collective performance and sculpture

Formine, 2021

“Processione” is a collective action organized by the artist in July 2021, during the art residency in Formine (Association for the Promotion of German-Italian Scientific and Cultural Exchange) at Lago Maggiore, Italy. 

The action was inspired by an old photo found in the Casa Rossa, showing the brutally hard working condition for women there. 

The members of the Association and local people have been invited to walk collectively from the bottom of the mountain (where the photo was taken in early 1900) to the village on top, carrying a stone.

The artist originally planned to carry the stone, alone, for the whole path, as a symbolic gesture in memory of the women that were used to carrying several dozen kilos of materials on their baskets for very long distances (a report from 1927 refers to them as “two legs-pack animals"). 

Instead, every participant (men, women and children) voluntarily decided to share the stone and carry it collectively up to the village. The children also voluntarily carried smaller stones.  During the performative action, Jonas Hartmann, a German actor and author, breaking for a few minutes the complete silence in which all the action has been led, read to the audience in a small mountain chapel an old report about these women. 

At the end the stone was placed into a memorial, carved with the help of several inhabitants, “IN MEMORIA DELLE DONNE DI FORMINE”

(in memory of Formine’s women)

photos : Monika Keiler