wall dialogue resistance 2019-2021

A real limit and an imaginary place, showing the tension between the need for protection and the desire to go beyond what is known, the wall leads us to a spatial hidden dimension which is both physical and emotional. 

The project basic concept emerged in 2019 during a residence in Portugal, and has been transformed finding new meaning and different way of working and presentation due to the pandemic. It still remains an open project. Born as a participative process, in 2020 the project found an indirect way to involve people, to stimulate everyone’s imagination through a question, and to collect voices, ideas, thoughts about the wall with a short audio that has been sent to the people involved. Recognizing the pivotal role of the body as a tool for listening, dialogue and participation, in person or remotely we asked people to answer to this question: what’s beyond the wall?

Wall site specific at SA Manifattura for Autunno Danza Festival, Cagliari – September 2021

credits and cast:

Artistic direction: Sara Marasso and Stefano Risso 
Concept, Choreography and dance: Sara Marasso 
Sound design, live music and video: Stefano Risso
Borrowed voice: Michele Di Mauro + voices collected from the people

Residencies 2019/2021: 

Rede More Residencia Temática Internacional / International Thematic Residence, DevirCapa Centro de Artes Performativas do Algarve, Faro, july 2019
ResiDANZE di Primavera, Teatri di Vita, Bologna, june 2020
Attraversamenti Multipli, Margine Operativo, Rome, september 2020
Autunno Danza Festival, Cagliari, september 2021
Teatri d’Autunno, Centro Artistico Il Grattacielo, Livorno, october 2021

In 2021 the project has been selected for Incubator Call for Consultancy Retreat in Las Palmas – Gran Canaria curated by ENCC European Network for Cultural Centres. Also thanks to this support wall dialogue resistance becomes a cooperative european project supported by CREATIVE EUROPE PROGRAMME

“[…] a wall without heavy moral layers, without judgment, and therefore open to interpretation. And so, the initial question “What is beyond the wall?” it diluted in a dialogue with the wall not as an obstacle but as a structural condition. The wall delimits the space, imposing on the performers internal trajectories that collide with the walls but without anguish: they are explorations and attempts at forcing, not assaults to destruction. And the question gets an oblique answer: It’s about us and invisible things, that Marasso writes in large letters on the wall, referring to the sense of the border and closure to an individual and social responsibility (which concerns us), but also to those things that we do not see: they’re beyond the wall, but they could be here, or inside. And, as if by magic, the enormous graffiti with the writing slowly fades away, as absorbed by the wall itself, sucked by the porosity of a concrete wall that seems to breathe as if it were alive.“(…)
Stefano Casi, June 2020