x-machine

An x-machine is a device, a machine for manipulating x-type objects.

We always act within devices, we belong to them. A device is a relationship of forces, of knowledge and of powers. It is a tool we use, a space we inhabit, it is the society that surrounds us. The very epoch in which we live is a man-made macro-device: a new era, called the Anthropocene, in which the sum of human actions has influenced the earth's environment to such an extent that it has created a true geological stratification, with consequences beyond our control.

In our stage device, x-machine, there are three musicians and a sound designer, a microphone in the centre of the stage is the only input allowed, all amplified and electronic sounds are generated by it, outside of it only the acoustic sounds of the instruments. The performers relate to the machine and to each other through the microphone, they are conditioned by it, but at the same time they try to escape from it, to create a subjective path. The stage itself is a device: the mirror of a theatre hall. The actions that the musicians perform generate in space and sound a stratification, an ever-increasing, irreversible level of entropy.

Is it possible to escape established power relations or constituted knowledge? To do so, we need to find lines of escape to reinvent new forms, new relationships, new devices.

All here is the space that makes us subjects and not objects.

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credits:

direction and set design: Federica Amatuccio.

musical direction and sound design: Andrea Gianessi.

music: Federica Furlani, Jacopo Giacomoni, Andrea Gianessi, Marco Puzzello.

costumes: Martina Mondello, with Solidea Colussi and Pinuccia Marchisio

performers: Federica Furlani, Jacopo Giacomoni, Andrea Gianessi, Marco Puzzello.

production: tsd - teatro dei servi disobbedienti

with the support of DAS - Dispositivo Arti Sperimentali, Bologna

finalist Biennale College Directors Under 30 - La Biennale di Venezia 2020

presented at ØSCENE 2021 in Osimo - curated by ØNAR / AMAT

premiered at the Venice Open Stage 2022 festival

photo: © Costanza Betti, courtesy of Venice Open Stage