Arte Studio Ginestrelle Residency, Assisi, Italy - Appartengono: A Sense of Belonging - 2011
Assisi and the Regional Park of Mt. Subasio, are sacred places, destinations for pilgrims who interact with those whose roots are deeply planted within the local soil. There is a rich history, a legacy of place that is not present in the adolescent culture of America where we come from – a connection/disconnection of place, self and community. As outsiders we are privileged by the generosity of insiders - collaborator/performers from the small village of Costa di Trex who share their stories of place through text, movement and sound. Together we created a work to be performed at Arte Studio Ginestrelle that evokes the spirit of Mt. Subasio and the people of Costa di Trex.
Paul and I were artists in residence, May 18 through June 7, 2011, at Arte Studio Ginestrelle in the Regional Park of Mt. Subasio in Assisi, Italy to set a performance work on community members of this area. To facilitate the work, Dr. Marina Merli, Director of Arte Studio Ginestrelle, arranged a collaboration with the cultural association of Pro Loco Costa di Trex in the small medieval town of
Costa di Trex, 6 km from Assisi. As originally proposed, we worked in collaboration with a group of 5-10 performers of varying ages utilizing material from their own writing to create an original physical theatre piece about connection to place, self and community through movement and text, and created a video, photo and sound exhibition of digital photography, video and DAT recordings of the process and culminating work.
This project was graciously humbling, balanced by a healthy dose of creative problem solving, completely unexpected joys of human generosity and the incredible beauty of the area of Mt. Subasio. In Umbria, the month of May is dedicated to the celebration of the Virgin Mary. We were immersed in the sacred and the secular as we followed local religious services and community festivals from church to church of the local region. The town of Assisi, peacefully towering in its sacred stature, did not overshadow the sublime nuance of this removed area of rolling hills, orchards and winding roads. Arte Studio Ginestrelle is tucked among the hills of Mt. Subasio and in May, the hillsides are covered in the flowering yellow of Ginestra, “broom” as we know it in the United States. Typical of the houses of this area, Arte Studio Ginestrelle is built of locally quarried stone brick that stays cool throughout the heat of the day. Marina, owner of Ginestrelle, has a Spartan aesthetic and cherishes the preservation of aged and decay. For the artist, there is a sense of tabula rasa, a blank slate with which to work with, but one cannot help but be inspired by the wisdom of the rustic ambience that permeates Ginestrelle and the confluence of international artists sharing breakfast together while graced with Umbrian hospitality. Language communication was sometimes a clumsy exchange of facial expressions, gestures, movement, phonetic blunders and mouth sounds. Armed with dictionaries, a sense of humor and a mutual willingness to be understood, we trudged. It was exhausting and exhilarating; an incredible experience.- JG
Paul and I were artists in residence, May 18 through June 7, 2011, at Arte Studio Ginestrelle in the Regional Park of Mt. Subasio in Assisi, Italy to set a performance work on community members of this area. To facilitate the work, Dr. Marina Merli, Director of Arte Studio Ginestrelle, arranged a collaboration with the cultural association of Pro Loco Costa di Trex in the small medieval town of
Costa di Trex, 6 km from Assisi. As originally proposed, we worked in collaboration with a group of 5-10 performers of varying ages utilizing material from their own writing to create an original physical theatre piece about connection to place, self and community through movement and text, and created a video, photo and sound exhibition of digital photography, video and DAT recordings of the process and culminating work.
This project was graciously humbling, balanced by a healthy dose of creative problem solving, completely unexpected joys of human generosity and the incredible beauty of the area of Mt. Subasio. In Umbria, the month of May is dedicated to the celebration of the Virgin Mary. We were immersed in the sacred and the secular as we followed local religious services and community festivals from church to church of the local region. The town of Assisi, peacefully towering in its sacred stature, did not overshadow the sublime nuance of this removed area of rolling hills, orchards and winding roads. Arte Studio Ginestrelle is tucked among the hills of Mt. Subasio and in May, the hillsides are covered in the flowering yellow of Ginestra, “broom” as we know it in the United States. Typical of the houses of this area, Arte Studio Ginestrelle is built of locally quarried stone brick that stays cool throughout the heat of the day. Marina, owner of Ginestrelle, has a Spartan aesthetic and cherishes the preservation of aged and decay. For the artist, there is a sense of tabula rasa, a blank slate with which to work with, but one cannot help but be inspired by the wisdom of the rustic ambience that permeates Ginestrelle and the confluence of international artists sharing breakfast together while graced with Umbrian hospitality. Language communication was sometimes a clumsy exchange of facial expressions, gestures, movement, phonetic blunders and mouth sounds. Armed with dictionaries, a sense of humor and a mutual willingness to be understood, we trudged. It was exhausting and exhilarating; an incredible experience.- JG
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Appartengono: A Sense of Belonging Direction, Photography & Videography: Joséphine A. Garibaldi & Paul Zmolek Appartengono (A Sense of Belonging), a collaboration with Paul Zmolek, Pro Loco di Costa di Trex and residents of Arte Studio Ginestrelle, is presented in both Italian and English and is organized into five sections:
Considered a work in progress, Appartengono (A Sense of Belonging), ultimately includes the contributions of approximately 25 community members and artists from Italy, Finland, America, and Quebec. The material that was generated with the community members of Costa di Trex developed into two short pieces, Appartengono (Belonging) and Quercia e Mattoni (Oak and Bricks). Originally these two pieces were to be performed live, but a couple days before the scheduled performance we learned over half of our performers could not attend because of preparation for a Catholic confirmation and a school performance. Fortunately, Paul and I had been working on several concurrent projects, preparing different video and sound shorts to be exhibited during our scheduled performance. Lemons become lemonade: we had been copiously documenting video and sound throughout the process of working with community members of Costa di Trex, hence, 2 more videos were included into the final “works in progress” exhibition, Section II. Quercia e Mattoni and Section IV. Appartengono. Each of the pieces is in Italian. I wrote Quercia e Mattoni based upon text submitted by one of the performers, Stefania. Marina Merli, director of Arte Studio Ginestrelle, helped to translate my writing into correct Italian prose which would accurately evoke the spirit of Stefania’s original submission. Using Italian as our starting point and applying the choreographic method developed by myself and Zmolek, movement was generated from the text. Section IV. Appartengono was based upon text that was written by Orsola Mirti Manicelli. What developed was a lovely duet between mother and daughter that was choreographed and performed under a street lamp in Costa di Trex, 10 pm on a cool spring night with a peacock cawing in the distance. - JG |
