SPARKS / Francesca Grilli

Francesca Grilli / Creation

Roberto Rettura/ Sound
Guido Rossetti / Palm reading
Azzurra D'Agostino / Words
Benno Steinegger / Movements
Paola Villani / Hat designer & realization
Carolina Cappelli / Photo & Video
Chiara Guidi / Advice
Chiara Massari / Producer
Giulia Traversi / Diffusion and care
Chiara Fava / Administration
Production
Corpoceleste_C.C.00# (ITA) Santarcangelo Festival (ITA) Snaporazverein (CH)
co-production
Welcome to the village (NL), Saal Biennaal (ET)
in collaboration with Workspacebrussels (BE)

Première: Santarcangelo Festival, 5-13 July 2019 , Santarcangelo di Romagna (Italy)

 I consider any poetic image, that breaks our normal imagination and creates hope, a form of rebellion against central power.
I consider it powerful and perturbing to be able to raise and form a child so that it conserves and safeguards marvel as a subversive
thought. To bring back hope to the future that is to be, to the body of the fireflies and to the new generations, is a subversive action.

Francesca Grilli

ph. Carolina Cappelli

DESCRIPTION AND STRUCTURE

The outcome-performance will put children and adults together in a dimension of interpretation of
the body: the future, the past, the present and the death through palmistry on a stage. I care to
underline the sense of responsibility and view that only children have, situating them in a dimension
of global vision of the world. However, the children will be free from any responsibility related to
questions from the audience that will be invited to stay in silence: the children will wear a mask,
trough which they are able to see the hands of the adults, but the adult won’t see the face of the
child. The action contain a profound sense of education, of the idea of the performance as a magical
and necessary act. The mask will be made with a mirror surface: the adult’s eyes will be partially
mirrored in the child's face. The masks will be realized and design with the contribution of Paola
Villani. The performance is a piece that mixes performing arts and visual arts: the masks are
artworks by themselves and the children will wear them during the performance. In this way they
become an active, essential and indispensable element of the performance.
I am interested in the sense of responsibility, which I put in the children’s hands, in their firm belief in their visions and in their ideas
of the future. The action contains a profound sense of education, of the idea of the performance as a magical and necessary act. I
believe in a utopia-in- the-making as a social objective, even if it remains a wonderful and intangible, incomprehensible product.

This act, however minimal, contains a necessary fracture with time.

Francesca Grilli

p.h Carolina Cappelli

SPACE AND AUDIENCE

In the performative space the children will read the palms of the audience members. The audience
will see a rather poetic image: between seven and fourteen children (according to the size of the
space), wearing special masks, who will receive adults to tell them about their own life and their
future.
The audience will enter the space one by one, they won’t be allow to talk but just to listen to the
child. Every time the child will finish the reading, another spectator will be invite to join the space
of the performance.
The duration of the performance is ca. 70 minutes and the spectators can enter and exit the space as
they want. There is no limit for the number of the audience members who can attend the
performance.
Francesca Grilli
Francesca Grilli is an Italian artist currently based in Bruxelles. Her research vibrates in two fields:
visual art and performing art. She uses a multidisciplinary language where the performance flows
between visual art spaces to performing festivals, with a special attention to sound in all its forms
and registers.
Grilli has developed several projects around the concept of the resistant body. In the earlier
performative projects the body was engaged as a reflection of the resistance to life, to time, to
decline, in spite of everything and for everything. In these last works, the resistant body gives in to
or struggles against the concept of being consumed. Present in every artwork is in fact a
disappearance, which is the result of an action contained in the work itself. She explores the realm
of sound her works move from private and personal elements into spectators' space of action,
drawing them into an ambiguous and unsettling territory.
Her work has been exhibited in many internationals venues such as Palais De Tokyo (2017), Van
Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (2015-2017), Azione – Interazione at MAXXI Museum in Rome
(2016), viceversa - Italian Pavillon at 55th Biennale di Venezia (2013), MADRE Museo d'arte
contemporanea Donnaregina in Naples (2012), Serpentine Gallery, London (2010) and Manifesta7
in Bolzano (2008).
She has also participated in numerous performance festivals including: Santarcangelo Festival
(2017- 2019), Kunsthalle Osnabrueck, Germany (2017), O museu como performance at Serralves
Foundation, PT (2017), Homo Novus Festival in Riga (2016), Drodesera Festival (2006/2017),
Romaeuropa Festival (2011), Rencontres chorégraphiques in Paris (2010).
Francesca Grilli is currently an Associated Artist of Santarcangelo Festival 2017-2019.

CONTACTS

WEB SITE: WWW.FRANCESCAGRILLI.COM

E- MAIL STUDIO@FRANCESCAGRILLI.COM
MOB + 39 388 58 96 952