The Great Theater of the World

THE IMMINENT PAST | IL GRANDE TEATRO DEL MONDO


Progetto Triennale 2018-2020
Trittico sulle opere di Calderón de la Barca

Installation project created in the monumental spaces of the Pilotta Complex in Parma divided over three years:

2018 IL GRANDE TEATRO DEL MONDO
Auto sacramental

2019 LA VITA È SOGNO
Auto sacramental

2020 LA VITA È SOGNO
Dramma teologico-filosofico
Progetto per Parma Capitale della Cultura 2020

The philosophical-theological baroque drama perfectly represents the thematic question that headlines the entire project: the imminent past. The Farnesian monument between the historical period and the contemporary, the dramaturgy that isolates life and dreams in the same space-time (and viceversa) and the relationship between urban space, collective fruition and active memory configure a hypothetical framework of synthesis and project for the capital of the future. The perception of individual time through multiple artistic forms (installation in space, video projected images, live performance, baroque musical dramaturgy, modern and contemporary) favorisce quel tempo comune – insieme allo spazio comune, la città – necessario a delineare identità comunitaria e nuove prospettive.

Scrive Jean Luc Nancy: “The art called contemporary is not simply that which can be dated to today. It is called contemporary because it does not inherit any form or reference. It cannot be the art of the sacred nor that of glory, nor that of a presumed nature or destiny of peoples. It only inherits the enigma brought by this word - ART - which was invented at the moment in which all the figures of a possible "representation" began to disappear. It is contemporary with its own wandering and with the always uncertain and trembling birth of forms that would be typical of a failed encounter of all the properties received".

We think that contemporary time is necessarily discontinuous, the contemporary artist adds, divide, removes, replaces one's time, he “feels” it deep inside, puts it in relation to other times, sinks into the past and tends towards the future. “In the contemporary world everything has yet to happen. And together it has already happened" as Marco Belpoliti acutely reflects. And what happens is the present, our present.

Se poi la fisica moderna – soprattutto quantistica – tende ad escludere l’esistenza del Tempo, and tells us that the moment that comes is not the same as the moment that precedes it, and that there is no linearity but only concentric movement of atoms moving in space, and that the sensation is only subjective and only determined by movement then our research has some foundation.

The continuous refraction in classical work, be it literary or poetic or visual, therefore it becomes, for us linguistic practice, constant in aesthetic research, in the metamorphosis of forms and signs, in the repetition of history; wandering and uncertain investigation, Paul Celan would have written as a stutterer.

Like the Time of the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

The Great Theater of the World, to be carried out in collaboration with the Pilotta Monumental Complex, e la messa in scena de La vida es sueño di Pedro Calderón de La Barca, first in the form of a contemporary auto sacramental and then in the staging of the drama in all the spaces of the complex, constitute our three-year proposal.

The philosophical-theological baroque drama perfectly represents the thematic question that headlines the entire project: the imminent past. The Farnesian monument between the historical period and the contemporary, the dramaturgy that isolates life and dreams in the same space-time (and viceversa) and the relationship between urban space, collective fruition and active memory configure a hypothetical framework of synthesis and project for the capital of the future. The perception of individual time through multiple artistic forms (installation in space, video projected images, live performance, baroque musical dramaturgy, modern and contemporary) favorisce quel tempo comune – insieme allo spazio comune, la città – necessario a delineare identità comunitaria e nuove prospettive.

The Pilotta Monumental Complex can represent that common space that hosts the different times of collective and individual history, as an inclusive hub for the different souls of the Polis . They will be able to actively participate in the project, through practical workshops, students of the Toschi artistic high school and other schools in the city, of the Arrigo Boito Conservatory and the various choirs, of the University (the University of Parma is a supporting member of the Lenz Foundation), of the students of the Cinema District as documentarians of the entire experience. Each construction phase will make use of advanced technological systems that will document the work in progress, particularly for site-specific, The most advanced video and sound representation techniques will be used.