PERFORMANCE

Sexuality and affectivity, ability and disability, ethnicity and cultural background: a group of teenagers is invited to question issues related to the politics of the body while building the dramaturgy of the performance Body of Knowledge of Australian actress Samara Hersch, in collaboration with performer Nico Guerzoni. The performance overturns positions and connections, weaving one-to-one relationships between adult spectators and teenage performers, fostering a dialogue between generations.

From a distance, the teenagers start phone conversations with the adult spectators in the theatre, slowly building a shared intimacy. The vulnerability and the power of adolescence are made tangible, questioning certainties about the body and tackling issues such as sexuality, boundaries, pleasure, intimacy, shame, pain, consent, ageing, death, relationships with others, and the future.

Workshops held in the schools of Bologna by artists Muna Mussie and Donatella Allegro will precede the work on the performance.

LECTURE

How can we remember our interdependencies and entanglements across generations ? How can we prepare for the cognitive and emotional transitions that we will experience in the coming decades? And what cultural practices and rituals will help us to face the unknown, to generate solidarity in times of uncertainty and to navigate social life in times of inevitable change? During the lecture, Samara Hersch shares some of her reflections on her artistic research by talking about some of her works in recent years that focus on intergenerational exchange and the production of self-consciousness, as well as her curiosity to investigate the concept of absence and the concept of representation within performance. It is also shared how his artistic process clashes with people who often do not consider themselves artists and how this influences his working methodologies.