FEEL
Feel is a sensory performance and workshop conceived during an artistic residence at Morni Hills, Chandigarh in India during April 2019. Due to the language barrier, other forms of communication became necessary and as sensory impressions naturally arose, they made an encounter with another culture possible.
Feel reflects upon the concepts of living and belonging. In a world where people are constantly chasing time, Feel is an invitation to slow down and reclaim possession of one's own body and the process of listening to others.
This project considers the human body as a physical space, as one's own "home". The sensations felt by experiencing our surrounding space can redefine our perception of bodily space. Feel is therefore an opportunity to experience inner and outer space as a single territory, using the most immediate and elementary tools we have available: the senses.
The performance unfolds in an empty room, a place devoid of physical objects. Besides the body, the space is filled only with sounds I recorded in a variety of contexts during my long journey through the Indian sub-continent. A sensory space is therefore created, designed to draw out different types of experience and memory, such as when one enters a dreamlike state and the images follow one another rapidly and without any apparent relationship.
The performance comes to life as gesture and sound enter into dialogue and develops as the audience is invited to participate. What begins as a game soon evolves into discovery, risk, feeling, emotion, sensation…
Feel was inspired by the work of three great artists, Enrique Vargas, Marina Abramovic and Atsushi Takenouchi.
Feel moves between paradoxes, using Vargas' words: "To see you have to close your eyes. Silence is necessary to listen. Darkness decodes the body: the hands see, the nostrils evoke, smells feel silence. Whoever perceives returns to his origins and smells, palpates, feels as if it were the first time". Feel is also conceived as a game, designed to bring the audience into the action of the performance.
Abramovic's work is of great inspiration, particularly "512 Hours" where the audience "realises" the performance and personally tastes, if only briefly, the daily physical and mental processes of the performer.
Last but not least, Butoh dancer and master Takenouchi, to whom I was an assistant and of whom I am still a student, teaches the fine art of ritual performance as a medium of knowledge and transformation.
photo: Stefano Puzzuoli
Feel was presented in 2019 at the Healing Hills Art Space (HHAS), Morni Hills (IN), as the culmination of my artistic residency. It was also presented at the "Friday Performance" of the Himalayan SubBody Center for Art, McLeodGanj (IN). It was presented in 2021 at Spazio 500, Vigolo Vattaro (IT).