We stand still here, among the mulberry blossoms

Site-Specific Performance

Through discreet sound gestures, attuned to the acoustic peculiarities of the Giardino delle Vergini, the performance engages with the landscape from a perspective that transcends categorizing living beings. Instead, it focuses on the depth of their emotions: in this space of exchange and connection, the collective listening opens up new possibilities and variations. Central to the performance is the partial dematerialization of the subject-author, where the artist does not position himself as the pivotal point, thus subverting the traditional setting of frontal listening. This approach offers participants a peripheral vision, allowing a departure from the conventional sound aesthetic that dictates a linear relationship between sound creators and receivers. By encouraging a circular exchange, participants direct their listening inwardly and are invited to share their emotions with those nearby silently. A dynamic web of unpredictable, fleeting connections and gestures is created among the audience members.

NOTES:
The idea to place two people face to face draws directly from the title of the Italian Pavilion’s project, “Due qui / To Hear”, which plays on the homophones “two here” (in Italian, due qui) and “to hear”. This wordplay suggests how hearing — or rather, listening — is a form of attention towards others, evoking the dual presence necessary for any act of listening. There can be no listening without at least two: one who speaks (or sounds), and one who receives. However, in this performance this binary is blurred, since the two participants are both listeners, both silent presences, both here (and there). Positioning two people seated in front of each other creates a microcosm of this idea. It makes visible and tangible the relational essence of listening. As Pauline Oliveros reminds us, “We listen in order to interpret our world and experience meaning.” Listening, then, is no longer only an act of perception, but one of co-presence and mutual attention. The acoustic paradigm is no longer just about receiving sound, but about attuning oneself to another being—human, mechanical, or vegetal. This face-to-face arrangement deliberately subverts the conventions of performance, where the artist is often the central figure and the audience is positioned in passive alignment. As noted in the curatorial text, the performance moves beyond this traditional structure and invites a “partial dematerialisation of the subject-author.” The artist (myself) steps aside, and in doing so opens up a horizontal space of shared authorship, where those present become the work’s co-creators through their embodied presence and attentive silence. Moreover, the encounter between two seated individuals fosters a form of peripheral listening—not to a stage or a speaker, but to each other, to their own sensations, and to the landscape surrounding them. This setup invites participants into a shared space of reciprocal attention, where listening becomes both an intimate act and a relational form of knowledge.