Peaceful Places

Margherita Landi e Agnese Lanza
Selection FNAS Showcase


Synopsis

The hug is a gesture we have all known and shared since we are born. There is something that touches all of us so deeply at the moment we are able to let go of our resistance sharing support, heartbeats, and melting in a cuddle. The world pandemic had changed our confidence in sharing this simple action. In contrast with the image of bodies as weapons, an image that has been used by various thinkers to define the relationship with the other nowadays, we propose the image of bodies as peaceful places. After having avoided so many bodies in the last year, finally we have the possibility to meet with others.

Peaceful Places allows everybody, all kinds of bodies, to transform their emotional state into movement, training their empathy and then their body to hug. Real people, with real emotional bonds, guide the user's movement by sharing their tenderness. Auggie Award 2021 winner for Best Art, the project is a participatory, inclusive dance installation, a new performative format.

In the video, the user will meet five couples with different real relationships (grandfather and grandson, mother and child, mother and adult daughter, friends since childhood) and will imitate their gestures. The user will have the chance to imitate, and so embody the hugs and the affective gestures that will see in the video. The user then will start moving and composing a unique simple choreography made of affective gestures.

Virtual reality in this sense becomes a tool to augment the physical experience and, at the same time, a tool to learn a physical language from a VR headset.
Aiming for an emotionally and engaging experience, the project wants to deepen the possibility of creating a choreographic score starting from immersive videos of real bodies that tell their stories. Peaceful Places aims to be an experience of proximity, thanks to virtual bodies, and at the same time an experience of absence, of loneliness. In fact, the audience we will see a flock of bodies hugging the emptiness.

Company

Margherita Landi e Agnese Lanza develop projects that express the expressive potential of virtual technology, focusing on accessibility, inclusivity, and embodiment that these tools enable. Their individual research efforts revolve around related and complementary concepts that intertwine and complement each other in these projects realized using Virtual Reality. Agnese approaches movement with a focus on achieving the essence of the gesture, while Margherita concentrates on the processes of emotional projection in the digital world and the transformation of human rituals in relation to technology. Their work begins with the fundamental concepts of listening, sharing, and connection, transporting them from the physical world to the digital world, thus seeking to eliminate the dichotomy between man and machine and, on the contrary, enhancing the possibility of “enhancing” the human experience through technology.

Organising and collaborating people or organisations

  • Choreography e concept: Margherita Landi e Agnese Lanza
  • VR video e concept VR: Margherita Landi
  • Post Production: Sasan Bahadorinejad e Cosimo Lombardelli
  • Year of production: 2021
  • Cast video 360: Mirko Cuttini, Sara Della Mora, Margherita Landi, Agnese Lanza, Iris Pellizzari, Armando Puicher, Daria Rizzardi, Giada Rossi, Anna Toscano, Enea Zancanaro
  • Produced by Gold Enterprise
  • With the collaboration of: Dialoghi/Residenze delle arti Performative a Villa Manin, Festival Contaminazioni Digitali, PimOff, Compagnia Giardino Chiuso.

Projects details

Status: In the process of creation

Web of the project: https://landilanza.com/

Additional documents: 

Market of reference: International

Disciplines: Installation, Movement, Visual/digital arts

Scale of the show: Small format

Location for the project:  All kind of spaces

Recommended audience: All audience

Interests: Accessibility, Community, Dramaturgy, Emergent



Teaser



Stormo
Effetto Larsen