Spirits Read Foucault
Written and performed by Silvia Battista. Filmed by Massimiliano Ferraina
RUINS festival (2021);
Hyderabad University, India (2016);
Rhodes University, South Africa (2016);
Greenwich University in London (2015);
Goldsmith University, London (2015);
www.ruins.media
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Written and performed by Silvia Battista. Filmed by Massimiliano Ferraina
RUINS festival (2021);
Hyderabad University, India (2016);
Rhodes University, South Africa (2016);
Greenwich University in London (2015);
Goldsmith University, London (2015);
www.ruins.media
Read more
Spirits Read Foucault consists in a performance-research-experiment that employs storytelling, guided visualization and mental imaginary. The aim is experiential and pedagogical wherein performance is used as a vehicle to guide audiences to reflect on death, on the meanings of our embodied lives, on the identity politics attached to our bodies and their appearances and what – if something – remains after the physical body is not longer here. My research’s intention is to encourage attention toward the intertwined body-mind liminal complex, as an order of materiality that actually crosses beyond its discrete boundaries to meet the spiritual. There, appearances seem to loose their grip on our perception and an opening for an intersubjective, energetic non-identity might perhaps emerge.
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The Stories of the Firefly
Conceived, written, devised and performed by Silvia Battista. Special guest Steve Boyland.
Angel Field Festival 2020, Liverpool, UK.
Presented in 2020, at the Angel Field Festival in Liverpool, with the special collaboration of vocalist Steve Boyland, 'The Stories of the Firefly' brings together visuals, experimental storytelling and sound. Written through the use of what Battista refers to as ritualistic writing, the resulting performance is a visceral, hypnotic, visionary journey. Inspired by the work of artists such as Laurie Anderson, Pauline Oliveros, Kimmo Pohjonen and Patti Smith it reflects on the poetics of active imagination, Buddhist philosophies and mythologies, and animistic ecologies.
S.O.S.! Spirits of Sound (2019)
'Sounds' Spirits' is an improvisatory piece between Silvia Battista and Annalaura Alifuoco presented at the event ALIEN SOUND, AMBIENT MUSIC AND THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN
Liverpool Tate Gallery 2019
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/workshop/alien-sound
S.O.S.! Spirits of Sound (2019)
'Sounds' Spirits' is an improvisatory piece between Silvia Battista and Annalaura Alifuoco presented at the event ALIEN SOUND, AMBIENT MUSIC AND THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN
Liverpool Tate Gallery 2019
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/workshop/alien-sound
Persephone
Devised by Silvia Battista in response to Angelo Madonna’s installation The Jugglers
Independent Liverpool Biennial 2018.
https://www.artinliverpool.com/events/ib18-george-henry-lees-silvia-battista-persephone/
www.angelomadonna.org
By employing repetition within a circular structure, the performance produces a presence which plays on the possibility and impossibility of a dis/embodied presence to inhabit a space. Eventually Persephone vanishes and her story will be narrated: a contemporary tale of loss and redemption, of myth and ordinary life, of jugglers and lost souls.
Colonization Passes through the Lenses
We Use to Understand the Other
Series of gigs in various venues around Liverpool - 208-2019.
The Factory Kitchen @ Invisible Wind Factory;
Kazimier Garden;
81 Kershaw Street.
A River is Never a Matter of Peace
Devised, written and performed by Silvia Battista.
Video by Angelo Madonna.
Dartington Hall, Devon - 2017
In March 2017, I was asked to perform at the Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery at the opening of the show “The Thread that Binds Us: a Collaborative Exhibition by Artists Focusing on the River Mersey from Source to Sea”. The performance was planned for May 2017. To figure out what to do I decided to spend one month and half, two hours a day with the river Mersey. Every day I sat on the same spot of the Southbank of the Liverpool promenade looking at the river Mersey for two hours without speaking with anyone and without moving. I spent time with the river, attending it on a daily basis to notice the details of its existence through stillness. Each day, at the end of the two hours I wrote ten lines with/for and about the river Mersey. With the passing of days I felt in love with this massive flow of water, with the affect that the liquidity and fluidity of its presence had on my consciousness. I became aware of its reactions to different weather conditions, its different “emotional states”, its pollution. In time I became more liquid, more watery-like, as if these hours spent in meditation with the river Mersey were slowly changing my biological being/apparatus. The piece, that I present at Liquidscape 2018 develops from this experience and process and it includes: the reading of the final/edited text; a series of actions with/for the river Mersey water; sound and vocalizations. It will result in a well calibrated repetitive poetic gesture, a dance between reading, pouring, mourning and celebrating; a reverie to the river Mersey and on the possibility of being ourselves liquidscapes.
Icarus Dream
Book: Drawings by Silvia Battista. Poetry by Andrea Lioy
Words and drawings intersecting to reflect on the fate of mythological figure of Icarus.
Performance: Conceived and performed by Silvia Battista.
Nightingale Theatre, Brighton - 2011
Crypt Gallery, London - 2006
It is a participative performance art piece conceived and performed by Silvia Battista. It was presented at The Crypt Gallery, London (2005) and at the Nightingale Theatre, Brighton (2011). Members of the audience entering the space were invited to sit and wear the headphones provided to watch a short video. The voice and animated character in the video introduced itself as Icarus, told his story and asked visitors to talk to the figure sitting in the space and, through storytelling, helping him to recover from his trauma.
Animation: Drawings and animation by Silvia Battista. Sound by Mental Ethnic and Silvia Battista. Produced by the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art, London - 2006
Cultural Centre of Fljotsdalsherad, Iceland - 2007
The Asu Art Museum in Arizona, USA - 2008.
"Icarus' Dream" is a visual interpretation of the mythological story of Icarus. Fascinated by the symbolic meaning of this figure I drew and animated an imaginary and metaphorical journey of its fall by interpreting it as a shamanic journey into Alice's hole.
Queering the Rosary
Devised by Silvia Battista. Performed by Silvia Battista and Butler. Rosary bead is made by Giovanni Porfido
Modern Panic III Festival, London - 2012
http://www.guerrillazoo.com/modern-panic-3-live-art.html
It is a live art/video piece consisting of two hours and half recitation of the rosary prayer to the Virgin Mary using the prayer bead string made by the artist Giovanni Porfido. This prayer bead string is entirely made of wool with each bead resembling human testicles. The object queers the recitation of the rosary in embodiment in connection to sexual energy. The two performers, all black dressed like in the tradition of South of Italy have the faces covered by a black transparent veil.
The Waking Up of an Unplugged Mind
Devised and performed by Silvia battista and Angelo madonna
Hatch Gallery, London - 2011
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