into a symbolic, tactile and bodily language. This process took place in Ambiente #2 of the Macro Museum through a regular workshop, closed to the public, during the first half of the month.
Then from January 18th to 30th, the performers dialogued with one visitor at a time, exploring the tactile elaborations we worked on together which became multiple performances open to everyone daily. Visitors agreed to pass through a curtain into the installed space, respecting the imposed silence and letting themselves explore a mutual exchange of touches with the performer’s body which, alien at first, became very soon unexpectedly intimate. The performers acted upon the viewers bodies in the dim light, letting them experience the phenomenon of gaining a sense of self-awareness through perceiving another body, letting go of control and opening themselves to a deeper, emotional listening.
video
video-extract (video-story)
credits:
Gianfranco D’Alonzo, Gianni Piacentini, Cecilia Casorati, Micol Di Veroli, Paolo Martore, Paolina Baruchello, Manuela Gavagnin, Alessandra Monaco, Claudia Di Manno, Jennifer Panepuccia, Anastasia Guantini, Emma Di Ienno, Enrico Di Ienno, Eileen Stevenson, Simone Valente & MonkeysVideoLab, Claudia Pecoraro, Cecilia Pecorelli,
Giorgio De Finis & Palaexpo