{"id":714,"date":"2018-03-01T20:01:47","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T20:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/?p=714"},"modified":"2022-11-03T17:24:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T17:24:00","slug":"mars-2018-the-relationship-between-body-and-screen-in-studio-azzurros-performances-since-the-1980-until-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/mars-2018-the-relationship-between-body-and-screen-in-studio-azzurros-performances-since-the-1980-until-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Mars 2018 – The Relationship Between Body and Screen in Studio Azzurro’s Performances Since the 1980 Until Today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Studio Azzurro is an Italian group that has been working with different performative languages since the 1980s: video installations, theater, video art, cinema, interactive installations, interactive museums. In all these artistic experiences Studio Azzurro has never worked using the languages handed down by tradition, but has always experimented by mixing them with new technologies. The work they have conducted in theater is particular, because the use of new technologies has transformed the concept of theater and has opened the way for the development of new performative forms such as digital or technological theater. In what follows, we will study the relationship between body and screen in Studio Azzurro\u2019s performances. Analyzing selected performances from the 1980s to the present, we will observe how the body moves and acts when confronted with an on-stage screen, and how in turn the screen reacts to the living presence of the body. The performances we will consider are: Prologo a diario segreto contraffatto <\/em>(1985), La camera astratta <\/em>(1987), Delfi <\/em>(1990), The Cenci <\/em>(1997), Galileo (Studi per l\u2019inferno) <\/em>(2006) and Il colore dei gesti <\/em>(2013).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Studio Azzurro was founded by Fabio Cirifino, Paolo Rosa and Leonardo Sangiorgi in 1982 in Milan, but its origins and poetics are linked to the 1970s, to the experimentations that arrived in Italy from the US–first, happenings and performances, and then, \u201cthe theater of images,\u201d a term coined by Bonnie Marranca in 1977. (Marranca, 1977, p. 9-15) In Italy, the interesting research around the theater of images took place mainly in theater cooperatives and associations born around the time of the student and workers\u2019 movements in 1968. Studio Azzurro\u2019s birth was part of this cultural climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As described by Paolo Rosa:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It begins with the experiments of the 1970s that come before Studio Azzurro: sudden feasts, temporary occupations of places, environmental and \u201ccriminal\u201d reconstructions, cinematographic happenings [\u2026] At that time, with the experience of the militant communication laboratory, we became aware of the body and gesture, of the actions in the urban space. [\u2026] The other root of Studio Azzurro, which we were about to form, was the photographic experience. (Pittaluga, 2012, p. 22)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if at the beginning Studio Azzurro\u2019s work was not properly linked to theater, it had all the theatrical elements of the Italian experimentations of the 1970s: the importance of the body, the relationship with the environment, visual elements, the use of new technologies, a minimal dramaturgy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the large catalogue of Studio Azzurro\u2019s performances, several are termed \u201ctheatrical performances,\u201d since they use some theatrical elements and languages. But it is difficult to delineate a line that separates a theatrical performance from a video installation or a sensitive environment, since even if there are some differences among them, they belong to a clear and unique poetics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Studio Azzurro\u2019s works use several languages, they are all linked to the new technologies, and specifically to video, since video is involved in the cultural revolution of the 1960s, and even more so in the 1970s. It is used both in performances and as an autonomous medium–video art. In the 1980s, video and performance are indissoluble. For the Milanese group, video is \u201ca decompression chamber of a visual stress, it clears and cleans the image and resubmits it as if it were new and never seen.\u201d (Valentini, 1990, p. 19)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prologo<\/em> and La camera astratta<\/em> were realized by Studio Azzurro in collaboration with Giorgio Barberio Corsetti. To analyse them, it is important to know how Barberio Corsetti worked with his actors, since they are part of these two performances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Corsetti is the heir of the Roman experimentation that began with Carmelo Bene. In 1975 he founded his experimental group, La Gaia Scienza in Rome, with an explicit reference to Nietzsche, from whom he gleans the idea of the actor as a philosopher-dancer, stressing his athletic qualities, both physical and mental. For Corsetti, the actor must feel the space that surrounds him like a part of himself and must bring this perception on the scene. Body and thought are no longer two distinct things but a unique act. Corsetti\u2019s actor \u201cfreed by function of having to transport characters, feelings and moods [\u2026] has imposed himself as full of pure energy, as a physical and psychological expressiveness of his existence in the space.\u201d (Valentini, 2007, p. 111) The encounter between Corsetti\u2019s group and Studio Azzurro\u2019s video installations increased this vision of the actor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the first performance, Prologo1<\/sup>,<\/em> Studio Azzurro and Corsetti had decided to link their different experiences, working together with video technologies and theatrical languages and making actors and screens interact in real time. According to Studio Azzurro, it was conceived as a \u201chappy project plan, an affinity that led us to construct in theater an experience not of interference or contamination, as it was common to say at that time, but of perfect symbiosis.\u201d (Valentini, 1995, p. 57)<\/p>\n\n\n\nStudio Azzurro\u2019s origins and its relationship with video<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Performances of the 1980s: Prologo<\/em> and La Camera Astratta<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n