Performance

A katana is a samurai sword. The artist retraces its life, both symbolically and in practice. First raw steel, it is then forged, sharpened and polished in the foundry. The artist follows the same process, ultimately returning it to its original state. His presentation to the public, however, takes on a political meaning. The sword is neutralised as an offensive weapon. It not only becomes mere steel again, but also loses its aggressive charge: a gesture of hope at a time when the sound of weapons resounds.

The performance explores the emotional geographies, connections and disconnections that run through contemporary relationships. The text is part of a broader, ongoing project through which Silvia Giambrone has gathered fragments of everyday life for many years, using notebooks, notes, annotations, images, observations and fragments of experience.

This practice, built up over time, regards recording and collecting as an action that is both performative and transformative. Taking notes on the world becomes a way not only to observe and question it, but also to disarm its rhetoric.

From this perspective, irony plays a central role: it does not make the subjects lighter, but reveals their tensions and contradictions, illuminating the shadowy areas of everyday experience. Moving through relationships, encounters, losses, dependencies, alliances and desires, the text explores the connections and disconnections that shape contemporary relationships, questioning emotional patterns, power relations, gender stereotypes and possible forms of freedom.

This performance focuses on the concept of national borders, tracing their history through the anthems of states that have ceased to exist since 1865, the year in which Mendel’s work gave rise to modern genetics. From that moment, a new way of thinking about continuity and discontinuity in living forms emerged: one based not on appearances, but on deep, invisible relationships, like those that connect us beyond appearances. The succession of voice and music evokes a constantly changing geopolitical landscape, where borders and identities shift over time. In dialogue with botanical taxonomy, the work reflects on the fragility of all classification and the impossibility of imposing a definitive order on the complexity of the world.

I challenge you to hold a flame in your hand for a minute and a half without burning yourself. Fuoco is a ritual of secular spirituality, born from a challenge and an act of trust. Fire captivates participants and suspends them from the ordinary through direct contact with the primordial: pure, transformative energy. Each person sees themselves in the flame, experiences an expanded sense of time and inhabits the here and now in the palm of their hand. Playing with fire means carrying and protecting, bringing freedom and responsibility together. It is a symbolic call to enter the experience and publicly reflect on the meaning of the flame, on the fire that animates us and that we safeguard, and on the values we wish to preserve and pass on. Touching fire is a threshold: once initial fear or curiosity has been overcome, the flame invites meditation, profound wonder and contemplation, encouraging individuality and the soul to emerge.

You are invited to become conscious bearers and protectors of fire. In a brief encounter, participants will experience the work in complete safety, guided by simple technical precautions. The act will be documented through a photographic portrait and a brief oral account: living traces of the experience and reflections on the flame and the meanings evoked by contact with fire.