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Alessandro Carboni
ITA

ALESSANDRO CARBONI

THE ANGULAR DISTANCE OF A CELESTIAL BODY

18/9

17.00

National Museum of Contemporary Art

ATHENS PREMIERE
DURATION: 40'

The Angular Distance of a Celestial Body is a transversal reflection on the cartographic process. If this process involves “the reduced representation of the Earth’s surface, as well as of the events that are observed and occur on it,” Carboni’s work replaces the graphic sign used on maps with the body.

On the floor, a geometric modular structure counterposes the vertical tension of two symmetrical, specular — but never identical — bodies with no identity or gender.

The “fragmented” costumes that wrap the bodies tell us about the chaos that rules our world and the lack of continuity between the objects. They are disguises of a metaphorical carnival aimed at destructuring the established order of things, to investigate unstructured forms of discourse and make them visible through the ritual act of representation. The sound follows and leads the actions, outlines a variable horizon, thus relating the numeric (cartographic) dimension of the world to an archetypical, organic, analog landscape that describes and measures the world without contemplating numbers.

The Angular Distance of a Celestial Body is the definition of azimuth, that angle that allows us to measure everything that is in the terrestrial sphere. Starting from the idea of numerical convention, through the drawing of a line that allows to represent everything, Carboni admits to have arrived at the voice of a member of the Pirahã community of the Amazon rainforest who speaks in a language in danger of extinction. The performance emerges as a declaration of uncertainty that becomes a possibility: it condenses on stage a long artistic research and comes across as an imaginative tale that critically claims back the complexity of the world, thus declaring the impossibility to reduce and control it.

BIOGRAPHY

Alessandro Carboni‘s artistic career meshes research through performance, visual investigation, experimental geography and Critical Cartography in a unique way, with special attention to the practices of transmission and sharing. As both choreographer and performer, Carboni is active between Europe and Asia. His work inhabits urban spaces, draws trajectories and new blueprints for theaters and museums. His research revolves around complex networks of permutations found between space and its constituent elements (places, people, relationships), all planes of projection from which emerge critical questions about the contemporary.

CREDITS

CHOREOGRAPHY & VISUALS CONCEPTION: Alessandro Carboni
PERFORMERS: Ana Luisa Novais & Sara Capanna
COSTUMES: DEM
ORIGINAL MUSIC: Danilo Casti
PRODUCTION: Formati Sensibili 2018

Città delle 100 Scale Festival; ATER – Circuito Regionale Multidisciplinare; Santarcangelo Dei Teatri; H(abita)T – Rete di Spazi per la Danza / Sementerie Artistiche; L’Arboreto – Teatro Dimora Mondaino, TIR Danza.

The performance was selected for Aerowaves Twenty20.