On the corner

by Cecilia Bertoni

in collaboration with Carl G. Beukman

director  Cecilia Bertoni
music and sounds  Carl G. Beukman
with  Cecilia Bertoni, Mauro Carulli, Mariagrazia Pompei, Charlotte Zerbey
filming and editing  Bam, Cecilia Bertoni
technical direction and fittings  Paolo Morelli, Alice Mollica, Chiara Nardi
assistant director  Mauro Carulli
production director  Michela Giovannelli
with the invaluable help of  Valentina Pracchia and Deniel Balestra and all the collaborators of Dello Scompiglio project

Spectators gather at the top of the Collina dell’Uccelliera (Aviary Hill), where two old restored huts and a large wooded terrace become the scenery for three acts that make up the promenade performance On the corner. Each act draws on the vast theme of death and dying.
The site-specific situation becomes support and inspiration to the dramaturgy.
The spectator is sometimes enveloped by the environment, sometimes directly involved in it. Or remains just a distant spectator.
The act at the Bamboo Hut tells of the period before death, in which the dying person often lives in two parallel worlds. In one, in a struggle for concrete survival, her/his needs are reduced to the minimum, shrinking the space around her/him. In the other world, this very same person begins to enter into an experience that is ever more immaterial and fluid. If the person believes in a life after death, gets used to a life without a body, without space and without time. Otherwise he/she simply gets used to nothingness. More and more, the person lives in a world that is difficult to communicate from and inaccessible to the living and for this reason solitude is experienced in its most complete expression.
The living can only watch, powerless.
The Shepherd’s Hut becomes a metaphor for home, understood as the body we inhabit. Sometimes the body is accommodating, it moves, it carries us in the world, it communicates, but it can also become inhospitable. Physical pain imprisons us, isolates us in an increasingly limited, unstable and lonely space, from which we would like to escape. Forever.
Between the two houses, in the shade of the trees, while the spectators take some refreshments, they will be invited to play a game. And as in all games, there is the arbitrariness of who wins and who loses.

This house is not
my home anymore.
I wish to sneak away,
To vanish in the mist,
Dreaming – dancing,
Sleeping. That long sleep.

On the corner

On the corner/videoinstallation

VIDEO 21’ 08’’

BY CECILIA BERTONI
2019

director  Cecilia Bertoni
music, sounds and noises  Carl G. Beukman
with  Cecilia Bertoni
filming and editing  Bam, Cecilia Bertoni
technical crew  Paolo Morelli, Alice Mollica, Chiara Nardi
production director  Michela Giovannelli

One of the parts of On the corner can be shown as a video installation on its own, or as a performance with the partecipation of Mauro Carulli and Cecilia Bertoni.

On the corner /videoinstallazione

Rubedo/videoinstallation

VIDEO 25’ 07’’

BY CECILIA BERTONI
2023

conceived by  Cecilia Bertoni
in collaboration with  Carl G. Beukman, Claire Guerrier, Fernando Marques Penteado
directed by  Cecilia Bertoni
music, sounds and noises  Carl G. Beukman
with  Cecilia Bertoni, Carl G. Beukman, Claire Guerrier, Fernando Marques Penteado
filming and visual effects  Nadia Baldi
editing  Nadia Baldi, Cecilia Bertoni
RUBEDO costume design made by  Lucia Castellana
technical direction and set-up  Paolo Morelli
production  Michela Giovannelli

The video RUBEDO originates from the homonymous video installation by Cecilia Bertoni that draws on the theme of death and dying, through the celebration of her own funeral, but also tells of the relevance and instability of living, in an individual and collective sense, in its affinities with the mysteries and the imagery of the alchemical process.
Existence – in the light of life as a complete work, with all its falls, with its little deaths – reaching the end can reveal itself as a fabric full of irony, colours and even lightness. And those who remain celebrate their sadness, but also honour the poetry of the moment. In the video, the visitors are transported to a disembodied elsewhere, in which the transition and transformation of every daily gesture becomes a ritual.
The word “rubedo” evokes the eternal transformation of the body and soul.
The two videos RUBEDO and On the corner, contrasting in aesthetic and sound choices, follow the story of a single figure that changes, dances, laughs, walks, travels, rests, abandons itself and becomes aware of every mistake, fall and uncertainty.

2023_Rubedo_videoinstallazione

round midnight / portraits

VIDEO INSTALLATION
2017

conceived and directed by Cecilia Bertoni
music, sounds and noises  Carl G. Beukman
performers  Olivier Boréel, Eleonora Chiocchini, Katia Frese, Sara Leghissa, Valerio Sirna
video camera and editing  BAM with Cecilia Bertoni
video make-up  Giulia Avarello and the performers
scenery construction  Paolo Morelli, Alice Mollica, Giacomo Citti
production year 2016

image by Cecilia Bertoni

The video installation round midnight is an adaptation and development of one of the videos shown originally at the homonymous performance by the director and artist Cecilia Bertoni, presented by Compagnia Dello Scompiglio in 2016.

In the video we see the portraits of the 5 performers. At first, they appear to have just woken up, without filters or masks, still unconscious of the need to present themselves to the world. Subsequently, their features whitened, they emerge made-up according to the conventional representations of masculine and feminine, whereas at the end of the narrative, they themselves choose a make-up that neither obscures them nor merely renders them presentable, but which says more about who they truly are, beyond the dichotomy.
Within these transformations there are delays, structural modifications as regards the normal concepts of time in which it becomes difficult to define what one is and what one becomes.
The viewer participates in the images in an atmosphere that circumvents chronological time and makes them feel at ease, almost as if the world no longer observes them and there is no need to adopt the set role that responds to the expectations created about us.

The installation consists of a parallelepiped of 4,5m x 3m by 1,5 m hight coverd in red velvet, with hand embroydered pillow in various materials on which people can make themselves comfortable. The two projection walls are covered in synthetic leather with red embroydery.

round midnight / ritratti