Polypolis
By Liuba and Ciro d'Aniello
CONTENTS
GENESIS
The deep roots of this projects begin from the consciousness of the emptiness that grows in our cities, always more homologated in a way of life devoted to appearance, business and superficiality.
In the middle of the crowd it's easy to perceive many people really sealed and tied in life-style boxes, always busy for unuseful conquests.
MOTIVATION
This situation is shown and condemned through a series of artistic performances acted in the middle of a city, into its concrete and busy daily life.
Liuba, the performer, appears into the city streets sealed in two big white boxes that ties her and block her movements.
In the action there is pain and indifference, accusation of a human condition that ever more is piercing into our lives: the imprisonment of the contemporary human being into boxes of duty, convention, ideology and hypocrisy. This cage freezes and blocks every authentic possible life, but sometimes this is not even perceived: lots of people think to be realized and satisfied and happy, but they don't perceive to be sacrificed inside limits of emptiness and blindness.
ARTISTIC FORM
The performance passes through chaotic and busy streets, melting with the city in its concrete reality and life, with the purpose of acting, provoking, and thinking over human condition in society.
Art becomes an action in concrete life and goes into street for proclaiming a message. Message addressed not only to habitués of art exhibitions and to the strict world of art lovers and workers, but expanded to everybody, open to a total communication.
Performing into the cities has two meanings: the first is to give rise to reflection for the people that will be meeting with the performance. Liuba wears boxes and goes through the streets to show, like x-rays, the real nature of our living: closed into boxes, surrounded by them.
The second meaning concerns people's reaction meeting with the performance. Walking through the city the action will provoke different effect: indifference, surprise, reflection, intolerance, agreement. In this way it will be possible to show every city's identity and character.
The city is seen like a "living organism" inside of witch is introduced a "prickly element": the reaction at this element gives many different keys for an investigation and confrontation between the cities and the countries.
The performance will be filmed with a video-camera, and this documentation in an essential part of the project. A video maker, Ciro d'Aniello, will film the wandering of Liuba imprisoned in boxes through the streets, recording people's reactions and identities. In this way each city, seen through the video, will show its own character, human geography, metropolitan landscape, and images of its social constitution.
NETWORK
Polypolis artistic project consists in acting the performance in the 7 European culture capitals connected in network.
Each city, through Café9, will be able to follow the event in its development, to consider identity and difference.
The choice of performing in several cities is very important:
a) It connects several cities of an unique, common geographic region, Europe.
b) By watching the video resulting from the performance, it's possible to realize how is the single reality of each city, so to reflect about similarities and differences. The performance will be acted with the intention to give seeds for reflection, and this reflection will be received in many different ways.
c) The streaming through the net of Café9 will permit the vision of the event also to virtual people, so to make the project total and inclusive for both the persons that will see directly the performance and the ones that will see it on line.
PRACTICAL INFORMATIONS
Polypolis project consist in:
a) An interactive performance through the streets of 7 European culture capitals.
b) The video documentation (and later editing of it) of the action and of the people's reaction
c) Streaming video in Café9 Network of the performance.
PERFORMANCE
The performance (3 hours length) is developed through the streets of a city, preferably in busy hours and in neuralgic places.
The selection of the places will be taken by a previous investigation, following suggestions expressed by local organizers of each Café9.
The action involves one performer and one video maker.
The performer, Liuba, wears two big white boxes. Her face is painted in white like a mask, and her hands are hidden into white gloves.
On the boxes back is written a poem, made by the artist, that helps to understand the meaning of the action and to think over it. (The poem/poems can be given to the people by a local collaborator).
During the action Liuba is walking through the city closed into her boxes prison: the movements are tided up, spontaneousness is blocked, and pain and imprisonment are obvious and suffering.
VIDEO
The video maker, Ciro d'Aniello, dressed in a white overall, films the action and records the crowd who meet the performer, focalising reactions and emotions. The results of the video work, images and editing, will be later selecting to offer a synthetic vision of performances' flow
STREAMING
The video of the action, (length 10' each one), will be streamed contemporary in each city connected to Café9 network.
In this way the public of each Café9 could take a global look over the event and make considerations, comparisons, trying to discover integration between different cities.
The way to stream the video of the performances in the city can be two:
All the 7 videos are streamed in a single day, so to have a synoptic and syntactic vision of the projects and its results.
Each video is streamed in Café9 network, planned for a periodical and recurrent date, so to give a vision of the work in progress.
