the art of remembering residency
september 21 to october 5 2021
Museo Nitsch Napoli
Maayan Boni * Amaury Cambuzat * Laith Demashqieh * Matilde di Pietropaolo
Ainara Lopez * Olec Mun * Keri Rosebraugh * Mayke Verhoeven
theatrum phonosophicum (alias Leopoldo Siano & Shushan Hyusnunts) * Alejandro Zertuche
saturday october 2 7pm
Divergent Senses II part
video screening by Raffaella Morra
tuesday october 5
the art of remembering open studios 5pm - 7pm
the act of remembering ceremony 7pm - 9pm
"All that is solid melts into air,
diffusing the labyrinth,
a continuum of existence in the end
As travellers, they do journey,
searching for some sort of wonderland.
What is it that connects us?
A memory?
What if we stop remembering?”
the rabbit hole presents "the art of remembering" a global residency program, in collaboration with Fondazione Morra, and E-M Arts, to be held in Naples, Italy from September 21 - October 5, 2021.
10 candidates have been selected to spend 14 days together unravelling the question "what if we stop remembering?" The program, designed as a dramaturgy of inner exploration, projects Naples as wonderland, in an environment that is created both as an immersive journey and international artist residency program.
Artists will explore the subject on their own, in a contemplative and inspiring environment, equipped with their own studio space inside Museo Hermann Nitsch, generously granted by Fondazione Morra, as well as attend 5 experiential workshops introducing "the rabbit hole method™” at the Museo Hermann Nitsch, among other public spaces and excursions around Naples.
Naples as wonderland:
As part of the program, artists will embark on scripted journeys - '"the labyrinth of mirrors" and "the secret gaze" - created by founder of the rabbit hole, Samina Virani, where Naples proposed as wonderland, transforms itself into a looking glass, a space of deep introspection, evoking and awakening "the art of remembering."
A specially designed curatorial program by Fondazione Morra and E-M Arts will guide the artists into discovering Naples' mystic past and present, elements uniquely hand-picked by Raffaella Morra, who has also curated 2 video screening nights titled Divergent Senses. Inhabiting the ‘familial Napoli’, the residency artists discovery, explore and experience, preventing conventional methods of visiting, and try to cultivate an absorption of knowledges. Cultural landscapes are the inspiring environments, the magical gates: Museo Hermann Nitsch, Casa Morra, Vigna San Martino, the Baia archaeology and its surroundings, the Osservatorio Astronomico are some of the suggested active mechanisms ensuring that the discourses and relations engage in assimilative processes and facilitate multiple forms of imagination. The participants have an itinerarium: within the philosophy of Master Nitsch, through the path of the sacred Nature, inside the vestiges of the ancient ruins, under a sky full of stars and planets.
The final response:
In this process-based residency, each artist must develop an answer to "the art of remembering”, which will form a collective response on the final night of October 5th at Museo Hermann Nitsch. Essentially, process, which is “the art of remembering” will transform into ritual which is “the act of remembering”
A work within a work:
The concept and program have been written and directed by the rabbit hole’s founder, Samina Virani. The method is designed as a dramaturgy, a labyrinth, where each artist goes down the rabbit hole, embarking on its mythological journey to discover a collective blank canvas. In the artistic direction of the program, Samina Virani explains “the scripted elements of the residency are designed to allow the artists to delve into self-introspection, a white canvas, a formlessness where the secret gaze exists. Some could call it ‘remembering’."
During the residency, there will be a certain tuning of “the art of remembering,” through 5 workshops; hand-picked facilitators who have each designed bespoke workshops around the subject.
Positioned as “A work within a work” with the program designed as a framework for each’s own artist exploration, and the outcomes of this process, composed of the responses and individual works of the 10 international participating artists.
“The Rabbit Hole Method™"
Each artist will interrogate the subject "the art of remembering" immersing in The Rabbit Hole Method™, a process of inquiry that extracts and distils from contemporary artistic practises, philosophy, mysticism, mathematics and dance. It includes the teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Farid Ud-Din Attar, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Lewis Carroll, among others.
Under careful advisory from Georgetown University, and the MIT Senselab, the program bases its principles on deconstruction, and the reinvention of rituals and forms. We also work with Teatro de los Sentidos, based in Barcelona, an immersive theatre company that creates experiences deconstructing what has become our pre-supposed sensory mapping, and instead discovering the magical silver thread that presents itself, if one is open to remembering.
The 4 facilitators selected for this project are members of the rabbit hole collective:
Giovanna Pezzullo; Co-founder Le Inefable, Barcelona
"The memory of the body" https://www.facebook.com/lainefable08
Creator, actress, professor, smell design, dramaturgy, Giovanna is co-founder of Le Inefable, and a previous member of Teatro de Los Sentidos for 20 years.
