Ciò che resta del fuoco

10 november 2018 at 6.30 pm
24 november 2018 at 5.30 pm
22 december 2018 at 5.30 pm

Ciò che resta del fuoco (What Remains of Fire) is a performance which was conceived, created and produced especially for the 2018 edition of Palinsesti, and actually takes shape as a collateral event of the Atlas exhibition by Maria Elisabetta Novello, dedicated to the theme of the nocturne.

The title of this artistic practice clearly represents an explicit tribute to the book Cinders by Jacques Derrida. In this publication, the French philosopher was inspired by the closing sentence – «cinders there are» – from one of his previous writings, La dissémination (1972), in order to engage in a plural and choral dialogue of analysis on the true meaning of that same proposition. This dissertation, which develops over many pages, doesn’t come to any conclusion that can be considered definitive or conclusive. Indeed, the true purpose of this book is inevitably the implementation of a form of self-deconstruction, aimed at revealing what is inexpressible and is inexorably inherent in Derrida’s own writing and in his most subjective thinking as well.
This work by Derrida relates to Maria Elisabetta Novello’s research through the usage of cinder, which has been elected as the preferred material in her artistic practices for several years now. This performance also includes, in particular, a reflection on the theme of fire, which burns and transforms everything.

In a dark and silent room, the audience can’t see anything. At the beginning of the performance the breathing of two dancers, through which their presence is sensed, is the only perceptible element. With a rhythm that becomes more and more rapid, the performers start moving and light matches whose brightness rends for brief moments the darkness of the room, lighting fleeting gestures, faces, and spaces.
An ancestral struggle is played out clearly: dark against shadows, life against death, man against night, knowledge against the most impenetrable mystery.
The dancers, in a performance that unfolds itself evidently as a reenactment of an ancient and almost primal rite, are explicit metaphors of human existence: they cannot see and certainly not know where they are going, where they will be led to by their fleeting gestures, however they try to make their way through the dark, to proceed in the most hidden and blackest night.

Fire - always considered as a mythical, mythological and primal element - lights up but yet, at the same time, consumes, generating transformations and irreversible changes of state.

written and directed by Maria Elisabetta Novello
with Roberto Cocconi and Luca Zampar
in collaboration with AREAREA company