La Forme de l’âme is an interdisciplinary performance inspired by the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, a French philosopher who worked at the turn of the 21th century. His reflections oscillated, among other things, around the affectivity of the human body. The titular “shape of the soul” will be created by dancer Elena Boillat, composer Pietro Luca Congedo and director Fabrizio Rosso.
This project combines the presence of the artist, electronics using fragments of the voice of the deceased thinker and bands of light emphasising the movements of the female body. The sound sets the pace, the passage of time to which the human body is subjected over the passing stages of life, from birth to death. The light and the body, entering into an enigmatic fusion with smoke, come to life, divide, follow each other, and finally disappear into nothingness. “The body dies and takes its secret to the grave, leaving only the smallest trace of its passing,” Nancy emphasised. The vision of the naked body becomes both soothing and obscene. The French philosopher, historian and sociologist Michel Foucault put it somewhat ruthlessly: “I can go to the end of the world, hide under the blanket in the morning, melt in the sun on the beach, but it will always be where I am. My body is the place to which I am unquestionably doomed.”
The performance boldly stages the tragic reality of limitations and finalities into which we are thrown like into a vortex, and the mystery towards which life inexorably leads us.
