Prelude

What you see below are fragments of visions, a catalogue of suggestions that open up possibilities for much wider exploration; a declaration of intent. As artists who reflect on the present, our very natures are ambivalent: we rely on the classics to guide us through the complexity of the contemporary world. We have given life to an editorial group with the aim of creating tables of comparison that will embody the questions listed below. Only by accepting the failure we have sunk into will we be able to advance hypotheses for the world that is to come.

1. For a Process that is not a Product
We are calling for an artistic practice that is about etymology and not commerce. We stand for an idea of theatrical work whose form is only an indirect means for the public.  We want be able to experiment openly without any fear of contradiction. We belong to a society that tends to simplify language in order to legitimize itself, thereby limiting its ability to explore. This undifferentiated approach complicates the artist’s journey into the abyss of creation and prevents her or him from shattering forms. Our aim is, therefore, to re-establish a dialectic between the basic components of language, one that will restore dignity and symbols to the complexity that moves through us. That is why we are using the term process. It is not forms that are the aim of our quest but the material that generates them.

 2. Recovering the body and saving the body
We want to go beyond the radical disconnect between the biological body and its representation. We are for a return to elementary physiology. For a body that is a repository of culture and not an image or an idol. We see the body as a passageway to knowledge, the body as a linking verb. It has again become necessary to explore the uniqueness of the body and, thus, its end, death. For the first time, humans are having to face death without any sacred rites of passage, with nothing to accompany them. This abstraction of human existence is being abetted by the dominance of technology. For that reason, we shall strive to recover the realistic, symbolic, metaphoric and linguistic components that make up the identity of the individual. We have learnt to build houses because we ourselves have tissues and organs that compose us and enclose us. Every invention starts out from the body. Everything is connected to the body, even words. 

3. Against the market: connected to the before and after with no reservation
Every manifesto stands in opposition to its own time. What characterizes ours is that it excludes the past as a frame of reference, even as something to be resisted. It is the result of the excesses of commerce in the art world: theatre markets, literary markets, festivals and auction houses. Today only things that exist in the “here and now” have any value, and they exist in the present because they function. All this has been made possible by the hyper-communication that animates the internet. Our exploration is an act of resistance to the commercial pact between art and technology. Technology, inasmuch as it is a language, must serve us as a tool for knowledge. We have had enough of the latest gadgets. It is precisely for this reason that we have set ourselves the task of seeking a passageway into another reality, a more intimate, more ancestral world. Our way of investigating the present is to stand outside it, outside any fashion or trend. It is only by distancing ourselves that our eyes can grasp objects as they really are.

4. A technology that is assumed
A pact with technology must be about learning and not consuming. Technology for us is a given fact, something that can be infinitely projected into the future, a protagonist in the historical process. We acknowledge the dominance of technology but we reject its hegemony: it is not an object or executor of artistic creation, technology must return to being what it has always been. An indirect means, a way, a form of concession that answers the questions: why? how? in spite of what? Technology is the eternal contradiction lying between the means and the obstacle. We don’t want to be like Astolfo who thought to flee to the moon to avoid the harquebus. We are already beyond mass destruction. We have already been destroyed and replaced virtually by technology. We are already imagining a world in which our bodies no longer exist. Computers will be our memories. Technological appendages are already part of our genetic patrimony. We feel that we are witnessing an end: we believe that theatre and technology must continue to dialogue with each other so that funeral rituality can be explored for a possible renewal. We do not know why or whether this will be of any use, but we know that we must do it. There still needs to be somebody in the world who can move outside narrow utilitarianism. It might become necessary to reconstruct a literary order as a system of orientation.

5. Laying bare the idea of language
We want to strip words from self-serving rituality. We need to reestablish the language systems that dominate theatrical practice and reveal the manipulations that they seek to actualize. We need to return to a critical spirit, encourage a true critique of the spirit. A system of language that is a linking verb. We thought that words inhabited bodies organically. That is no longer the case, and maybe it never was so. The only verbal language that isn’t alienated from the body is the poetic, imaginative, symbolic language. What is our mother tongue?

6. The obstacle of space-time
No representation can be conceived of outside the crisis of spatiality and temporality. Technique shows us the way: we oppose it and embrace its means. What is put on stage must no longer be merely “here and now”. It must be “everywhere and always”. We cherish the idea of synchronism and holism. Everything that pervades space-time, history and the countless narratives needs to be reconceived with a critical perspective, but also without judging. Space-time as a complement of limitation.

