2023 Books (shelves of Libreria Polarville) First presented: Libreria Polarville, L’Aquila, 13 June 2023 Performers: one or more performers Curated by: Katiuscia Tomei In collaboration with: Teatrabile L’Aquila, Libreria Polarville, PAQ Performing Art Center
One or more performers move among the shelves of Libreria Polarville in L’Aquila. They walk along the rows of books, stop, choose one. They open a page and read it in silence, motionless. Then they close the book, put it back and translate what they have just read into movement. The body reproduces the words through gestures, shifts of position, postures. Nothing is spoken. When the movement ends, the cycle begins again: another shelf, another book, another page, another sequence of gestures. Each choice is autonomous and not agreed upon. The content of the page determines the quality of the movement: a descriptive text produces different gestures from a dialogue or a list. The performers do not communicate with one another and do not address the audience, who watch the sequence repeat itself in the space of the bookshop, among the tables and display stands.
Entropic regime. The text on the page becomes gesture; the gesture exhausts itself in repetition. Each cycle: shelf, book, page, gesture, end. The translation from word to body runs one way only — the string wears out in the passage and does not come back.
Photo: Cristina Crippa Produced by artQ13.