Mutabis

Mutabis

Vinci / Galesi

A cura di:
Eleonora Raspi

“Places inspires movement, that make you start a journey through things, creating different perspectives. Those are that “space” through yourself and, vice versa, allowing you to find place in a concept, an idea, a thought. Making them become space. ” Giuliana Bruno

Flower against flower, grass against grass, natural element against natural element. Two bodies moving slowly on a steep terrain, among the stones of an abandoned factory, among the stones of a mining warehouse, in the mud of a flowery meadow. The light creates shadows on a moving cloack, the performer’s body carries contradictory and repeated sounds; finally the artist stops himself and becomes part of the apparent immobility of nature. Suddenly the dark, flowers close on themselves, the performer’s look reveals the thought of end.

MUTABIS is a project that includes a cycle of performance by the duo Vinci / Galesi. A metamorphosis in fieri of a universal nature capable to adapt itself and become in harmony with each chosen place. The project has the ability to be expressed by a multiplicity of media: from performance to video, from photography to sound, from sculpture to drawing. Every medium explores and focuses on one aspect of MUTABIS.

The first act was presented by Vinci / Galesi on the occasion of the contemporary art event ALTER, in the city of Chiaramonte Gulfi on 31 July 2015. The two artists wrapped in a floral cloak kept walking along the streets, through the squares and among the monument of the city, concluding the performance inside the Church of Santa Teresa with a last moment of transfiguration: an intimate embrace in which the two entities became one. For this second act, Vinci and Galesi have chosen the scene of memories and childhood: on 11 March 2016 MUTABIS crosses Scicli in collaboration with Alessandro Zangirolami completed by the sound experimentation of Antonio Mainenti. Here MUTABIS becomes a three-day itinerant journey away from the urban center and its everyday life and touches and listens to other locations not normally frequented and rendered invisible by time.

MUTABIS is a transformation of body into a natural element; the union of two entities in one. The performer invests himself in a flowered habitus from the natural world of which he proclaims himself as bearer. With the progress of the creative act, the distance between the body and the human feeling and the body and the nature is lost; the corruption of the flesh becomes one with the corruption of the flowered clock. What is traditionally conceived as a dichotomy, in MUTABIS becomes a union of voices.

The journey through the six locations (one inside and five outside) is a fundamental part not only of Sicilian history and legends but also of the personal history of the duo. Along the way, the camera catches the bodies of the artists following them very closely almost touching the flowers and penetrating the flash, crossing them up to the moment of their disappearance in nature. The exclusive sound, sensitive to light changes now acts as a guide modulating itself to movements and emotions.

It is a haptic relationship between the camera and Vinci / Galesi which reflects their relationship with the places they pass through. According to the Italian researcher Giuliana Bruno (Harvard University) the concept of haptic involves the presence of a tactile, a physical relationship with space, which goes beyond the simple look. The two artists, through their wandering and observing, enter in contact with the space following a logic that is no longer oppositional, but inclusive. Through the juxtaposition of the coat’s flowers to the surfaces they go to cure a ten-year wound: the flower – the presence of the natural element in general – is curative in their work as a symbol of rebirth and energy flow. Full of a millenary memory the flower takes on itself the faults of humanity and pays homage to abandonment and moral negligence. Earth returns to the earth, flower returns to plant, the body returns to the origin of its being.

The former San Niccolò Mill, the heart of the intellectual, political and social commitment of the two artists, is the first place chosen and at the same time the only internal location. The performance winds itself from one corner to the other, sagging on the ground and crossed looks, and at the end turns into an embrace – the apex of transformation into a single body in which masculine / feminine and man / nature become an unicum. Vinci / Galesi move slowly through the space observing the vertebrae, the supporting veins, the edges and the imperfections of the architectural body.

With each movement the sound responds; form tome to time tenuous, now present, it becomes the voice of the corporeal microtension of gestures and flowers. During the journey of Vinci / Galesi noises and harmonies from nature match and resonate with / against a spontaneous synthetic score, generated by the photosensors worn by the performers. Electronic vibrations seem to belong to an otherworldly sphere or a supernatural language and explode from the performer’s resonance body and free themselves in the air. It is a vicious circle, a chase; is the sound itself which arose from the body of the artist, to guide every subsequent movement. Crossing the space as an indigenous element, each performer embarks on a process of estrangement in order to be able to watch from afar, in a state of virginity, what escapes the everyday look.

The ritual, the sounds, the looks are repeated in the other five chosen places: the former Fornace Penna in the Pisciotto district, the stone Quarry adjacent to the ancient Convent of the Cross, the clay Quarry of Truncafila, the stony ground in the Giarberi district and finally a flowery field in the Cuturi district. Every time, at every step and exchange of energy, some petal or a whole flower comes off, apparently leaving a testimony of its presence as a painful dialogue with the territory. If the passage between spaces on the one hand influences the perception of oneself and of the places crossed, on the other it inevitably leaves a physical and emotional trace both on the subject and on the surfaces. Like modeled fabric on the body, Bruno describes the relationship between space and subject as a two-way carnal bond. Performers and spectators find themselves immersed in the place of the “tra”, where they move around (move out) and move (together), thought  the journey, between outside and inside, private and public, enhances their surprise and their emotion.

Top