The Teatro Maddalene of Padua , inside the exhibition Contrappunti 06- 07 , gave hospitality last 24 th of November to the new video-performance show by Motus , A place [that again] , pièce directed by Daniela Nicolò and Enrico Casagrande from All strange away by Samuel Beckett.
Unique occasion to experience a return, a quiet scenic flavour, no words, no interaction, no place as excess of the installation. The show is the attempt to describe the hall of the death wait., a refection on the representation, a description of the inexistence. A sort of research on actor and bi-dimensional plan lightened by a white light. A white screen and a transparent reliquary at the centre of the scene are the premises of the silent and refined performance, simultaneous and poetic, where two young actors reside their time between sensual movements and erotic excess.
The accent is posed on the slowness of the action, the human essence, on this play of looks and signs, entrances and exits, blacks and whites, flesh. And then paints with felt-tips and parades synchronized with melancholic pleasures. Invisible container. So here’s the sense of a solitary life, imprisoned, immobilized. Black light, white, light again, dark. Infinite words coming from the video, running in the video, the show business has more meanings until our death. Editing, sounds, geometries that delimit. As it is, no veil, no artefacts, immediateness and obsession.
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Motus works on Beckett again after ten years. In 1994-5 the company prepared in fact a show, L’occhio belva , that made them able to live and transform non-theatrical locations with real artistic invasions. The title itself is a Becketian definition, the one he uses for the camera and the entire show rotates around this obsession for the look, even if the principals referents where Quad and the Spopulator. L’occhio belva has been an immense act of love for the revisiting of the lyrics, the white period made of “acts without words”.
“Azione. Un luogo, ancora quello. Mai un’altra domanda. Un luogo, poi qualcuno, ancora quello. Di nuovo Beckett dopo 15 anni per Ripartire da lì . Pick it up. Ancora le sue scarne parole che ci perseguitano come quella luce abbagliante che invade e folgora. Ovunque. Never see, never find, no end, no matter . Ancora quello spazio vuoto. Bianco. Assoluto. Dove tutto si vede. In cui tutto precipita. Senza alternative. All strange away. Diabolico tentativo di fermare il tempo, di dilatare l’istante del trapasso, definitivo, verso il momento in cui “nessun rumore di respiro è percepibile”. Immagina gli occhi bruciati azzurro cenere e le ciglia scomparse. Solo carne silenziosa. Mangiata dallo sguardo. Occhio belva . Che cerca negli angoli senz’ombra. La cinepresa filma indaga entra nelle pieghe della pelle. Con rigore scientifico. Espone. Così è la morte, o meglio, la caduta secondo Beckett. Precipitare all’inferno dove l’immaginazione muore. Non c’è più visione? O forse il vedere inizia da lì? Stop. Ora decidiamo di tornare su quelle linee – nello spazio di ciò che è già stato – come un viaggio d’Orfeo – sapendo di rischiare – sapendo che potremmo vedere il dissolvimento – il nulla – ci proviamo non cercando il possesso – per lavorare sul Beckett non-teatrale, così essenziale e depurato, occorre essere posseduti. Entriamo di nuovo nelle straordinarie descrizioni di una “dimora per corpi” geometrica fatta di linee e lettere all’interno della quale i corpi si muovono appena, in attesa di una fine che tarda ad arrivare dove l’ Imagination va immaginata morta e l’ unico assoluto è il tempo che scorre. L’ unico modo per sottrarsi al flusso temporale è – (come avrebbe detto Murphy)- ” andar via da sè ” – sedersi su una sedia dondolo e dondolare – rannicchiarsi all’ ombra di una pietra – come Belaqua – l’ indolente del Purgatorio dantesco – o lasciarsi abbagliare dalla luce esponendo ogni angolo del proprio corpo a una cinepresa che indaga senza pietà. Così è All strange away , la composizione “pornografica” di Samuel Beckett , che non prelude ad alcun paradiso , “…..dove la colpa consiste nel non sapere quale e la pena nel continuare a cercarla…” . L’attore è ridotto ai minimi termini, esposto sotto una luce accecante così “Come è”. Via ogni egocentrismo – via ogni ornamento – ogni inutile parola – solo Occhio e Oggetto. Ecco, l’ Immagine è Fatta, ora… ” trovi un senso chi può” .” (testi di Motus)
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The collaboration between Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò, founders and artistic directors of the company, started in 1990 and produced Stati d’Assedio , first independent work, inspired by the homonym text by Albert Camus. The actual name of the company has been given the next year, when they started occupy their selves with Samuel Becket, an author that Motus will deeply explore in different shows and echoes even in the last performances. Strada Principale and Strade Secondarie (1991 whose name derive from a Klee work) are inspired to him, Ri-partire da lì (1992) and L’occhio Belva (1995) on whom the homonym video is based.
