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.
Dixit et adversi contra stetit ora iuvenci,
qui donum astabat pugnae, durosque reducta
libravit dextra media inter conua caestus,
arduus, effractoque inlisit in ossa cerebro:
sternitur examinisque tremens procunbit humi bos.
He said and stood straight against the bull's face,
who stood there prize of struggle, hard from above
he lowered the basket to his right between his horns,
he broke through her skull bones,
he shook himself, crashing the beast to the ground dead.
In this framework, funeral games are celebrated in honor of the father.
A choral episode sung by the Black|punk ensemble with OvO, a contemporary gladiatorial school, which elevates and vibrates this funeral performance in everlasting memory of the old histrion.
Games, games in honor of the Old, games of young and old, experience and arrogance, patience and foolish haste to get where there is a goal, a purpose that appears divine but that reveals itself as a shadow. The shadow of an ever-equal gesture, a movement from top to bottom bringing down the curtain on the dead man's head.
Hard from above the horns fell the basket
splits the bones of the skull and crashes the beast dead into the mud
the last blow of the force of the past falls the baskets in the hands, narrow strings with pointed protuberances,
Roman invention intended for the blood circus that draws applause,
which enhances the sight, a custom foreign to the animal, which, fed up and absent, allows itself to be struck.
Dying in the earth and blood he glimpses, misty, the feet of those who thought powerful.
The worst has been beaten.
What OvO do cannot be classified into a musical genre. It's not noise, it's not metal, it's not doom, it's not punk, it's not rock and roll, even if there's a little bit of all of that. It is certainly neither free nor avant nor impro. For once you can say that a group is truly incatalogable. Their performances are legendary and have led them to play all over the world, from Europe to Mexico, from North America to Israel. They have made records or concerts with, among others, Nadja, KK Null, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Rollerball, Godflesh, Thrones, Sub Arachnoid Space, Zenigeva, Lightning Bolt, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Estradasphere, Steve Mc Kay, Trencher, Ludica, Bill Horist, USA Is a Monster, White Mice, Cock ESP, Bastard Noise and many others.
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live music performance | OvO < Stefania Pedretti | Bruno Dorella
creation | Francesco Pititto | Maria Federica Maestri
imagoturgy | Francis Pititto
installation | Maria Federica Maestri
Performer | Valentina Barbarini | Giuseppe Barigazzi | Giancarlo Ilari | Vincenzo Piccirillo | Pierluigi Tedeschi | Elena Sorbi
light design | Gianluca Bergamini
assistant director | Elena Sorbi
production | Ilaria Montanari