VULCANALIA (Requiem for the Molten)
2024, Work-in-progress, performance-based multichannel video
With Nicola Fornoni
Digital 4K, 00:28:10, colour, stereo
MAXXI videogallery, Rome (IT) and Künstlerhaus, Vienna (AU)
A prophecy of glaciers and volcanoes with Pasterze Glacier, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, VULCANALIA (Requiem for the Molten) intertwines speculative collective imaginings with radical tenderness through collaborative performance, co-tellings, and soundscapes. Can forensic facts and fiction be distinguished as we stand on the molten ground of prophetic imagery? The prophecy does not tell of cataclysmic events but speaks through wounded skin embedded into fractures of violated landscapes. Psychic and visceral, prophecy oozes out from spaces of porosity—gaps and fissures inside bodies and pumice.
Between the destruction and resilience of natural environments, we inquire about what seismographic bodies reveal from the tremors beneath our surface. In the spirit of Vulcanalia, the ancient festivity for the God Vulcano—held shortly before the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD— we weave together the unseen and unforeseen, the oppressed and unspoken, embodiment and research. In the Garden of the Fugitives, thick ashes fall, hot clouds of rocks and toxic gases rush down, and all organic matter reduces to a future void frozen in a moment of shock and pain. As we reconnect our shared vulnerabilities, we ponder: can light pierce the land torn apart as echoes of history and the potential of regeneration? Centuries come and go – when the earth shakes, do we keep on dancing?
Concept: VestAndPage. Performance: Andrea Pagnes, Nicola Fornoni, Verena Stenke. Texts: Verena Stenke, Nicola Fornoni, Andrea Pagnes. Guitar: Nicola Fornoni. Editing: Verena Stenke. Camera: Victor Jaschke. Archive material courtesy by National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
VULCANALIA (Requiem for the Molten) has been produced as part of the artistic research network Shaken Grounds. Art as a Seismography of Precarious Presences. It explores the artist's role as a seismograph in the intricate relationship between humanity and an evolving, technologically influenced geological environment. The artist collective Shaken Grounds revisits the continental margins of southern Italy, exploring the intersections of natural seismic activity and anthropogenic environmental damage through an interwoven mesh of artistic experiments. Shaken Grounds. Seismography of Precarious Presences is hosted by the Angewandte Performance Lab (APL) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, led by artists Nikolaus Gansterer, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek, and Lucie Strecker, alongside international collaborators. The research proposal (AR 780, DOI: 10.55776) has been co-authored in 2022 by Nikolaus Gansterer, Dominika Glogowski, Mariella Greil, Peter Kozek and Lucie Strecker. https://shaken-grounds.org/
