How I Met Your Laundry: Twelve Performative Interludes and a Party
Descriptions of the Performances from the How I Met Your Laundry Event – Twelve Performative Interventions and a Party, in Order of Appearance. Texts are the property of the artists.
How I Met Your Laundry takes its name from a popular TV series and features a fast-paced succession of short performances, each lasting a maximum of 15 minutes, presented by students from the Academy of Fine Arts of L’Aquila: Mara Albani, Margherita Callà, Francesca Chiola, Sara Dias, Satya Forte, Sabrina Iezzi, Davide Mariani, Andrea Marinucci in collaboration with Lorenzo Mazzaufo, Francesca Perniola, Susanna Sforza, and Luigi Vetuschi. Within this performative marathon, two talks will be held, led by philosopher Daniele Poccia and art critic Amalia Temperini, respectively. Conceived and curated by Maurizio Coccia in collaboration with Celeste. Produced by Sunistema APS in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts of L’Aquila (Director: Marco Brandizzi). The project was realised with the sponsorship and collaboration of the Municipality of Teramo and with the support of the Province of Teramo.
Mara Albani, Sabrina Iezzi, Orazio Flacco, Odes, Book I, Poem 5. The two performers, standing face to face, engage in a dialogue about unrequited love. The garment, worn and then offered, symbolizes self-giving, an openness toward the Other, imposed by the role of motherhood. Maternal love is an asymmetrical act, devoid of reciprocity, encountering the irreversible dimension of loss, offering hospitality without ownership, giving without reintegration. The beloved, in fact, owes nothing to love, no debt. The donated garment, therefore, refers to the mother’s body as a shell, a symbol of her sacrifice. Through the revisiting of Horace’s verses, it becomes an ex-voto, a mother’s thanksgiving for surviving the storm of her own love.
Sara Dias, Hi how are you? So I wanted to tell you a bit, I understand well but I wanted to say, I won’t go on. But that’s okay. The artist moves through the space, rubbing her body against the interior surfaces of the laundromat. This results in an involuntarily sensual sensory-motor interaction. The action reformulates the shared space of the laundromat, staging what is typically seen as scandalous or too intimate to be casually displayed: the itch and its consequent relief. The laundromat, already a compromise between public space and private sphere, becomes a pretext to reflect on how a body can relate to a hybrid context, which both legitimizes individual actions and promotes communal forms defined by strict social rules. Intimacy is exposed, making the body vulnerable to new forms of fragility and interaction with the Other.
Francesca Perniola, Apiretica Eupnoica. This performance explores the relationship between the female body and the eros/fear dichotomy. The laundromat becomes a backdrop for a state change, where the artist’s sanitary undressing procedure takes on an erotic charge through the reading of *Come, Enter, and Pluck Me*, a poem by Patrizia Valduga. Here, eros, understood as the tension towards the union between the self and the world, with the consequent loss of self, contrasts with fear, understood as the crystallization of self-preservation. The artist’s body, as the meeting point of these two poles, becomes a space of self-determination, demanding and enacting a choice. The female body is offered to the world, ready to let itself be contaminated by it.
Talk by Amalia Temperini. Coming soon…
Margherita Callà, The Choice of a Safer Path. The artist’s body enacts a symbolic climb on the laundromat’s window, using bars of soap as footholds. The contrast between the stability of the holds and the slipperiness of the soap dictates the rhythm of the action, leaving visual traces on the window’s surface. What remains are the traces of “failure,” of that “futile effort” that is not a condemnation but the very essence of the journey. After all, even Sisyphus did not make pointless efforts.
Francesca Chiola, From the Window I Never Fix My Gaze on a Planet. A vocal performance in which the artist interacts with the space and the audience through improvisation and singing. The action invites participants to drop their masks and engage through a pure and exemplary offering of themselves. The voice, both a physical and emotional element, is used by the artist to redefine the space of the laundromat, turning it into a dynamic stage where she explores and shares her most spontaneous self.
Andrea Marinucci in collaboration with Lorenzo Mazzaufo, Raw Percussion of a Cooked Memory / Repercussion #1, approx. 10′. An exchange of ideas between the artist and drummer Lorenzo Mazzaufo forms the basis for a sound performance, inviting the audience to participate in the creation of a shared memory. Two sculptures made of galestro clay, one fired red and the other raw green, are worn by the artist, creating an unprecedented hybridization of body and musical instrument within the laundromat. The series of rhythms, beats, and pulses generated by the drummer through the percussion of the red sculpture are converted into a new sequence of movements and strikes impressed upon the green sculpture by the artist’s hands. From head to hands, memory becomes a plastic experience.
Luigi Vetuschi, Sunset Hunt. This installation immerses the audience in the shared experience of a camaraderie ritual. The “trumpet” of a Nissan 350Z engine sonically redraws the Passo delle Campanelle, the route connecting Teramo to L’Aquila, which for the artist and his friends represents a true Sunset Hunt. Upon reaching L’Aquila, it is possible to catch a glimpse of the sun, already hidden behind the mountains when departing from Teramo. Through the audio and video recording, the artist doesn’t return the lost sunset to his city, but rather the warm atmosphere and kinetic energy of the camaraderie experience.
Talk by Daniele Poccia. Coming soon…
Davide Mariani, Waiting face a washing machine, 12′. The artist, crouched in front of one of the dryers, reads an excerpt from his email correspondence with the ADSU (Azienda del Diritto agli Studi Universitari – L’Aquila), staging an “obsessive” dialogue without a tangible interlocutor. The laundromat here is understood as a public space where waiting is practiced and shared. A spatiotemporal diaphragm, waiting, places the individual in a state of tense suspension, pulsating immobility. Through juxtaposition, the artist uses the waiting for a dryer cycle to tell of a different kind of waiting. The action becomes a cathartic litany through which, however, he reaches a state of apparent calm: the promise of warm and dry clothes, a reference to a home and city where he can finally feel welcomed.
Satya Forte, Susanna Sforza, For Every Indigestible Word of Yours. A tablecloth-dress fuses the two artists’ bodies, limiting their individualistic impulses while simultaneously creating a space for sharing. Together with the food heated inside one of the dryers, the very experience of mutual nourishment is shared. However, the union between the self and the Other is not total; it leaves behind an unassimilable residue, as it brings to light a co-dependent relationship between the self and the Other in the act of recognizing personal identity. The performance concludes with a procession led by the two performers, guiding the audience to the nearby park where the shared experience is extended to everyone, closing the event with a convivial moment.
