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.
Performance episode on the theme of old age. At the origin of the new empire a plural gerontogeny that reproduces Patres in Patres. To an already aged Aeneas the burden of his father Anchises' inglourious care. The load, the weight, the toil is always bearable if the purpose is glorious, loving, respectful.
There is no limit other than the physical one, but the body reveals unexpected forces in the streets/lanes of the city/hospital besieged by death. Instead, for those in charge of a mission, the weight of the objective, of the result, is added. Old age is added to old age, wrinkles and sores on soft skin, uncertain gaits with twisted fingers, brains defaulting to a purpose. What purpose but to live –begging and cursing – until the last moment? Among the sleeping old men the shadow of the forgotten bride – Creusa – reappears in the naked and wounded body of a Loca (mad) Queen.
A new musical chapter in Andrea Azzali-Monophon's long artistic alliance with Lenz Rifrazioni. A musician and experimenter with electronic processing, since 2000 he has grafted his sound research onto the dramaturgical scores of Lenz's performance creations. The Monophon Project was conceived by Azzali in 1996, after a series of collaborations with various musical groups – Tac, Parts, Razza Ventura. With this new theme song he participates in numerous electronic music festivals. In 2000, together with Adriano Engelbrecht, he created the music for the show 'Catharina von Siena', for which the CD of the same title was released. From that moment on, the artistic partnership with the company became increasingly close and led to the sound writing of all subsequent works.
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live music performance | Andrea Azzali – Monophon
creation | Francesco Pititto | Maria Federica Maestri
imagoturgy | Francis Pititto
installation | Maria Federica Maestri
performer | Valentina Barbarini | Giuseppe Barigazzi | Giancarlo Ilari
Video Performer | Paolo Maccini | Luigi Moia | Guglielmo Gazzelli | Lino Pontremoli
light design | Gianluca Bergamini
assistant director | Elena Sorbi
production | Ilaria Montanari