"What is memory and where does it live in us? In this workshop we will discover the evocative power of the senses and how sensory thinking lights the imagination."
Patrizia Menichelli, Founder, Ars In, Sensorial Theatre, Florence
“the art of evoking” www.arsinteatro.it
Artist, trainer, performer, costume designer, set designer and director. Seeker of sensory methodologies applied to theater and art, to education, to artistic processes of social participation, to work groups. For the Teatro de los Sentidos, she designed the costumes for more than 25 years.
"What does it mean to create an imaginary space that we are gradually inhabiting? This art of fostering the poetic experience and evoking the imaginary territory of memory will allow the artist and the public to find their resonances. A workshop that creates moments of amazement and connections with sensory memory beyond our personal stories. We are going to delve into the poetic languages of the wardrobe from personal garments, how to favor a curious look that supports the exploration of everyday life. Each costume tells us a memory or puts us in contact with a desire, where we can glimpse it as a story, which is expressed at a visual, tactile, olfactory level etc. This research seeks to stimulate imagination and memory and a "territory" of self-knowledge for actors and performers. Using Alice’s white rabbit game that embodies curiosity, to enter another time, the time of play; from the play-game we will move into the experiences. It will be a way to expand our perception, so that we can be transported into an imaginary space where we can remember what we thought we didn't remember.”
Alper Akcay, Dance in Heart, Whirling, Istanbul
"The whirling begins" https://www.alperakcay.com
Dancer, performance artist, creative movement instructor, whirling dervish.
"This archaic knowledge is remembered with the awareness of breathing. The main aim of our workshop is to recall seeing, hearing and feeling through our hearts, and through Sema, whirling rituals and nature’s whispers as they occur at that very moment."
Lynsey Peisinger, Los Angeles, Athens
“Body, Time, Space, Access” http://lynseypeisinger.org
Performer, director and choreographer, Lynsey is currently co-directing the Seven Deaths of Maria Callas, an opera by Marina Abramović.
“My layers of remembering are not yours. Just like we all inhabit our bodies differently, we remember differently. Why do I remember some things with images and some things with sensations? What causes selective memory? We will work with improvisational and durational exercises that focus on stillness, release, recall and concentration.”
Video screenings:
Raffaella Morra, Naples
“Divergent Senses” video screenings https://em-arts.org
“As a puzzle without a clear matrix, Divergent Senses video screenings are the separate components or hidden qualities of a unification: the first part is occult and accessible to the candidates; the second part welcomes all practitioners. These videos are interpretive inferences rather than linear stories, drawing imaginative connections between the onscreen event and emotional engagement. When information is missing and out of order, the perceivers seek their causal relations; the salient information is omitted to arouse curiosity and enable the participants to understand their motivations of elaborate details, and mentally construct a coherent description.”
Judging Process:
751 people applied to this program
7 international 3 Italian artists were selected, where each artist presented a response to the following question: “What if we stop remembering?”
Judges:
Professor John Voll, Head of Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University
Professor Don Rodrigues, Professor English Literature, Vanderbilt and Harvard University
Raffaella Morra, Director, E-M Arts
Piero Tomassoni, Founder, Artvisor
Teresa Carnevale, President, Fondazione Morra
Samina Virani, Founder, Artistic Director, the rabbit hole
Loredana Troise, Art Historian, Curator, Museo Madre, Napoli
10 artist projects selected:
Please see appendix for full details of each proposal
Maayan Boni : Performer: Tel Aviv
Amaury Cambuzat : Composer, author, musician: France, Italy
Laith Demashqieh : Audio visual artist: Jordan
Matilde di Pietropaolo : Visual artist, Italy
Ainara Lopez : Dance, choreographer: Switzerland, Spain
Olec Mun : Pianist, composer, sound healer: Argentina, Spain
Keri Rosebraugh : Painting, sculpture, video: USA, France
Mayke Verhoeven : Sculpture, installation: The Netherlands
theatrum phonosophicum (alias Leopoldo Siano & Shushan Hyusnunts): Philosophy of music and sound art: Armenia, Germany, Italy
Alejandro Zertuche: Visual artist, performer: Mexico
About the rabbit hole: https://www.101010n.com
Established in 2008 in New York, the rabbit hole numbers 5000+ individually hand-picked members from 56 + countries. The membership is by invitation only. The rabbit hole seeks to stimulate new ideas about the self and the other, and to challenge culturally constructed limits and borders.
To support this goal, a traveling residency program was established in 2012, aimed at the deconstruction of myth, storytelling and the essential notion of pilgrimages. Exploring the magical realism of archetypal journeys, while relying on wit and the power of improvisation to reconstruct new narratives.
