Aeneid Project 2011_2012
Lenz Rifrazioni's race towards classical literary texts continues with the twelve-episode rewriting of Publius Virgil Maro's Aeneid. The new performative and visual project inspired by the great epic poem of Virgil, the greatest interpreter of Latin classicism, is grafted onto Dido - the latest creation dedicated to Ovid. Made for the filmic part in the allegorical landscapes crossed by Aeneas during the founding journey of Latinity, the creation takes as its body of investigation the rhetorical figures of Virgil's epic, in a critical interpretation of the iconology of the potentate and dominance.
In this major performance project, Lenz's visions merged with the sounds of four musicians from the international electronic scene: Lillevan, Paul Wirkus, OvO and Andrea Azzali-Monophon, who performed the individual episodes live.
The Aeneid (Aeneis), an epic poem in twelve books composed between 29 BC and 19 BC, is a monumental work, considered by contemporaries to be a Latin iliad. It was the official Book sacred to the ideology of the regime of Augustus, sanctioning the origin and divine nature of imperial power.
AENEIS
These are the titles of the twelve episodes that make up the creation of Maria Federica Maestri and Francesco Pititto, a contemporary visual and performative work installed on Virgil's epic monument. Made for the filmic part in the allegorical landscapes crossed by Aeneas during the founding journey of Latinity, the creation takes as its body of investigation the rhetorical figures of the epos virgilino, in a critical interpretation of the iconology of the potentate and dominance.
In the perimeter space of the Ara Pacis, a celebratory and propagandistic monument erected in the Campus Martius between 13 and 9 BC to glorify the Augustan victories and, during the Fascist years, the site of the gymnastic exercises of Roman youth - exactly reproduced from the installation, the first six ceremonial paintings inspired by the Aeneid are drawn. The walls of the stage enclosure are decorated with the visual friezes of the film sequences in substantial formal fidelity to the narrative structure of the friezes of the Ara Pacis, an explicit ornamental redundancy that connects the imperial present and Aeneas, the mythical progenitor of the Roman lineage.
But on the table of the contemporary ceremony, other sacrifices are consumed and other gods are honored: the cruelty of a demented pater, the horror of maternal love, the torment of old age, the grotesque brutality of the familia, the horror of bodies in erotic constraint, the violence against dying animals, the neuroleptic transit into the afterlife, materialize in a skeletal epic without consolation.
In The Wild Boar Race, the first episode of Aeneis, the fundamental relationships that give rise to the scenic structure are diagnosed.
Four complex generative constraints – Father/Daughter, Daughter/Lover, Mother/Son, Lover/Beloved – trigger the regressions/obsessions hidden in the folds of their respective functions.
The origin of descent imprints the mark of destiny prefigured by superiors.
Seemingly everyday relationships move destinies and lives with far-reaching repercussions; the encounter between human and divine always produces epochal changes, sudden deviations from the course of history.
A former guest of Natura Dèi Teatri 2009, Lillevan is a Berlin-based video artist, co-founder of the audiovisual group Rechenzentrum, which played a pioneering role in proposing the union between music and moving images.
Lillevan has collaborated with many artists of different genres, from opera to installations, from minimalist electronics to dance and classical music, created performances and performances for major international festivals, and wrote and directed for film. Lillevan sees his work as a multilayered process that offers each viewer the opportunity to focus on different details of the performance. Human perception remains the final interactive element of live video composition, as the images return to their original ambiguity, moving away from the imperative nature of traditional editing.
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live music performance | Lillevan
creation | Francesco Pititto | Maria Federica Maestri
imagoturgy | Francis Pititto
installation | Maria Federica Maestri
performer | Valentina Barbarini | Giuseppe Barigazzi | Giancarlo Ilari
light design | Gianluca Bergamini
assistant director | Elena Sorbi
production | Ilaria Montanari