Francesca Pionati ~ FATE PRESTO

Francesca Pionati's "FATE PRESTO" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 1, 2024 as one of 38 AEROPONIC ACTS of CHAMELEON ORBIT curated by Elisa Giuliani & Giulia Crispiani.

Here you will find the documentation of Francesca Pionati's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by  Bethany Crawford and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.

FATE PRESTO

Francesca Pionati's question: How do we re-construct after what we know has been destroyed?

Francesca's introduction:

1.

When the delegation of Japanese scientists arrived in the destroyed city in Southern Italy for the first time, they could not believe their eyes. No wonder everything came down in the blink of an eye.

But could they really understand what they were witnessing?

2.

Why was the major so obsessed with the reconstruction of the bell tower whose head fell off during the devastating earthquake of 1980? After 10 years of silence, the head was reattached to the body, and the bell started ringing again.

How many still have faith in its sound?

3.

“As Mr. Barra, the lawyer Antonio Barra, who was a very smart person—he must be really old now—said: “You have enclosed the city in the grip of the prefabricated buildings!”

What is more violent, the fall or the reconstruction?

Bethany's report: The performance opens with a single performer standing mid-stage under a spotlight, recounting her personal history. She shares stories of the devastating earthquake in her Italian hometown, weaving these with reflections on the political influence of her grandfather and the broader political context of the region. This introduction sets the stage for an exploration of memory, legacy, and the systems that shape how we understand them.

The performer transitions by putting on a jacket and bringing chairs onto the stage, joined by a second performer, marking the "first act." Together, they present a slideshow of images, including photographs of Japanese visitors who arrived after the earthquake—tech-savvy but never heard from again. The narrative shifts into a theatrical production, where one performer embodies multiple characters, playing professionals and institutional figures from across the globe involved in the earthquake's aftermath. Through speculative correspondence between these fictional experts—written in formal, detached language—the performance examines seismic infrastructure planning and the broader question: how do we build in anticipation of disaster?

As the performers read these exchanges, they humanize the otherwise faceless figures of technical and scientific authority. After removing their blazers and adopting casual poses on the chairs, they shift to a reflective exercise styled as a "therapist game." They pose the question: "What do you see when you look at the rubble?" This moment explores themes of associationism, trauma, and relearning how to perceive devastation. Is rubble an opportunity, a disaster, or a site for disaster capitalism? These reflections invite the audience to interrogate their own perceptions of destruction and recovery.

The performance frequently breaks theatrical conventions to make its constructed nature explicit. Acts are announced, reminding the audience of the scripted layers at play. In Act 2, a video interlude presents a polished 3D rendering of a clock tower. The structure, gleaming and impenetrable, resembles both a corporate skyscraper and a dystopian fortress. Accompanied by a pulsing, glitchy soundtrack with religious-sounding vocalizations, the clock tower mutates and collapses in a violent display of fairground music, strobe lighting, and sound effects. The performer watches this collapse visibly, reenacting the earthquake’s destruction in real time.

The final section introduces a slideshow featuring an older woman on a couch, described as someone with an extraordinary memory. The narrative reflects on the changes witnessed across generations, exploring how memory and history evolve over time. The performers, holding phones as they read from scripts, repeatedly draw attention to the performative nature of the production. A Google Maps backdrop pinpoints the exact location where these events unfolded, grounding the piece in reality while exposing the layers of mediation and representation.

At one point, the performer speaks in Italian, true to the identity of the character she portrays, while a translator follows. This duality emphasizes the politics of re-enactment and the reproduction of actions, words, and translations. By making the methods of delivering narratives explicit—whether about God, capital, or lived experience—the performance questions the structures that shape how we receive and process stories.

The performance concludes with the performer walking toward the stage lights, shielding her eyes from their blinding glare. This act underscores the awareness of being part of a constructed production, leaving the audience with a provocative question: "What do you think is more violent, the form or the construction?" Through its deliberate exposure of theatrical and narrative structures, the performance compels viewers to reflect on how stories are framed, who gets to tell them, and how these frames influence our understanding of the world.