 7. Logical Analysis
The representation of reality kills meaning. We take the word anatomic back to the roots of scenic language. We aim to perform a logical and critical analysis of the logos as an analysis of the real, as an organization and as a project. Is logical analysis a linguistic legacy or a patriarchal imposition of history? We direct our enquiry towards dismantling the rules of logic and grammar, in those moments when language seeks new pathways: in errors, in defects and in neologisms.

8. The forgotten and forgetting
We stand for a theatre that puts the narratives of those who are forgotten at centre stage, without filters. A theatre that doesn’t presume to appropriate the narratives of others, to sugarcoat their language, to gloss them with a political patina. The forgotten as other potential subjects, as agents in narratives parallel to our own. Forgetting as an indirect object of artistic practice.

 9. Chaos
To carve up the individual in order to make him complete, to make him autonomous and critical. Carving up the individual means performing an autopsy, giving a name to the parts of the meat and fleshing in the parts of speech. The individual is the result of a contradiction between body and language. The individual who moves in chaos generates chaos. Economic, social, artistic chaos. Chaos as an indirect object of place and time. Chaos as a contradiction. Chaos as an equilibrium between the individual and technology. We still feel the need to exercise freedom, a freedom to verify even where manipulation cannot be avoided.

10. Mnemosyne
We want to rediscover the value of all the senses and their contribution to our ability to remember, beyond the perpetual glance turned towards the interface. To shed light on all the consequences of the domination of digital media over our need for memory. The digital world is already changing us neurologically given that we can always obtain a quick answer to every question and fill in the gaps of our memory. The brain saves energy wherever it can. When the brain isn’t stimulated to hold on to a memory, because it can access information at any moment by a simple search on the internet, it loses its cognitive ability, its capacity to think and learn. Attention is distracted and personal motivation is inhibited which leads to dysfunction and emotional confusion.  The deep memory is more connected to our personal identity because we ourselves are our memories. It is our ability to archive and select memories that determines who we are. These parameters, which we have constructed with our experiences in time, help us interpret the reality that surrounds us and move in the world.

Lorenzo Conti
Angela Dematté
Riccardo Favaro
Carmelo Rifici
Francesca Sangalli
Paola Tripoli

conceived by
Carmelo Rifici, Paola Tripoli

editorial board
Lorenzo Conti, Angela Dematté, Riccardo Favaro, Francesca Sangalli

editorial manager
Silvia Pacciarini

research project leader
Isabella Lenzo Massei, LAC

scientific research collaborator
Benedetta Giorgi Pompilio, MASI
Giada Moratti, LAC
Alice Nicotra, LAC

production manager
Maria Fico, LAC
Massimo Monaci, LAC

production delegates
Vanessa Di Levrano, LAC
Nicola Fiori, LAC
Marzia Montagna, LAC

video production
Associazione REC
Adriano Schrade, REC
Olmo Cerri, REC
Anna Domenigoni, LAC
Igor Samperi, LAC

communication
Alessio Manzan, LAC
Alice Croci Torti, LAC

graphic design
Mike Toebbe, LAC

web and database development
Ivan Pedrini, LAC
Cryms Sagl

photo/video content
Anna Domenigoni, LAC
Irene Masdonati, LAC

press office
Anna Poletti, LAC
Silvia Pacciarini

marketing
Gregory Birth, LAC

technical direction
Pierfranco Sofia, LAC

technical coordination
Sarah Chiarcos, LAC
Igor Samperi, LAC

stagehand
Serafino Chiommino, LAC
Andrea Borzatta, LAC
Luigi Molteni, LAC

electricians
Noray Yildiz, LAC
Giovanni Voegeli, LAC
Mattia Gandini, LAC

sound engineers
Brian Burgan, LAC
Lorenzo Sedili, LAC

apprentices
Giulio Bellosi, LAC
Alberto Granata, LAC

scene making
Matteo Bagutti, LAC

administration
Maria Cristina Bartolone, LAC
Stefano Cimasoni, LAC

production
LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura

Thanks to
City of Lugano
Repubblica e Cantone Ticino
Swisslos Fund
Lugano per il Polo Culturale Foundation

Main Partner
Credit Suisse, UBS

Research partner
Clinica Luganese Moncucco

Conference partner
ticinoscienza.ch, a project of IBSA Foundation for scientific research

Media partner
Corriere del Ticino

Partner Mobility
Renault Autors SA

AIL

Migros percento culturale