Porta Capuana. Space as a doubt / 2025 / Naples
site-specific dance performance that traces the emotional geography of the Porta Capuana neighborhood of Naples.
The site-specific performance literally traces an emotional map of the neighborhood, involving the inhabitants in a process of sensorial rediscovery of their city. The performance is staged inside the exhibition “The sun to come”, the exhibition that inaugurates the biennial program REBIRTH, conceived and developed by nonlineare - independent curatorial initiative founded by Teresa Iarocci Mavica.
The project unfolds through a structured framework of research and artistic practices that explore the concept of rebirth in relation to global crises and the transformations of our time. The exhibition brings together international artists whose works traverse the delicate balance between creation and destruction, hope and catastrophe.
What is rebirth not from the perspective of a person, but from the perspective of the space? From the point of view of the main gate in the square, the trading place in the market, or the broken bell of the monastery? I am interested in detaching objects from everyday reality, in taking them out of the category of “handiness” with the help of Viktor Shklovsky's technique of “defamiliarization”. By “defamiliarizing” objects from everyday reality, one can learn something more true about them: for example, that things are mysterious in their essence, complex and strange.
Timothy Morton writes that “mysterious” comes from the Greek “muein” (μύειν)-not to open one's mouth. It means that things are silent. They are silent and because of this there will always remain some mystery in them.
I propose to use defamiliarization to revisit the streets of the Porta Capuana neighborhood. Using the optics of art, I propose to discover something more sensual about the streets than historical or factual data about them. I am interested above all in individual experiences, experiences on the verge of disappearing.
The materials in the performance:
Choreography - Olga Tsvetkova & citizens of Naples
Composer - Angelina Rud
Sound directing - Ilya Streletskiy
Performers - Carmela Abagnato, Joe Celli, Martina D’Antonio, Floriana di Marco, Beatrice Donda, Davide Nazzaro, Fabrizia Lanzotti, Francesca Pastore, Alessandra de Francesco, Olga Tsvetkova
Special thank you to Teresa Iarocci Mavica
production by the Made in Cloister Foundation
Ten years after its establishment, the Fondazione Made in Cloister upholds its mission of urban regeneration through art with a new biennial program. The Foundation’s starting point was the transformation and rebirth of the 16th-century Cloister of the Church of Santa Caterina a Formiello—an abandoned space repurposed through cultural production. This model of urban regeneration through contemporary art fosters dialogue between artists, artisans and the local community.
site-specific dance performance that traces the emotional geography of the Porta Capuana neighborhood of Naples.
The site-specific performance literally traces an emotional map of the neighborhood, involving the inhabitants in a process of sensorial rediscovery of their city. The performance is staged inside the exhibition “The sun to come”, the exhibition that inaugurates the biennial program REBIRTH, conceived and developed by nonlineare - independent curatorial initiative founded by Teresa Iarocci Mavica.
The project unfolds through a structured framework of research and artistic practices that explore the concept of rebirth in relation to global crises and the transformations of our time. The exhibition brings together international artists whose works traverse the delicate balance between creation and destruction, hope and catastrophe.
Porta Capuana. Space as a doubt.
«People become stronger when they are thrown into chaos, not when they are protected from it»
Nassim Taleb's Antifragile
What is rebirth not from the perspective of a person, but from the perspective of the space? From the point of view of the main gate in the square, the trading place in the market, or the broken bell of the monastery? I am interested in detaching objects from everyday reality, in taking them out of the category of “handiness” with the help of Viktor Shklovsky's technique of “defamiliarization”. By “defamiliarizing” objects from everyday reality, one can learn something more true about them: for example, that things are mysterious in their essence, complex and strange.
Timothy Morton writes that “mysterious” comes from the Greek “muein” (μύειν)-not to open one's mouth. It means that things are silent. They are silent and because of this there will always remain some mystery in them.
I propose to use defamiliarization to revisit the streets of the Porta Capuana neighborhood. Using the optics of art, I propose to discover something more sensual about the streets than historical or factual data about them. I am interested above all in individual experiences, experiences on the verge of disappearing.
The materials in the performance:
- thick brown cardboard (everydayness, the low, trash, matter, protection). Cardboard as a transcendent state of searching for the truth in non-obvious places. Choreographic score of paper as persona.
- thin, absolutely transparent plastic (transcendental dimension, spirituality, ghosts, the unknown, the beyond). Fragility, transcending the limits of the human, but at the same time in its self-destructiveness resisting beingness, creating co-existence out of the potential of its ephemerality.
Choreography - Olga Tsvetkova & citizens of Naples
Composer - Angelina Rud
Sound directing - Ilya Streletskiy
Performers - Carmela Abagnato, Joe Celli, Martina D’Antonio, Floriana di Marco, Beatrice Donda, Davide Nazzaro, Fabrizia Lanzotti, Francesca Pastore, Alessandra de Francesco, Olga Tsvetkova
Special thank you to Teresa Iarocci Mavica
production by the Made in Cloister Foundation
Ten years after its establishment, the Fondazione Made in Cloister upholds its mission of urban regeneration through art with a new biennial program. The Foundation’s starting point was the transformation and rebirth of the 16th-century Cloister of the Church of Santa Caterina a Formiello—an abandoned space repurposed through cultural production. This model of urban regeneration through contemporary art fosters dialogue between artists, artisans and the local community.