The spectacle debuts at the Interzona of Verona , inside a freezer cell 70x30m, made in metal, that the spectator is forced to get through in an itinerant path, between sound and visual installation. The cold space is filled up with hallucinations, where everyone’s obsessions resonate. In this Becketian “purgatory” the eye moves searching for a memory, a sense that probably it will never touch. Emptying, waiting, desolation are themes that fed Motus way. In 1994, the company home accommodate the itinerant show Cassandra. Interrogazioni sulla necessità dello sguardo , inspired to Cassandra by Krista Wolf .
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Catrame (1995) is inspired to J. G. Ballard , science-fiction author, entirely set inside a transparent Plexiglas 8x3m box. In this show ” the relationship with the space is shattered in rapport to the precedent works, the operative area of the body is close, separated from the external ambient by the sides, a sort of isolation cell, sterilized, vacuum-packed, as vacuum-packed is the continuous perception of the world, from the car compartment rather than the TV screen “. In 1997, Motus measures itself in , a six-tracks spectacle that demolish the Ariosto’s poem to get the deepest nodes and reproduce them during the exhibition.
It’s not a fact of “representation” of the Orlando Furioso with his battles and loves, rather of “performance”. Two are the interests of Motus: the circular and labyrinth structure of the work and, at the same time, the fetishist Orlando obsession for Angelica. They are twin obsessions, one of the language and the other of the content, which eco an analogue obsession, the continuous research of the theatre for a real look and real flesh. “We make a cross on the representation, to deepen and make it blood, to lay bare the shame ”.
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The Progetto Rooms is large and engaged. It started when Enrico and Daniela travelled the Arizona and Nevada deserts and it will give the company the third of the Premio Speciale Ubu for “the splitting images and the story of the Progetto Rooms evolution”. The work is realized in several stages: Vancancy Room (2001), a work-in-progress itself, and Twin Room (2002). Splendid’s is inspired to Jean Genet, but the two authors that most signed the last production of Motus are Pasolini and Fassbinder.
The project titled is dedicated to Pasolini, composed by L’Ospite (2003), inspired from the movie Teorema, and Come un cane senza padrone (2004), draw on Petrolio. The solitude of the contemporary man, the desolation of the terrains vagues of the moderns suburbs where the shout reverb inhumanly and at last fall into nothingness. These are themes between Motus and Pasolini. The waste of the bourgeois life, make of standard procedures and ascetics sceneries, is the most distant point from the real life, it is terrain vague, completely un-semantic. The scream of the artist leave this desert to shake it, a scream that comes from the flesh and becomes inhumane, trying to restart the meaning.
A new project is dedicated to texts, works and films of Fassbinder, inaugurated in spring 2005 and delineates two way of research. The first one deepen the themes of intolerance and power, and find its realization in Pre-paradise Sorry Now , from a Fassbinder text title. The second one is a reprise of the melodramatic atmospheres of Le lacrime amare, Marta, Un anno con tredici lune by Petra Von Kant and recomposes into the play Rumore Rosa (2006).