by Maria Cristina Reggio
“Video cameras dot our streets, cities and homes, watching over lives that pass by frantically and are often indifferent to their invisible presence: surveillance methods that also represent slender swords of Damocles, generating a sense of threat and danger. Often, the systems of control against “possible enemies” are even more concealed, sometimes invisible, as are the borders themselves. In this way, the data of millions of people is collected every moment by social media, banking and telephone systems, Google and biometric detectors, flowing into a system of metadata whose inspiring concept suggests a strategy of universal domination, which uses technologies in the service of a global design of consumption.
The peaceful submission to the Panopticon, together with the emergence of a climate of widespread uncertainty and mistrust, make the neighbour, the passer-by, the stranger we meet on the bus or plane, the other. The possible enemy can then be each of us, the anonymous other who is next to us. Since the attack of 11 September 2001, followed by many other terrorist incidents in which the systems of control were circumvented, global horror has shattered trust in the other. The search for the enemy found in contemporary communities has to deal with an ambivalence and an underlying tension that dramatically involve the spread of systems of control on the one hand, and the protection of individuals, the right to freedom of movement of peoples and the extension of invisible borders on the other.
Developing the path of integration and comparison between different disciplines, the project FAMILY GAMES#5 was enriched by a further workshop experience, led by an artist and theatre actress, Chiara Guidi, co-founder of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (now Socìetas), a theatre company founded in the 1990s, which has strongly influenced the contemporary art scene.
The workshop led by Guidi, “Lottare con la propria voce”, addressed the theme of the conflict between voice and word, working with a group of about thirty students from the Academy. The artist undertook what she herself describes as “an internal ‘battle’ made up of contractions and thrusts, to finally arrive at that form capable of enclosing a fire”. For Chiara Guidi, the voice “is matter that can be touched, drawn, sculpted, engraved, and whoever draws a form from it to narrate or act poses the same compositional problems as a visual artist, an architect, or a sculptor. (…) The voice is an invisible material and although its colours, its timbres, its pitches and intensities are invisible, the word nevertheless relies on its expressive power. The “doing” of the word relies on the invisible body of the voice, on its sound””..
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“FAMILYGAMES” is a multidisciplinary project of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, curated by Maria Cristina Reggio and Marilena Pecoraro (lecturers in artistic anatomy), and by Franco Ripa di Meana (lecturer in directing). Over five years, dozens of students and teachers from different artistic fields have been involved: painting, sculpture, theatre and multimedia arts. The research focuses on the relational life of communities in the age of globalisation, through the creation of videos and multimedia performances.
In the 2018/2019 academic year, the project took the form of an annual Integrated Workshop: with “Familygames #5 – Il Nemico Ritrovato” students are guided in a dramaturgical and multimedia writing exercise, with the aim of creating a performance that will be presented to the public on 30 May 2019 at 9:00 pm, in the spaces of the Carrozzerie | n.o.t. The theme of “Il Nemico Ritrovato” is the emergence of conflicts in contemporary communities, with a particular focus on the current phenomena of control of possible enemies and new video surveillance techniques.