Residenza 40 Gaia Mencagli

As part of the Performing Arts Residencies at Villa Manin, organised by the CSS Teatro Stabile di Innovazione del FVG, on Saturday 6 October there will be a residency open to the public Listening to the inevitable transformation of all things by the artist Gaia Mencagli.

‘In a world that tries to deny the passage of time of human bodies through plastic surgery, make-up, and hair colour, that tries to make us lead increasingly indoor lives by accustoming us to the static nature of concrete, asphalt, and bricks, we are increasingly distanced from our cyclical, fragile, and perpetually changing nature.

In opposition to this global trend of desperate striving for an inextinguishable eternal youth, there are many artists and thinkers, such as Rebecca Solnit and the Ecosexuals, who propose an encounter with life that brings us closer to the natural and organic world from which we come and of which we are inevitably a part.

With the project Ascolto l’inevitabile trasformazione di tutte le cose (I listen to the inevitable transformation of all things) I want to enter into this counter-current of thought, with the desire to create a personal ritual that helps me and those who will be part of it to welcome the impermanent nature that characterises every living being. Specifically, the artist’s research in this performance project moves within the confines of the language of theatre, exploring the physical and emotional transformation that characterises the passage from child/maiden to woman. 

All this with a poetic language that does not follow the everyday logic, but the symbolic and imaginative one of the dream world.

The seed for Ascolto l’inevitabile trasformazione di tutte le cose was planted a year ago during a week-long rural artistic residency in close contact with the land (Ascolti di Terra 2023, Tuscania, VT) where alternating agricultural work with moments of artistic elaboration led to the creation of a 10-minute poem in motion. This first study was shared with a small group of local people in the open air among olive trees and wheat fields. Then the same study was shared in the park of the Konkrete Kunst museum in Ingolstadt for a dance festival on Earth (Tanztage 2023, Germany). Today the poem wants to expand and occupy a more dilated space where every moment is lived and not hinted at.’ Gaia Mencagli

Team in Residence
Gaia Mencagli, author and perfomer
Matteo Cambò, musician and composer
Emanuela Serra (Balletto Civile), tutor