This performance emerged as a wild, collective act, happening only once.
A shared action by students of the Academy in Carrara, embedded in the landscape of the Monti Versiliesi, in the Bosco del Monte di Ripa, a place where the earth still speaks through sound and humidity, where the absence of permanence shines. Nature, untamed.
The naked human body was not intended as provocation, but as a natural element.
Exposed, vulnerable, transient. Female and male alike. Beside earth, stone, and water, the body loses all hierarchy and becomes matter among matter, as fragile as the ground it stands on. The oldest catwalk of humanity. And the best of so many.
Our work developed strongly through sound and acoustics. Rhythm,
Bam.
Bam.
Bam.
The sounds of the forest, the cracking of the ground, breath, footsteps, silence within our chatter. The landscape (the beautiful forest) was not a backdrop, but an active part of the performance, or rather, a tribute.
Each sound became a temporary scar and a color in space and in our hearts.
Nudity was necessary to dissolve distance. Without protection, without social rank-signs, the human body entered directly into relation with the durability of nature and with its own finitude. Mud to mud, earth to ash.
The moment of washing the feet marked a transition. A simple, archaic gesture, deeply embedded in collective memory. Not as a religious act in the dogmatic sense, but as a sacral gesture: a thanks for nothing. An acknowledgment of humanity’s dependence on the earth, on Gaia our primal mother, on the matter that precedes us, outlasts and laughs at us.
Allowing others to wash my feet meant relinquishing control, accepting care, and embracing vulnerability. A storm of tenderness. The body was not understood as possession, but as a place of passage.
Cicatrici nell’Acqua did not seek a final form. Like water, every action was destined to disappear. What remained were traces, in memory, in sound, in the bodies of those who took part. The performance consisted of three to four people. Not as individuals, but as bodies in relation.
A temporary balance between human and nature, between the sacred and the earthly, between what remains and what inevitably dissolves.
Monti Versiliesi 2017
