Domus, in continuity and coherence with its intentions, launches in partnership with Atelier Essenza its 2022 programme with an ambitious project titled PERFORM(HER). The 2022 edition aims to discuss, develop and disseminate knowledge and studies on performing art, starting from the local phenomenon of Tarantismo.

Starting from Tarantismo as a total social phenomenon, this year Domus will try to restore the performative logics of possessed bodies assigned to rituals of dispossession, but deviating from them just as much, by reversing these logics through a politics of gestures. Logics of emancipation of possessed bodies have been put forward by contemporary feminist theories and one of the challenges of this week’s residency will be to propose the outline of these logics by articulating them with artistic performances. Fragmentary visual languages, unexpected encroachments and precarious balances are at the heart of contemporary art, and performance is the perfect artistic expression in which to bring together these fundamental characteristics that have pulverised canons. In performance, the action of the artist is closely connected to the experience of the audience in a mutual exchange of offering and inner transformation.

The female performing artist continuously stages herself through action as in a sort of psychoanalytical session in which the body is the absolute protagonist. The female body is a body in itself, women do not have a body, they are a body and this body is a creative instrument not only from a biological point of view but also from the point of view of thoughts, and the performance is the sublimation of an individual path which, by showing itself, becomes a collective experience.

Perform(her) will incorporate in its three days of embodied study the voices of an ample spectrum of thinkers, activists, and practitioners from diverse social, political, and cultural backgrounds. Widening the project’s theoretical and performative reflections and situating the project’s territory of Galatina in a broader international network of reflections, practices, urgencies.

An essential component of PERFORM(HER)’s process is its polyphonic approach, its thinking/doing as a collectivity and in direct exchange with the surrounding territory of Apulia. In this direction goes also the second moment of the project: two days of collective restitution across Galatina (one dedicated to performance and another dedicated to video projection work). PERFORM(HER) will reconsider the possibilities of embodied cultural and social justice. The intersectional approach connects individual experiences to a broader network of alliances: Galatina to the Mediterranean and other Souths of the globe, and Tarantismo to a lineage of multiple resistances that defy patriarchal and heteronormative characterisations of colonial descent.

Text written by Fabienne Brugère, Ilaria Conti, Romina De Novellis, Mariacristina Lattarulo, Guillaume le Blanc, Paola Ugolini.

MONDAY 18.07.22

Domus Artist Residency

9h30 - Opening of the days of study and official greetings by Romina De Novellis

10h to 11h - Alessia Rollo / David Zerbib

11h30 to 12h30 - Marta Federici / Sophie Dupont

17h00 - Opening of the meeting by Guillaume le Blanc

17h30 - ORLAN

TUESDAY 19.07.22

Domus Artist Residency

9h30 - Opening of the meeting by Fabienne Brugère

10h to 11h - Maria Alicata / Rada Akbar

11h30 to 12h30 - Alice Anderson / Massimiliano Mollona

17h00 - Opening of the meeting by Paola Ugolini

17h30 - Silvia Giambrone / Sergio Racanati

18h30 - Giulia Crispiani / Chiara Vecchiarelli

PERFORM(HER) hosted throughout the entire week of programme 18.07-22.07 the work of Domus_in Residence guests that has been done during their stay (Fall and Spring residency ran over 2021-2022) will be exhibited throughout the Domus Artist Residencey during the entire week inhabiting the entire house.

Amber Arifeen & Elena Righini - The Tarantata

film documenting a series of performances (38min 14sec), 2022

"Amber Arifeen and Elena Righini use the historical and contemporary context of Puglia region in Italy to explore themes of ecofeminism and freedom through the documentation of a performance project. Using Dance as medium to express freedom, Arifeen draw’s parallels between the feminist struggle in Pakistan and the socio-cultural transformations taking place in Southern Italy, allowing for a deeper connection and understanding of the current challenges faced by the global feminist movement. By exploring the relationship between historical Tarantismo phenomenon, the current contemporary issue of Olive Tree decimation, and the female body, they connect the past to present, body to landscape, and local with global, giving context to the performance project and a voice to the female experience of the 21st century."

Maria Luigia Gioffre - MIGNANO

sound (3min 31sec), 2022

“Every night in November I sat on the mignano of Puglia and heard, unspeakable things, that everyone at night, knew how to shout. During the residency time I heard the residency house used to be a "Mignano," to wit a typical house from Puglia with a balcony space where women not allowed to go out for cultural reasons, could stay and look what was happening on streets. The work consists of a recorded audio, captured from the mignano of the house, which now faces a common street where teenagers use to gather and chat. One day in November I was there hearing, they were passing by, the audio reports this whispering.”

