Looking for the invisible

Pictures of an invisible world

Progetto Wonder is a place to stop and think back at particular and hard to categorize events. The project finds nourishment in the studies of great anthropologists and researchers such as Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ernesto De Martino, Jorge Luis Borges and many other thinkers who asked themselves whether we live in a symbolic and magical system and how much it influences modern and contemporary societies. Fieldwork allows to transform those studies into concrete experiences, to meet the people and to get to know the places in which we live, no matter for how long. A room, a faint warm light, on your own or with the members of the company, and a question: “Have you ever experienced magic?”.

Then a recorder, a wooden table, dozens of little stories hanging on paper and a big book entitled “Name your magic experience”. Spectators are invited to participate by telling their own magic experience, to record their voices and to write the title of their story on the book. For every testimony collected, the company will write a short story, a sort of haiku, to express the emotion felt while listening to the records. In exchange for their sharing, the participants will receive the story generated by someone else’s account, picked among the titles on the book, with power of suggestion as the only selection criteria. As the titles are chosen, the installation gradually changes, making room for new stories. Up to the present, we have collected love stories, little poetic events and great miracles; we heard about omens, dreams, presences, visions, unreal and surreal moments breaking into reality. The recordings are transformed in short fantastical stories that will pass from hand to hand. “I don’t believe in such things, BUT…” How often the participants tried to justify themselves with such a incipit, highlighting the amazing paradox of stating something through disbelief.

Something weird

Since the creation of the street performance “La Morte tifa Barbie” (2014), we felt the urge to leave the stage to get in touch with a non-professional, random public. With all of our stuff – puppets, paintings and many other objects – we traveled a lot, discovering that children do not discern what is animate from what is not. Even after revealing the “trick” – pulling the hand out of the puppet – our young public keeps looking at it as if it was alive. Even now, the exploration of this weird something is one of the keys of our research.

Can the same magic happen even if the scene is not observed through the pure eyes of a child?

Wonder Project is inserted into CROSSING THE SEA Networking and exchange between Italy and MENA / Asia / Oceania / South America

“Crossing the sea” is a long term-strategy project that aims to establish connection and cooperation between the performing art sector in Italy and in the Middle East and Asiatic countries, establishing a dedicated mobility fund. The project is supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture and Heritage.