Adriana A. Leanza's "Soft caverns open endlessly and close" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on July 28th, 2023 as one of 19 AEROPONIC ACTS of  WHERE THE MOON IS UP curated by Elisa Giuliani.

Here you will find the documentation of Adriana A. Leanza's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Giulia Crispiani and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.

Soft caverns open endlessly and close

Adriana A. Leanza's question: Isn’t it all in constant motion?

Adriana's introduction: A publishing house in Palermo, a {fictional} anthology of microscopical interest. Yeasts fermenting in a beech wood container called maidda, like infinite drops inside a cave. Vibrant choreographies of migratory nature and secular gestures of transmissions. Bread-making never was an individual culinary practice, nor an unaccountable one. This ritual, intra-haptic. This motion, constant.

Giulia's report: We’re split in two groups and lead into the theatre from two different sides, somebody is giving instructions at the door, the room still smells like onions. We’re walking into the peach dark and we’re supposed to go from one room to another, performers are moving slowly on stage a really light text is projected on the black backdrop. There’s a soundscape of something like water dropping amplified. On the other side a blue projection with unclear images, hands on yeasts perhaps? The text on the wall in the second room speaks of a book published by Sellerio Editore in Palermo about micro-migration and Sicilian yeast fermentation choreographies (hard to read). Is it a speculative piece on micro affect, touch, movement and choreography. The performers speed up and start a stomping dance in the first room, of variated intensity, the soundtrack speeds up accordingly inside and out of the light. “What the fingers touch is a partial contradictory texture, always in the process of co-configuration”—the projection reads behind them. 

Phanuel Antwi Speaking of stillness, is it all in constant motion? We just came from a room which had a refrain, and then we’re coming to this dreamworld of sort, the evocation of darkness. My body is aware of itself, I found myself slowly moving, and felt warm energetic feels. This fermentation, and the work we’re doing here is a different kind of distillation, fermentation—this is our job here. It’s about separation and moving, and the energy we’re producing. The work makes me reflect on what we leave out and energetic feels, and the constancy of that energy that doesn’t go anywhere. We’re here watching bodies and the brain gets activated, in synch and out of synch.

Ayesha Hameed I’ve never been to an escape room. There’s so much aspiration to make something that is non linear, and yet we always come back to that. I walked around few times and every time I found new meanings. We were given direction on the movement but not on the content, so I feel like you presented us with a puzzle, rather than with a solution. Language is presented in a very elemental form. The room as I body, when I could see both sides, and both rooms at the same time, I couldn’t absorb that. 

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi This is a kind of piece is not so useful to overthink about, the movement the sensuality is the central aspect of this piece, you study ways to reverberate certain micro and macro movement, migration is what resonate in my and your body as I look at you. A reverberation of an internal movement, it could work as a durational piece. A tradition of ancestral dance—performed in front of each other.

The unifying element is the sound, as the dancers created a common sound, a reverberation, the architecture of the space worked through sound. The display of the text in space, with different kinds of style, works with different ways of placing a textwithin an architecture. You can look into New Vitalism, a current that reemerged in the philosophy of science, trying to expand consciousness to non-human non-animal bodies.

About Adriana Leanza

In italiano: 

TITOLO: Le morbide caverne si aprono all'infinito e si chiudono

DOMANDA: Non è forse tutto in costante movimento?

Una casa editrice di Palermo, un'antologia {immaginaria} di interesse microscopico. Lieviti che fermentano in un contenitore di legno di faggio chiamato maidda, come infinite gocce all'interno di una grotta. Vibranti coreografie di natura migratoria e gesti secolari di trasmissione. La panificazione non è mai stata una pratica culinaria individuale, né una pratica non rendicontabile. Questo rituale, intra-aptico. Questo movimento, costante.