Through video language, the history of Performance Art has enabled the memory of performative actions and practices to be preserved over time that would have otherwise been lost.
The show brings together different materials, authorial video works and documentation footage that convey all the strength and vitality of actions that were often born spontaneously and purely experimentally. From a focus on the works of two great Italian masters such as Pier Paolo Calzolari and Luigi Ontani, we move on to the story of the different declinations of the language of performance according to the space in which it is born and takes shape.
Videos of actions performed in the domestic space, in the artists’ studio or outdoors – such as those by Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Laura Grisi, Joan Jonas, and Marisa Merz, among others – alternate with footage of performances held in galleries, institutional or alternative spaces. Other significant moments and operative contexts are highlighted through material from the ASAC-Biennale di Venezia Archives, the Centro Video Arte and the Luciano Giaccari Videotheque Archive, relating, among others, to the works of Christina Kubisch, Federica Marangoni, Michele Sambin.
The show closes with a focus on services and broadcasts conserved in the RAI Teche archives that reflect on the diffusion and reception of performance into a broader generalist audience, thanks to the sensitivity of registers such as Emidio Greco and Alfredo Di Laura.
header: Luciano Fabro, Allestimento teatrale, Cubo di specchi (1967–1975), 15 febbraio 1975, Galleria Mario Pieroni, Bagno Borbonico, Pescara. Photo © Giorgio Colombo, Milano
Through video language, the history of Performance Art has enabled the memory of performative actions and practices to be preserved over time that would have otherwise been lost.
The show brings together different materials, authorial video works and documentation footage that convey all the strength and vitality of actions that were often born spontaneously and purely experimentally. From a focus on the works of two great Italian masters such as Pier Paolo Calzolari and Luigi Ontani, we move on to the story of the different declinations of the language of performance according to the space in which it is born and takes shape.
Videos of actions performed in the domestic space, in the artists’ studio or outdoors – such as those by Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Laura Grisi, Joan Jonas, and Marisa Merz, among others – alternate with footage of performances held in galleries, institutional or alternative spaces. Other significant moments and operative contexts are highlighted through material from the ASAC-Biennale di Venezia Archives, the Centro Video Arte and the Luciano Giaccari Videotheque Archive, relating, among others, to the works of Christina Kubisch, Federica Marangoni, Michele Sambin.
The show closes with a focus on services and broadcasts conserved in the RAI Teche archives that reflect on the diffusion and reception of performance into a broader generalist audience, thanks to the sensitivity of registers such as Emidio Greco and Alfredo Di Laura.
header: Luciano Fabro, Allestimento teatrale, Cubo di specchi (1967–1975), 15 febbraio 1975, Galleria Mario Pieroni, Bagno Borbonico, Pescara. Photo © Giorgio Colombo, Milano