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• THE STRUGGLE FOR VISIBILITY

  BY NOLI KAT

  When you are housebound, you become mainly invisible to the world. Unable to participate in the daily activities that happen outside the door of your home, it is easy to start feeling like you don’t exist. In The Struggle for Visibility, the artist attempts to become part of the outside world. They are covered in a golden silk sheet and stay close to the ground to represent their ongoing separate reality as chronically ill. In the public space, they become hyper-visible whilst remaining largely hidden from view. In their dreams of belonging to the outside world, they desperately try to overcome all the barriers it poses. In the last attempt to become more visible, they climb the highest stairs in the busiest part of town, but they find that this is too much to ask of their fragile body. Also, it does not lead to the meaningful social engagement they had wished for. Instead, they end up alone, exhausted by the effort of trying. For sick and disabled bodies to become more visible in public spaces, we need societies to adapt to our needs rather than push ourselves to become more visible to society.  
• UNDERSCARS

  BY VestAndPage and the Anam Cara colllective.

  Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, VestAndPage and the Anam Cara collective presented in December 2022 the performance opera UnderScars at Palazzo Mora, the historical premises of the European Cultural Centre in Venice. UnderScars is a gathering of experienced artists and performers who challenge their practice to attempt novel perspectives on art and society. It is a collective work that gravitates around the themes of disability, severe diseases, addiction, patriarchy, capitalism, abuse and discrimination. The wounds and stigma they cause are dealt with poetically through performance actions and artmaking rituals of kinship and togetherness. On this occasion, Palazzo Mora’s main hall and six adjacent rooms transform into a dwelling site of interconnected performance installations, where temporary, intensive co-creation processes aim to reveal the qualities of existence. The hosting space functions as a social-narrative incubator wherein performance methods are intertwined for coagulating inclusive and expansive life stories. The collaborative performance unfolds as it builds on sustained encounters of different artistic research combined with performative practices. As the title suggests, the artists now gather to unveil precious experiences of vulnerabilities, hesitations, fragilities, hopes, the unspoken they carry under their cicatrices, and wounds healed by performing. Memories and experiential transformation processes entwine and collide to respond poetically to present emergencies. UnderScars was envisioned and devised by the artist duos VestAndPage (Verena Stenke & Andrea Pagnes) and Marianna Andrigo & Aldo Aliprandi in collaboration with Irina Baldini, Sabrina Bellenzier, Giorgia de Santi, daz disley, Nicola Fornoni, Marisa Garreffa, Fenia Kotsopoulou, Ash McNaughton, Aisha Pagnes, Enok Ripley, Sara Simeoni, Mauro Sambo, Joseph Morgan Schofield, Marcel Sparmann and Emily Welther.  
• ECCE (H)OMO, GUERRIERI (WARRIORS)

  Kyrahm’s note: “In the last years, I met extraordinary warriors. I attended LGBT activists meetings before the Italian government approved the Civil Partnership Bill. I met with people struggling to build a model of society where diversity is a value. For health issues, I connected to the most intimate part of human fragility: the fear of death. I got in touch with other warriors, fighting against physical diseases. I chose not to be afraid. With humbleness, I gathered those people to expose their bodies and souls, voluntarily performing themselves and their real life-stories. A mother without legal rights on her baby girl. A woman in love with her girlfriend. The courage of the disabled and the pride of age and illness.” The live performance and the resulting docufilm reflect on the mother/child relationship compared and opposed to that one of a son who takes care of his elderly mother. A Pietas, acted out with a disabled boy, silently claims the fairness of all bodies to be loved, as well as a woman and her twenty-three years enduring relationship with her beloved partner; the tears of a silver-haired Venus watching at her lover’s face signed by time; and those who find the strength to transmit messages of love despite the fight against cancer. A key issue is the role of the voice: the voice of those who are no longer with us and the voice changing with time and illness.