Our launch residency project, "the crystal express" (2012), involved a 14 day train journey from Barcelona to Tel Aviv where 7 pilgrim artists journeyed to wonderland, stopping in 7 cities, travelling and interacting with communities across Western and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, exploring the question: "what is it that connects us?"
https://www.101010n.com/thecrystalexpress
Why Naples?
After “the crystal express” project, the Mediterranean port cities became the central focus of the rabbit hole’s research. The philosophical roots of the sea, migration patterns, trajectories of culture, but also its mystic beliefs, subliminal codes and narratives. In June 2021, Samina Virani (white rabbit) and Dr. Don Rodrigues (madhatter) presented the project at Borderscapes, a seminar program held at the University of Naples, L’Orientale, Post Colonial and Gender Studies Department.
About Fondazione Morra:
www.fondazionemorra.org; www.museonitsch.org; www.em-arts.org
Fondazione Morra, considered the epicentre of cultural investigation in Italy, includes Casa Morra Archivio d’Arte Contemporanea, Associazione Shozo Shimamoto, Vigna San Martino and Museo Hermann Nitsch, as part of its cultural spaces in Naples. The foundation, whose artistic and cultural raison d'être is “art for the sake of research and knowledge”, is fascinated by the subversive potential of the avantgardes. It has hosted artists such as Hermann Nitsch, Allan Kaprow, Living Theatre, Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramović, Henri Chopin, Peter Kubelka and Bob Watts. Fondazione Morra has officially invited the rabbit hole to create this residency program.
In proposing “the art of remembering” residency to Fondazione Morra, well-renowned institute in Naples, has been a catalyst to amplify the program elements, acting as host institution and curatorial guide, elevating the concept, and bringing it into the specific city of Naples.
“In its history, Napoli integrates parts of popular, religious, philosophical, natural and technical cultures, having Latin as its foundational base. In Napoli, the roots of words and the meaning constructions communicate through incantations rather than normal speeches. Not simply invitation and hosting guests, we’re expanding the concept of hospitality to include the relations and collaborations. The encouragement to our partners, to the participants and to friends is practise a diverse hospitality, an engagement on “the art of remembering”, searching to underly continuities/diversities between mysterious and ordinary Cultures. The residency artists, tutors and other practitioners shift out of habitual formations toward divergent thinking, in search of contradictions and ambiguity. It’s evident that in Napoli - jungle of cultures - nothing is thrust out or rejected: a comprehension without words, through sensations, meditations and reasonings, connecting levels of ineffable knowledges and activating the imagination. Based on uncommon observations, this imagery technique fosters communication, sharing and collaboration and, according to Ramon Llull, work by means of combinatory techniques in search of relational knowledge, on situations hidden from usual views” - Raffaella Morra
The next chapter:
The next “art of remembering” residency will occur in Kefalonia, Greece in 2022. In this context, Southern Europe as a shared public space and narrative will be celebrated.
Credits:
Samina Virani, Founder and Artistic Director, the rabbit hole
Raffaella Morra, Curatorial Lead Naples, Fondazione Morra, Director E-M Arts
Carlos Calvo, Creative Producer, the rabbit hole
Dr. Don Rodrigues, co-writer “the rabbit hole method”, Professor English Literature, University of Memphis, and Harvard University
Aurora Arenare, Assistant Producer, the rabbit hole
Pol Vidas, communications, the rabbit hole
Please contact Pol at pol@101010n.com for interview requests and more info.
Appendix: Artists’ proposals:
Maayan Boni; Israel
http://www.maayanboni.com/
“A sound installation revealing the silent inner voices that echo back at us. I am creating an archive of consciousness, diving for pearls, gazing inwards and documenting the images and the gaze itself. In an ongoing process which started with Corona, I invite people to remember what they never thought worth remembering. Mostly through words, they translate their inner abstractions and share an intimate moment.”
Amaury Cambuzat: France, Italy
https://ifeellikeabc.wixsite.com/ifeellikeabcathedral
“It is critical that our memories live on in the consciousness of others. If the interpretations of the memory are multiple even better. The story becomes universal from the moment the reader appropriates and interprets it and then shares it with others. No matter the interpretation, the reader who is now ‘contaminated’ will have his own version of the story, probably with different forms, intensity, and sensations, but eternal. In turn, the reader, whom I define as a ‘vector’, will be able to interpret the story as he or she sees fit and then transmit a memory of his or her own that, only if it is ‘alive’, will become part of the collective memory.”
