Theatre of Learning
Thursday, June 18, 2015, 9pm
Campus NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano
Via C. Darwin, 20
20143 Milan
Italy
T +39 02 97372 1
Curated by Marco Scotini
Theatre of learning, aproject created by Marco Scotini, independent curator and Director of NABA Visual Arts Department, focuses on the re-enactment of a series of performances by celebrated international artists from the 1970s. It is part of a programme of exhibition and workshop initiatives and activities organised by NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano, for Expo 2015.
Joan Jonas, John Baldessari, Nanni Balestrini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Yona Friedman, Piero Gilardi and Anna Maria Maiolino are the artists involved in the project, who, together with roughly 200 NABA students, will stage the performances in a final event/festival on 18 June from 9pm on NABA campus.
Structured as an educational platform forging a generational shift, Theatre of learning started with work phase comprising of a series of performative-based workshops led by the above mentioned artists, experienced in experimenting with performative strategies in a field of enunciation, reflecting the disciplinary emancipation of visual arts, theatre and dance. Guided and instructed by the artists, the students will stage a selection of historical performances, re-enacting the radically permeable and digressing climate of the performing arts in the past.
If the temporal existence of a performance is always in the present, Theatre of learning assumes the shape and strategies of re-enactment, as the space of “here” and “now.” Repetition thus becomes a form of reappropriation of the past (in an active form compared to documenting and archiving) without devoiding performances of their original emancipatory meaning.
As commented by Marco Scotini: “For years I have been attracted to the idea of repetition as intended by Deleuze, to the idea of a theatre of repitition. This idea in embedded in the DNA of performance. Performance is always ‘here and now,’ while still referring to a ‘then’ and ‘elsewhere.’ Repetition is never a return to something identical, but makes what is past still possible.”
The evening event on 18 June will host a world premiere of a performance by John Baldessari, One hundred people say UMBRELLA from never realized series “Fifteen Musical Projects. An exchange with Pauline Oliveros,” executed live by 100 students upon the instructions received by the artist. Other works will include a revision of the historical piece by Nanni Balestrini, Basta cani / Ti piace il gatto (Enough with dogs / You like the cat), re-construction of MerzStrukturen by Yona Friedman, parade of Vestiti-Natura (Nature-Clothes) by Piero Gilardi, recreation of the video performance Waltz (2003) by Joan Jonas in the presence of the artist, reinterpretation of performances L’Uomo Ammaestrato (The Trained Man), La Palla Istoriata, La Venere degli Stracci incontra Bello e Basta (Venus of Shreds meets Just Good) by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Entrevidas (Between lives), re-enactment of the installation by Anna Maria Maiolino with approximately 1,500 white eggs distributed all over the campus. The original work was a metaphor of the cultural and political fragility experienced by the artist during the transition period from dictatorship towards democracy in Brazil. The installation will become now a set for contemporary choreography, where the public will perceive the emotional and psychological tension of the act of performing in a field, mined with something as fragile as eggs.
The construction of subjectivities as a performative act reminds us of how the political significance of performance also depends on the successful subversion of bodies, roles and knowledge imposed by society, albeit within the realms of the stage.
NABA:
Federica Arrighi, federica.arrighi [at] laureatedesign.it
Press office:
Stefania Colò, stefania.colo [at] bm.com
Cristina Caricato, cristina.caricato [at] bm.com
Founded in 1980, NABA is an internationally renowned innovative arts and design academy based in the heart of Milan’s design scene. NABA is the largest private educational academy in Italy offering six BA and seven MA courses, all recognised by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR).
