Luisa Eugeni

FABER

un’ Opera per le Cartiere di Fabriano

multimedia work with live performance focused on the gestures of "making paper".

Among multi-channel video installations, music, and opera singing - in the site-specific performance Faber, the abandoned historic paper mills environments were digitally dislocated, to ideally returned to host the production cycle.

Also the gestures of "making paper" were captured on video: the repetitive gestures of the papermaker who immerses the mold in the vat to produce handmade paper, “il ponitore” who, together with the "bardasciu," detaches the still wet sheet from the mold on the felt, the stitcher who passes the needle and silver thread from one side to the other of the canvas of the mold to fix the watermarks or metal meshes, the women who repeatedly counts the sheets in groups of five or in a fan shape, with an unprecedented dance of arms, hands, and fingers laying the groundwork for a live performance.

These gestures were then transmitted to the performers, musicians, and dancers, dressed in paper sculpture costumes, for the live show: all bodies simultaneously act on a motor, auditory, and visual level, in an orchestrated dialogue; the rush of the Giano river, the pounding of hammers on anvils, the creaking of the press are mixed with the voices of the singers; the music specially written for the performative act, taking its cue from the finale of Gioachino Rossini's William Tell, is interpreted through a computer and synthesizer.

The artist Luisa Eugeni opened up the space of her own residency, inviting other international artists to collectively create a transmedial narrative based on the gestural heritage of paper production: Paolo Casali (composer), Gabrio Gabrielli (dancer), Anna Jäger (dancer), Manuela Molinelli (mezzo-soprano), Janis Elias Müller (sound designer), Claudio Rocchi (tenor), Antonio Stella (dancer), Raphael Wutz (fashion designer).

The stitcher, the papermakers, the watermarkist, the women counting, are some of the key figures interviewed accordin to the purpose of the project, which aims to transpose into the future, through the performative lens, the cultural and historical value of a centuries-old product like Fabriano paper, highlighting not the excellence of the artifact, but the manual skills of the people who work with it and their specific gestures.

All this was made possible thanks to the collaboration of several papermakers who lent themselves to reenact in front of the camera the individual gestures of the production phases, then transmitted to the performers: in particular, we thank Riccardo Biagelli, Agostino Biocco, Rita Catufa, Enrico Cimarra, Chezia Di Pasqua, Mariella Iaiani, Daniela Pompili, Bruno Sebastianelli, Carla Sorci, Sandro Tiberi, Maria Francesca Tobaldi.