First meeting THE GARDEN OF VISIONS
Friday 11th May 2007 - Entrance of the San Martino Vineyard, 7 pm.

Garden of Visions - A walk through the woods of the San Martino Vineyard
a selection of rare and ancient plants by Maurizio Elettrico and Raffaella Morra

Piana della Civetta 8.30 pm.
Presentation by Stefano De Stefano and the authors of the book and CD box set
Foglio di Giostre e Film nella città
by Domenico Mennillo, Perino&Vele, Paolo Renza and Marco Di Palo
Il Laboratorio/publishers

followed by 9.15 pm.
Foglio di Giostre e Film nella città
poem-concert in minor for piano, voice and string quartet
voice Domenico Mennillo
viola Roberto Albin
electric piano Alessandra Cesarini
cello Marco Di Palo
violin Marco Esposito
violin Isabella Parmiciano

followed by 10 pm.
Poetic happening Fata morta by Giovanna Marmo
Music Nino Bruno

followed by 11 pm. NIKUTAI
towards a phenomenology of the body
realization and Buto dance Marie-Thérèse Sitzia

The Garden of Visions - a walk through the woods of the San Martino Vineyard consists of a walk along an alchemical-botanical pathway in which rare fruit trees will be planted. These trees bear witness to the ancient biodiversity which has been severely compromised by modern-day genetic homogenisation. The living installation - conceived by Maurizio Elettrico - consists of ancient plants from six- and seventeenth century orchards, and winds through the San Martino Vineyard from east to west, from the lower part of the space up to the higher parts. A small animal head will be attached to each of the 22 trees, and the symbol of a sephirot will be inscribed on each, as well as a plaque with the scientific name of the plant and its salient features. All will continue to grow in such a way as to create a woodland path and each sample will be carefully placed according to its specific environmental needs.

Foglio di Giostre e Film nella città is a poem-concert which arises from the union of Domenico Mennillo’s short prose poem of the same name and the music of the Neapolitan composer Marco Di Palo. The poem is a piece of writing conceived for the oral/performative dimension of the word, closely connected to the tradition of the lingua morta, the prose poem which was fashionable in Europe, and in Paris above all, between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries (and whose authors included Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Lautréamont and Stéphane Mallarmé, amongst others). The music of Marco Di Palo, as well as functioning as an autonomous soundscape within the concert itself, integrates some pieces of Mennillo’s reading. Mennillo is present on the stage during the poem-concert, as he reads his own texts. Di Palo conducts a small musical ensemble as well as playing his own music on the cello. The ensemble consists of a string quartet and an electric piano conducted by Marco Di Palo. Rosaria Castiglione is responsible for the technical direction of the piece.

Fata morta: cruelly fabular verses, phantasmagoric apparitions, dreamlike images which throw one into a strange linguistic and rhythmic departure. A disturbing, surreal performance, with determinedly analogous music by Nino Bruno. We find ourselves in an enchanted landscape, dismantled and in parts substituted by everyday elements. A tiny creature, a fairy, observes a deformed environment much larger than herself: an empty lake, an expanding room, a black marsh in which mute heads are hidden. A landscape of anti-marvels, a broken world which both attracts and repels.

NIKUTAI towards a phenomenology of the body
This work investigates the body as a primary entity, primogenous material which lets itself be watched in movement. The study starts from the awareness of the body as a living wrapper, a microcosm of the macrocosm, which moves through space and time, modifying them in the process. An attitude to waiting and crisis which leaves on show a natural body, divested of its own clothing. An exposed body which - with all its passion and desperation - makes a phenomenon from itself, the sacrifical lamb of the epiphany.
Marie-Thérèse Sitzia