as part of Secret Florence 2024

from the action Zen for Head by Nam June Paik (1962)

materials: plastic bags, bleach, uranine, water, UV lamp, mattress needles, two cotton fabrics
paths: an action born within the Flu水o framework, a complex immersive and cross-disciplinary project
by Alessadro Sciarroni, curated by Davide Quadrio, winner of the Italian Council (9th Edition 2020)

thefutureisNOW? by Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo is a performative action that propagates in different spaces and contexts, rewriting an uncontrollable liquid score each time.

In Zen for Head, Paik dips his head into paint and draws a line on paper, and then leaves the work open to anyone who wants to reproduce it. We started from here, from the bodily gesture and the liquid substance.

We have translated the action of NJP into 5 indications:
_working with matter, be it painting, paper, a bucket or something else.
_work on the trace, leave a trace, like a snail.
_work with liquid substances.
_working – as in the poetics of Fluxus – on a duration that is determined by a concrete temporality: the exhaustion of a matter, the evaporation of a substance, the consumption of all energy.
_working with the body as it is there, in its physical dynamics and presence.

Liquid, liquids, fluid, sea – waters as place-substance, with the writings that are produced in its liquid body.
Two tracks emerged:
+ bioluminescence – bodies-bacteria, biowritings. Living bodies, the waters are colonies teeming with beings, a connective substance between beings, a living writing.
+ toxic bodies/corrosive bodies – pollutants, agents that break and destroy. The traces of toxic bodies and radioactive substances remain for a long time, they are also forms of writing, sometimes highly harmful. Radical alterities.

– Silvia Calderoni, Ilenia Caleo

Calderoni–Caleo met at the Teatro Valle Occupato in Rome in 2012 and created a joint project of artistic residencies, research ateliers and performances. Starting from the workshop of the Biennale College Teatro 2018, they created KISS (2019), a performative project with 23 performers, produced by Santarcangelo Festival, CSS Udine, Motus Vague. For the Queering platform of the Freespace West Kowloon in Hong Kong they created the nomadic project SO IT IS (http://www.soitis.art/it). In 2021 they were part of Flu水o, a cross-disciplinary project that won the Italian Council (2020), for which they created the performative action thefutureisNOW? (Milan, Seoul, Shanghai). In 2022 they created the installation Pick Pocket Paradise for the exhibition “Espressioni con frazioni” at the Castello di Rivoli – Museo di Arte Contemporanea (Turin). They are associated artists of the Italian Pavilion of the Architecture Biennale 2023.

Silvia Calderoni is an actress and performer who works for theater and cinema. She trained artistically with the Teatro della Valdoca company and since 2006 she has been an active part of the Motus company

Ilenia Caleo is a performer, activist and researcher. Her research focuses on corporeality, feminist epistemologies, experimentation in the performing arts, new institutions and forms of cultural work.

SECRET FLORENCE, established festival of Estate Fiorentina, reaches its ninth edition this year. The project, carried out by five internationally active institutions based in the City of Florence’s urban area – Fabbrica Europa, Lo Schermo dell’arte, Musicus Concentus, Tempo Reale and Centro di Produzione della Danza Virgilio Sieni, is conceived for a series of scenic spaces that are mostly not previously used or not habitually used by the public, or for well-known spaces that are reinterpreted in surprising ways, where dance, music, art and cinema performances adapt to the characteristics of different places each time. All the artistic initiatives are part of a territorial unicum, and in certain cases are even an actual complete novelty in the international scenery of contemporary artistic research.
Full programme secretflorence.it

In collaboration with Associazione Culturale Yogurmak
Thanks to all the activities present in Via della Fonderia 51.

photo: Margherita Caprili