THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2024, 9 p.m.
Qualcosa ci sta sognando [Something is dreaming about us] by and with Manuela Gandini
Music by Brando Barbieri
Frittelli arte contemporanea
via Val di Marina 15, Florence
FREE ADMISSION
SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY
Qualcosa ci sta sognando [Something is dreaming about us] is a multimedia performance talk (body-talk), conceived and performed by Manuela Gandini, lasting about 100 minutes. It is an immersion in the art and life of Europe from 1929 to the present. It is a lecture/action conceived as a journey through time among the false gods of the 20th century, the spectres of Nazism, the construction of a fierce new language and surrealist visions. On the one hand the esoteric aesthetics of black, homologating and totalitarian power, on the other the white magic of the visionary art of the unconscious. The “trip” reaches as far as contemporary rituals, the demolition of monuments and a supposed, as improbable as present-day “death of art” or “birth” of an alternative vision to anthropocentrism.
Synopsis
An eerie haze cleaves the moon. Munich 1929, Eva Braun brushes her hair dreaming a of becoming a diva. In Paris Luis Buñuel, in Un Chain Andalous sharpens a razor ready to cut a woman's eye open to the short century. The twentieth century is a darkroom within which rise the walls of Auschwitz, the atomic mushroom, Man Ray's solarizations, and then LSD, the death of the Kennedys and the cannibalization of images.
On the one hand, totalitarianisms impose order, propaganda, obedience, and death, fueling the banality of evil. On the other, an androgynous dance, in the light and dense territories of Surrealism, turns tragedy into art with powerful rituals aimed at celebrating life beyond good and evil. The tale of Eva Braun's burning, toxic, morbid love for the Führer and her artistic ambitions vaporizes at the moment of their suicide when war correspondent Lee Miller, Man Ray's former companion, enters Hitler's apartment with her amphibians muddied by the soil of Dachau. The Talk - Qualcosa ci sta sognando [Something is Dreaming of Us] - involves a foray into the dark zone of our history through the dull eyes of gray figures such as Joseph Goebbels with his propaganda strategies, and volcanic artists/s such as Lee Miller, Marina Abramovic, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bo Zheng, Romeo Castellucci, Piero della Francesca, Bartolina Xixa...
Words, gestures and clips cross each other in a rhizomatic, unpredictable and bumpy path. All conceived as a rite of purification. Have we really freed ourselves from history's most grim symbols? If radio was called “Goebbels' mouth” during the Nazis, what are we calling today the countless Entertainment Society broadcasters that administer unambiguous streams of chaotic, functional news to a technocratic domination that has become dangerously invisible?
The show previously took place in:
Festival DeriveApprodi – Bologna
Galleria Artra - Milano
Sharevolution Gallery - Milano
Centro San Fedele - Milano
Arte Fuori Luogo# - Alzano Lombardo
A Pick Gallery - Torino
Cittadellarte - Biella
Museo MAN - Nuoro
Dromos Festival – Oristano
Festival Arte Evento Creazione – Molineddu, Sassari
Fondazione Mudima - Milano
Esplorare 2023 – AltraDanza Festival - Bari
MLB Gallery - Ferrara
Cinema Capitol/Liceo Artistico Manzù - Bergamo
Centro Internazionale di Brera – Milano
Castello di Monteruzzo – Castiglione Olona
CasermArte Festival Piccolo Libro - Sansepolcro
Rassegna Palcoscenico Contemporaneo, Teatro San Giovanni Bosco – Varese
Atelier Figure Festival Mess – Sarajevo
Auditorium – Gorla Minore