Context investigates the idea of context (from the Latin con-tèxere = weaving together, intertwining) as the set of circumstances that define an event: a reflection on the relationship between the elements that constitute it and the same conditions that generated it. Intended as a prismatic object capable of making more things coexist together, the project Context comprises various visual and performative, textual and sound formats that embody the entire research process from different perspectives. An organism composed of different elements, continuously interacting with each other; a fabric with no centre nor border, a tangle with irregular densities made up of weaves with alternating spaces and proximity.

Every format is interconnected with each other and – quoting Timothy Morton – “every entity seems strange. Nothing exists solely by itself, and so nothing is fully itself”.

The starting point is the geometric figure of the triangle, intended as the primary unit of the
subdivision of space. These triangular units form a web that becomes a narrative, aesthetic and performative model that invites the contemplation of seriality, of rhythm, of incompleteness. The intent is to operate a geometric and discrete approximation of space that will allow us to observe the triangle as a reductive and expansive unit at the same time. Triangles build abstract worlds interwoven with choices and possibilities. A geometric and discrete approximation of space, like an interconnecting mobile “mesh” in which infinite relationships and infinitesimal differences between the elements create continuous ramifications.

Only the repetition of the choices allows the distribution of possibilities contained in the matrix, generatrix of paths and relationships between the spaces, the energies, the bodies. Performative actions in which the performers are intended as manufacturing bodies, capable of being vehicles for variable and discontinuous energies and the infinite permutations of a context. A continuously updated analog map that attempts to render in three dimensions the fragility of the real and emotional space, the reverberation of the places or the stumbles of who those places cross for the first time. A mental space that becomes real only when it is crossed, only when what was thought or foreseen is experienced, touched, moved.

Imagining multiple possible developments of a never precisely defined context; trying to not-represent that nucleus of indetermination that lies at the heart of things. Context is a body of many arms moving in a space of possibilities. Context enters inevitably in the world, with its load of ambiguity, ready to be continuously rebuilt and disregarded.

All formats have a strong visual approach and they develop from the same founding principle: the idea of the double, of duality, of alternation. They have been developed in different places and contexts: from theatres to natural locations, from museums to hybrid spaces to urban dimension. The works emerge from a continuous adaptation of the shapes to what surrounds and holds them; the images, the bodies and the choreographies develop according to the relationships that they have with the space and take completely different aesthetic forms. Depending on the location, different versions emerge, with a specific research topic starting from the same founding principle: the infinite combination in which the continuous flow of visual and performative creation crystallizes for a moment to start again flowing against the space.

The research and production process was built through a path, spatially and temporarily distributed, between 2019 and 2021 in various international residences between Europe, the US and Canada thanks to the support of BeSpectACTive as the winning project of the 2019 call, Formati Sensibili, Tir Danza, L’arboreto – Teatro Dimora, Amina/369gradi.

The first stages of the research were developed in New York, between the MoMA archives and the studios of the La MaMa theatre and in Montreal, within the cluster Le Parc and Pulse of the centre for arts and technologies Milieux in 2019. The production was instead developed between the end of 2019 and 2020, through several creative residences in Nitra, within Nitra Festival (Slovakia), in Costa Verde (Sardinia), at Sementerie Artistiche in Crevalcore (in collaboration with Domino Center in Zagreb and Bakelit Multi Art Center in Budapest) and L’Arboreto – Teatro Dimora, the Emilia-Romagna Residence Center.

Credits
Project, choreography, scene and visual conception | Alessandro Carboni
Artistic contribution | Ana Luisa Novais (performer and development), Sara Capanna (performer and development), Loredana Tarnovschi (performer and development), Masako Matsushita (performer), Lucia Guarino (performer), Francesca Ruggerini (performer), Gianmaria Borzillo (performer), Eva Di Franco (costumes), Danilo Casti (music), Maria Virzì (light and technical assistance)
Organization | Debora Ercoli
Administration | Chiara Castaldini
Video documentation | Riccardo Biasi
Photography documentation | Luca del Pia
Production | Formati Sensibili 2019-2021
Co-Production | CapoTrave/Kilowatt in the frame of BeSpectACTive with the support Creative Europe SpectACTive in the program of European Union; TIR Danza. With the support L’arboreto – Teatro Dimora | La Corte Ospitale ::: Centro di Residenza Emilia-Romagna; Amina_project/369gradi; h(abita)t – Rete di Spazi per la Danza /QB/ Sementerie Artistiche.

FORMATS
So far, Context has been developed in 3 theatrical/performative formats and one visual/installation format:

CONTEXT / TRIO
Choreography, scene and visual conception | Alessandro Carboni
Performer | Ana Luisa Novais, Sara Capanna and Loredana Tarnovschi.
Original Music | Danilo Casti
Costume | Eva Di Franco
Light and technical assistance | Maria Virzì
The trio develops around the idea of time. Darkness wraps the forms in an explorative dimension, where time continually regains its circularity and in which the forms emerge inside an undefined narrative structure. The choreographic score, rigorous and geometrically structured, moves around a oneiric world, dissolved, constantly setting down and re-emerging
Duration 45’

CONTEXT / DUO
Choreography, scene and visual conception | Alessandro Carboni
Performer | Ana Luisa Novais and Loredana Tarnovschi.
Technical assistance | Maria Virzì
Original Music | Danilo Casti
The duo is conceived as a site-specific option and it feeds on space around it, in the context that each time contains it. Two figures inhabit a space, they enter the places, they measure them and they mould themselves after them. They move in the present and highlight the ludic qualities of the space.
Duration 25′

CONTEXT / SOLO
Choreography, scene and visual conception | Alessandro Carboni
Performer | Sara Capanna
Assistant | Ana Luisa Novais
Technical assistance | Maria Virzì
Original Music | Danilo Casti
The solo – presented in Sansepolcro within the exhibition and built around it – is the embodied visualisation of the matrix; it is the performance of the triangles turned into bodies, the crasis between the rigour of the action of measuring and the wild power of space. In the solo the permeability of the body allows itself to be crossed by the context, completely immersed in the abstractionism of complexity.
Duration 15′

CONTEXT / VISUALS
Drawing, photo and objects | Alessandro Carboni
Assistant | Ana Luisa Novais and Fabio Atzeni
Context Visuals represents a complex totality of visions, the drawings on display are not the only graphic transposition of the moving bodies or simple work notes, but transform in an additional graphic/visual format the reflection around the same concepts of measurement, three-dimensionality, matrix, possibility, incarnating the entire research process from a different perspective. Drawings that question and investigate space and bodies as pure forms, materialization of autonomous and parallel mental and visual processes. Also drawing is, therefore, an intention in CONTEXT, which opens the form and captures its process of continuous
formation and transformation.

The Artist

Alessandro Carboni is a visual artist and researcher whose practice is situated in the field of performing arts as a choreographer and performer. After several years of training in visual arts, creative media and dance, has developed an interdisciplinary practice focused on the production of performing and installation projects that involve several collaborators from different fields and disciplines. Not limited to the confines of the theatre, the museum and galleries, his practice evolves through interdisciplinary projects, interventions in the public and education space in the arts. His artistic and conceptual production revolves around the complex web of correlations and permutations that run between space and its constituent elements (people, places, relationships, meanings), beginning from the concept of cartography, intended as ”reduced/in scale representation of the terrestrial surface and phenomena that occur and evolve around it”. In this sense, in his performing and installations projects the artist uses the stage as a projecting plane from which arise reflections and criticalities related to the contemporary world.

www.alessandro-carboni.com

Context is large scale production of the Be SpectACTive! project.