Honoring the centennial year of Italian Futurism, GIRLMACHINE is a performance presented
at the Teatro of The Italian Academy on November 11, 2009. Featured in PERFORMA09,
the renowned biennial for new visual performance art in New York City, GIRLMACHINE will
inaugurate the symposium “Beyond Futurism: F.T. Marinetti, Writer,” organized by Professor Paolo
Valesio and the Department of Italian at Columbia University.
GIRLMACHINE is an investigation of Futurism’s ambiguous vitality and its complex
relationship to the modern body, exploring notions of masculine identity and mechanized
erotics. A Futurist club of men, women and objects created
by a collective of artists across art, theatre, architecture and music.
GIRLMACHINE traces these themes through the lens of diverse sources—whether directly linked
to the Futurist movement or not. The performance will unfold in an associative journey through
poetry, novels, manifestos, obsessions, tropes and stereotypes, along with contemporary
texts and song-lyrics; taking certain conceits of Futurist masculinity as
hyperbole. The directors Charles Chemin and Carlos Soto will work on the use of fragment. They will
build vibrant tableaux by exploring the relations between still images and movements, silence and
orchestrated words, repeated and sudden actions. Bodies, voices, decor, lights, texts will be
treated like vivid material, like layers that could erect and be destroyed in an antagonistic escalation.
To contrast the rich and overdecorated neo-Renaissance-style Teatro, (venturing even to the exteriors of
the building) the architect Christian Wassmann creates an inflated, transforming installation employing
mirrored foil, light and gas. Large, connected tetrahedrons float in space and change their configuration
throughout the performance; like additional actors questioning formality and gravity.
GIRLMACHINE will be built and rehearsed during a 2 week Fall Residency at the Watermill Center in Long
Island, founded by artist/director Robert Wilson. Co-organizer Esplor/Azioni, a Rome-based non-profit,
is currently developing a sister-project in Italy. |