Laith Demashqieh : Jordan
https://www.instagram.com/laithdemashqieh/
“First, I propose to set forth foundational principles, which the participants will be asked to abide by while examining the world around them; then, using the art space as a communion, we will examine for example magic in different cultures, tracing its evolution by examining its pseudo-scientific methods like numerology and sacred geometry. Eventually, we will produce a combination of objects and texts using certain materials that are sacred to our practice that can be ritualized through any set of tools, no matter if crude or that of the AI sort - for those rituals are that which keeps evolving.”
Matilde Di Pietropaolo: Italy
https://matildedipietropaolo.pb.design
“During the residency I wish to create one or more ephemeral stenography, aiming to support the work of those residents that will express themselves through the performances, the actions and the readings. These scenarios will be designed in collaboration with the performers and will be inspired by the alchemy studies that I will start in Naples, letting myself be guided by the emblematic figure of Giovan Battista Della Porta.”
Ainara Lopez: Switzerland, Spain
www.laciedetasoeur.com; www.moonwalkexperience.wixsite.com/moonwalk
“Cartografias del Recuerdo arises from the exploration between individual/collective body/memory and landscape. I will wander around Naples following different dispositives and scores, collecting souvenirs from the city and its inhabitants. Stories, myths, sounds, objects to construct non-linear narratives and create new cartographies that flirt with the idea of ‘borrowing/stealing’ the memories of others. I want to re-appropriate people’s memories. The aim is to weave new maps, new links, transformed testimonies, to find new names for things. Memory changes, transforms, adapts, selects, is a state of consciousness. Memory changes memories. Maps orientate, recreate and tame spaces in a random way.”
Olec Mün: Argentina, Spain
www.olecmun.com
“If we stop remembering, we might forget what ties us to the past, and if that past has brought us to this present of disconnection, then welcome forgetfulness. Let us forget our judging identity of separation. If we stop remembering we might just fall into an eternal present where the past is not an option anymore, and therefore, as paradoxical as it may result, the art of forgetting might be an unpredictable door into remembering who we really are. Remembering who we really are is not a matter of time or space, but a journey towards the transcending Self.”
Keri Rosebraugh : USA, France
https://www.kerirosebraugh.com/
“I’d like to be a modern-day explorer of the underground aqueducts beneath the city of Napoli. I want to study the water: take samples, freeze, and examine the aesthetic properties of the crystals with microscopic photography. I want to video the crystals while they freeze and play the videos backwards in time. My goal is to research how time has affected the subterranean structures and how/if that has affected the water. Does the water remember how it ‑owed before it was diverted into the reservoirs? Do the crystals inside mimic their surroundings? If time could go backwards, there would be no cause and effect here. What would Napoli be like if no underground caverns were constructed? What would Napoli’s position in Italy be today without the memory of its past?”
Mayke Verhoeven : The Netherlands
http://maykeverhoeven.nl/
“I am interested in how someone can hold on to objects with the idea of holding on to a memory. The memory will not be the same after years and objects will eventually end. I wonder if such an object has not become a souvenir. I compare it with relics. …I find it interesting how I make assumptions through this composition of objects and almost immediately form a story about this person. What if these items never belonged together and someone else assembled them? What happens if I combine my own found objects with each their own story? An outsider does not see this story. Can these objects form a new story or make a new memory? Can I push the thoughts about this memory in a direction? Despite everyone's own interpretation, can there be such a thing as a universal memory? Can objects as an abandoned still life represent this universal memory?”
theatrum phonosophicum (alias Leopoldo Siano & Shushan Hyusnunts): Armenia, Germany, Italy
https://soundcloud.com/theatrumphonosophicum
“The theatrum phonosophicum is the theatre of Phonosophia, defined by us as ‘knowledge through sound’. The focal point of our work is the experience of being through listening in synesthetic sense. The theatrum phonosophicum is a constellation of ideas, knowledge, thoughts, objects (sound and not), actions; the theatrum phonosophicum is a kind of Glasperlenspiel, a way of juggling with all the values and contents of universal culture, starting from the Origin, through free associations all ages and all places. We follow the principle of ‘only connect’: we cultivate, by tradition, a certain tendency to universalism... During the weeks in Naples, we would like to complete a book already in progress on the poetics of theatrum phonosophicum and realize a ‘lecture-performance’ on the meaning of this project - our life - envisioned as gesamtkunstwerk total work of art.”
Alejandro Zertuche: México
https://cargocollective.com/azertuche; https://www.instagram.com/alzerall/
“We reunite in waves, as the ocean does, as droplets become currents, / as such, memories in slumber dwell within the body hinting all the time / we never stop remembering because there is fire in our hearts / the air blowing on the hair is just another way of nature to say ¨I'm still here¨ / forgetting this is death.”
