Kyrahm and Julia Pietrangeli (aka Julius Kaiser)

Nettuno (Rome, IT), July 3, 2015. It’s almost the sunset at the beach that used to be the theatre of war during the dramatic landing of Anzio and Nettuno during World War II. A long white table waits in the sea; a rubber boat lands on the shore. The passengers join the banquet: an aged man, two young women and a few African men. They took their seat in front of a small and curious crowd. Each of the guests tells his odyssey. The African refugees share the stories of their long journey to escape from the unbearable living conditions in Nigeria, where they lost their relatives in violent criminal attacks, then to get to Libya, where they experienced the miserable conditions of the war and the underground prison detention. The lovely elder from Sardinia tells about his experience as an immigrant to Germany. He recounts the time when the Italians used to travel in masses after the last war, flooding the train stations with their cardboard luggage; a similar scenario recalling the past century exodus when the Italians used to embark to America. The story of the young woman born from a Sicilian mother and an African father reveals peculiar mixtures between different cultures in an unusual family story torn between dishonour and love. At the end of the feast, everybody takes part in the ritual of the salt thrown in the sea. To remember the sisters and the brothers that couldn’t make it, and to restore the sea in the sea. This performance, documented live, involved elderly Italian migrants and refugees recently arriving in Italy willing to share their stories to the casual audience of the beach.

The creation of a machine able to paint without the artist being present triggered the envy and admiration of Andy Warhol. “It’s the artwork that should speak and not the artist”, says a contemporary art mantra. But what happens when we investigate the role of performance art by interviewing artists whose physical presence is the fulcrum of their work? Is being an artist an innate condition, like the shamans - that you can either accept or dismiss - or is it the result of experience and valuable encounters? Beyond the Body is an intimate dialogue delving into the motivations that drive some protagonists of performance art to reveal their identity; and unveil their body; at times using their own (real) blood on stage through forms of expression uncompromising between life and death.

A long time ago, there were three kinds of human beings: male, female and androgynous. As they were powerful and threatening to scale the heavens, Zeus devised to cut them into two ‘like a sorb-apple halved for pickling’ and even threatened to cut them into two again, so that they might hop on one leg. Ever since then human beings longed for their other half so much that once found they restore their ancient perfection. – Aristophanes in Plato’s “Symposium”. Those who escaped the wrath of the Gods are not spared from the anxiety of research: Brutus at night, Julia at day, fragile and tenacious, reveals in front of the mirror that s/he does not know where this journey will take. Proud lesbian activist s/he’s one of the first Drag Kings in Italy.