Contemporary Cluster, Rome
curated by Re:humanism
2023
The performance retraces the history of the ritual cycle of the taranta, an ancient healing practice. According to popular tradition, women healed from the venom of a spider called the tarantula, a metaphor for a greater evil, a constant and incessant condition of physical and psychological domestic and social violence. The ritual was a moment of emancipation, a therapeutic practice in which the tarantate danced for days to the rhythm of tambourines and the melodies of a violin. Jeno was born out of the need to tell that part of the story hidden by the myth of the tarantula. The performance takes place in a longitudinal space like the aisle travelled by brides on their way to the wedding altar. The performer faces a drum that oscillates and emits the sound of its rhythm through an integrated speaker. The sound wave bounces off the drum’s membrane as the hands of the tambourine players did to activate the woman’s body on stage.
A helmet of electrodes placed on the performer’s head monitors this dialogue between sound and body. The device reads data from the body’s brain activity, demonstrating how the percussive rhythm of the drum influences the activity of the human nervous system, a theory already known among the primitive peoples of the Mediterranean, who used this instrument to alter their mental state to get to the point of transe. The difference in intensity between one datum and another regulates the emission of screams and laments of authentic tarantate women recorded during a therapeutic ritual cycle.