Antonia Majaca:  Antonia began her reflections by drawing connections to other artists, particularly The Otolith Group and their work Medium Earth, which explores the tectonic lines in California and the phenomena surrounding earthquakes. She noted how these lines create a sense of community, one that anticipates earthquakes before they occur. This idea of an "infrastructural unconscious" intrigued her, as it suggests a latent potential within communities to come together in preparation for events that have not yet materialized. For Antonia, this concept resonates with a blend of magical thinking and self-awareness, raising questions about the significance of physical structures like the tower and their presence within this "infrastructural unconscious."

She also referenced a second work by a Macedonian artist, an online series of drawings inspired by the devastating Skopje earthquake. Antonia reflected on the remarkable international response to the disaster and the intervention that followed. She highlighted the efforts of the architect chosen to rebuild Skopje in the 1960s, who continuously redrew designs for the city as if performing an exorcism, attempting to expel the "bad spirits" left behind by the destruction. These repetitive acts of drawing became, for her, a fascinating way of grappling with trauma and rebuilding in both a literal and symbolic sense.

Inti Guerrero: Inti reflected on the performance by situating it within the broader context of "seismic art"—works by artists that reference earthquakes and the ways they can shift not only the physical but also the social and historical dimensions of the world. He drew parallels to the Lisbon earthquake of the 18th century, a catastrophic event that disrupted Portuguese colonial enterprises. This earthquake, Inti noted, also catalyzed the development of seismology, demonstrating how such events reverberate through personal, social, and planetary narratives.

He expanded this reflection by referencing Crack of Dawn, a book about a major volcanic eruption in Indonesia. The event, cataclysmic in scale, marked a turning point in how disasters were communicated. Inti highlighted how the atmospheric pressure from the eruption was so powerful that it became one of the first nearly "live" media events, with news transmitted globally via telegraph in under 30 seconds. While instantaneous communication of disasters feels normal now with social media, this moment in history represented a profound shift in how information was shared and experienced.

What struck Inti most about Crack of Dawn was its structure, which combined scientific analysis with deeply personal stories. He saw a resonance between the book’s blending of genres and the performance’s exploration of similar themes. For Inti, the performance’s ability to intertwine personal memory, social dynamics, and planetary events mirrored the layered storytelling of the book

Ramon Amaro: Ramon began his response by admitting that the performance’s theatrical construct were somewhat outside his expertise but chose to engage through personal stories. He reflected on his own life, born in Detroit and moving to California at age seven, where he experienced a stark relationship between urban spaces and natural disasters. In California, he noted, the threat of wildfires or earthquakes is ever-present, but normalization often replaces panic. He described the fragility of the architecture in such an environment, where houses might crack before their foundations fail, illustrating the precarious balance between human constructions and nature’s unpredictability.

He drew connections between natural processes and renewal, citing how forest fires lead to the release of pinecone seeds, allowing new growth to emerge from destruction. Ramon extended this idea to urban planning, emphasizing how mythology and learned histories shape our responses to disaster. He recalled the common Californian narrative that the state might one day “fall into the ocean,” a fable that reflects both fear and the region’s seismic reality. Turning to Japan, he contrasted this with the impermanence of infrastructure in a country where rebuilding after earthquakes is a continual necessity.

Ramon described the performance’s staging as a “weird exploratory of affective gravity,” where seismic activity became a metaphor for broader narratives of instability and renewal. He considered the inclusion of cultural and archival materials, noting how the mundane was elevated to something extraordinary. He questioned the symbolic significance of the Japanese interpreter and the phallic imagery of the tower, asking what informs decisions about providing aid and knowledge and why such efforts often fail to leave a lasting impact. This inquiry led him to consider the cyclical destruction and reconstruction of not only physical structures but also cultural and historical relationships.

He reflected on the randomness of seismic activity as a metaphor for the performance’s narrative structure, where each turn offered something generative. Ramon appreciated the layering of reality and fantasy, particularly in how the recreation of fables and myths opened up questions about permanence and impermanence. He observed how this exploration aligns with themes of urban planning—particularly the need to decide what to preserve, what to let fall, and the consequences of those choices.

In closing, Ramon described architecture as a “predictive model for utopian desires,” though he saw it as a fundamentally failed project due to the inherent unpredictability of the natural world. Despite this failure, he found hope in the opportunities for renewal and reflection that arise in the aftermath of seismic disruption. The performance, he suggested, navigates these themes of return and renewal with generative complexity, leaving the audience to grapple with the questions of what we take away, what we rebuild, and what we let fall.

AEROPONIC ACTS 2024 ~ Chameleon Orbit