Clarissa Falco - TEMPLUM

installation (400cm x 200cm x 200cm), 2021

“One of the aspects that has most impressed the human imagination is the industriousness of arachnids, combined with great technical precision that these animals demonstrate in weaving their web. TEMPLUM is space sacred, irregular and tenacious. In tarantism, considered by Ernesto De Martino not as a disorder psychic but as a "culturally conditioned symbolic order" in which a crisis found solution neurotic culturally shaped, the tarantula became a symbolic animal contributing to the construction of the theory of the sacred. The denied body of the everyday is reasserted through the symbolic hegemonic of tarantism to become a representation of the ritual that characterizes the city of Galatina.”

Dyana Gravina - ‘The poison of a thousand movements'

(work in progress) Video/sound installation and somatic movement ritual (4min 11 sec), 2022

“The poison of a thousand movements is an experimental video and sound installation blended with the present, moving body. It's inspired by the Southern Italian phenomenon of Tarantismo and the cross-pathing history of pain, illness and the religious appropriation of wisdom, rituals and movement that belonged to the body and the body of women. The work aims to disrupt this connection and re-shape codes of acceptance related to female expression, pleasure and healing.”

Federica Peyrolo - PELLE DI MARE

photo series, 2022

"This project, documenting portions of tattooed skin, was born from the observation of the Deer Cave of Porto Badisco's cave paintings and the related reflections regarding the cult of women in prehistory, the symbology of visual language and the relationship with the image of the female body. Tattoos are modern symbols, symbols of a personal everydayness that is made public and triggers this interplay between inside and outside, between public and private, between ritual and spectacle, between body and wall."

Laura Rositani - Quando sapevo danzare sulle tele del ragno, tendevo fili luminosi agli angoli degli spigoli

text, 2022

"In the land of remorse hover folk tales and legends united by a general lack of critical thinking. My research starts from an attempt to give voice to these forgotten women: I would like to try to give a new reading to this act of resistance that occurs through movements, the chants of labor, the reaction that reverses their position from victims to heroines, emancipated and free. I am interested in this idea of universal language that is repeated according to an evocative power that refers back to archetypal and universally shareable concepts."

Video projection proposed by PERFORM(HER)’s guests - 21.07.2022 

With works proposed by PERFORM(HER)'s guests at the Chiostro di Santa Chiara (Piazzetta Galluccio, 73013 Galatina (LE) Iatly) and Domus Artist Residency (15 Arco Cadura, 73013 Galatina (LE) Italy). 

Ex Convento Santa Chiara

• Sainte ORLAN et les vieillards by ORLAN, 1983

• Chiara Fumai read Valerie Solanas, excerpt by Chiara Fumai, 2013

• Human_Non Human, extrait des Dances Géométriques by Alice Anderson

• A speech for the Deceased! by Rada Akbar

• We Always Carry Our Body interview of Sophie Dupont, 2018

• TRAUM by Silvia Giambrone, 2019

• MUSE by Elena Mazzi as part of the project Mascarilla 19 - codes on domestic violence produced by In Between Art Film, 2020

• Viva il paniere by Claudia Mollese realized during a residency at Cavoti Museum for Intrance Festival, 202

• DARKNESS performance by Sergio Racanati, 2019

• Interramento del mio sogno di sposa by Rossella Piccinno, 2020

• ƒ in between the Levels of Organic Life by Boisseau & Westermeyer, 2021

DOMUS ARTIST RESIDENCY Grand floor

• Harlequin Coat by ORLAN, 2008

• This Will Also Change, interview of Sophie Dupont

• Domestication by Silvia Giambrone as part of the project Mascarilla 19 - codes on domestic violence produced by In Between Art Film, 2020

DOMUS ARTIST RESIDENCY First Floor

• L'ORLANoïde by ORLAN, 2018

• The Book of Evil Spirits by Chiara Fumai, 2016

• Rukhshana/Abarzanan-Superwomen by Rada Akbar, 2020

• PARADA ANTI G20 trailer (audio film moodboards) by Sergio Racanati, 2021

• Presentation of Shut up, actually talk di Chiara Fumai

DOMUS ARTIST RESIDENCY Terrace

• Video triptych Pétition contre la mort - No baby no - J'ai faim, j'ai soif by ORLAN, 2018

• Shut up, actually talk, excerpt by Chiara Fumai, 2012

• Stung in the Countryside, The Tarantata series, by Amber Arifeen, 2021

• The poison of a thousand movements, (work in progress) by Dyana Gravina, 2022

• DARKNESS trailer by Sergio Racanati, 2019

• I Did not Say or Mean Warning by Chiara Fumai, 2013

• DEBRIS/DETRITI ROSARIO by Sergio Racanati, 2019

• DEBRIS/DETRITI SALINA GRANDES by Sergio Racanati, 2019