Saverio Cantoni ~ Forbidden love’s journal.

Saverio Cantoni's "Forbidden love’s journal." was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 4, 2024 as one of 38 AEROPONIC ACTS of CHAMELEON ORBIT curated by Elisa Giuliani & Giulia Crispiani.

Here you will find the documentation of Saverio Cantoni'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.

Forbidden love’s journal.

Saverio Cantoni's question: Don't you wanna take off this uniform between us?  

Saverio's introduction: Fragments from a Berlin journal: night tales of seduction, misunderstanding, glitches, and rage. Ten years of pages that I wanted to rip away from my journal as it recounts an impossible love with Berlin and its myth of libertarian life while subministrating an intense dosage of state repression. A sonic journey into failures of empathy, the encounters with the man in the uniform that obeys and seduces, a bait for organization and effectiveness, and its banality. How can real-life glitches coexist with the precise scheme of Central European politics; being the glitch that the state promised to support and that the police-state tried to erase? This is a sound performance conceived through an aesthetics of access, where the sound is not only to be listened to and a visual description will be offered as an integral part of the performance—a journey into fear and love, where certainties bend into chaos, mayhem, and its liberating joy.

Bethany's report: The space is thoughtfully arranged: on the left side of the stage, there's a green screen and projector, while a large screen covers the back of the stage. To the front right, a desk holds a laptop, microphone, mixing board, and other sound equipment. The artist begins by moving objects across this equipment, creating a variety of sounds. Subtitles appear on the main screen, offering live transcriptions of these sounds, attempting to represent them through language.

Saverio introduces the performance, inviting the audience to check in with their feelings. They emphasize that anyone is free to leave if they need to, or they are welcome to stay and engage at whatever level feels comfortable. The artist explains the setup, noting that text will be projected onto the screen and that QR codes, distributed among the audience, allow access to a transcript for anyone who prefers a different format. The artist also encourages everyone to be mindful of their acoustic tolerance, signaling the likely peak volume of the performance and offering earplugs for those who need them. This careful introduction, prioritizing care and inclusivity for different sensitivities and needs, concludes with a trigger warning about the performance's subject matter, which involves police violence.

The presentation then shifts to recount the artist's experience with police brutality in Berlin. Using multiple forms of representation—such as text on the screen, spoken words with live subtitles, visualized sound waves, and performative re-enactments—the artist explores how sensory information is processed and experienced, with different intensities emphasised by each mode. A re-enactment of the police moving through the space is performed in darkness, illuminated only by flashlight highlighting the themes of visibility and limited visual perception by a heightened sensitivity to the sound of the movements in the darkness. The visualisation of different sounds on the large back screen shows the varying frequencies and pitches of a voice speaking words, highlighting the nuance and affective resonances that are expressed in the inflections and tones as well as the words. The presentation denounces the police brutality as a system of the broader systems of oppression and violence that govern much of our lives. Through the text and narrative the artist presents modes and methods of resistance, how to be present, how to pay attention with different forms of sensorial registers, to be aware, to witness, to resist.

The performance concludes with a group of performers, fellow students and comrades of the artist, entering the stage to dance – ending the presentation by reclaiming the narrative and the space through differing bodies moving at their own frequencies, rhythms and resonances illustrating the power of collectivising as a method of ruptural dissonance to the hegemonic regimes of violence that attempt to govern our lived experiences. Through their presentation Saverio adeptly presents methods to remediate traumatic events or experiences In a way that diffuses the violence into a context of sensitivity, inclusion, care, and collective power, concluding the aeroponic acts with a powerful and propositional method for navigating the complex and ongoing violences we are experiencing around the globe today.

Antonia Majaca: Antonia congratulates that ending with this piece was particularly successful in bringing together the personal and political, something that was discussed so many times over the last four days, and how the personal and the political are always together and never separated.

Antonia comments on how the presentation concerns Berlin, a city that has been so important for the formation of many of us, including several people in this room. She adds that Berlin profoundly epitomizes so many of the issues of the 20th century that still confront us, and the 19th century that still haunts us and reflect on how in this particular moment, over the last few years especially, there has been a tectonic shift in the atmosphere of that city. It’s a city where people like her and others are increasingly want to leave and are losing hope.

She addresses the experiences that Saverio narrates of police brutality, and the constant fear and anxiety that comes from being in such a place with such a heavy history, penetrate all areas of our lives. All of us who dare to raise our voices, as Saverio has done here, against those forms of oppression—this brings us together in this room. She really appreciated the stance Saverio takes so explicitly, and how they don’t shy away from stating their political stakes so clearly.

There is a lot of space in the context of the arts, and in the expansive discursive arena that we call contemporary art, to address all kinds of issues. Antonia notes how she saw this over the four days, being iterated in so many different forms and manifestations. But to lose sight of the fact that we are always political beings is not something she, or many of us, want to be part of. As she said about feminist projects: a feminist project is a political project. Similarly, art is a political project.

Antonia appreciate how clearly Saverio stated this. When she speaks about planetary healing, she always emphasize that she see’s it as a political project—not as a form of self-authorization or individual growth that is customized for personal fulfillment. She’s talking about planetary healing as a political project that requires us to historicize, always -  paraphrasing Jameson, but she holds onto the idea: always historicize yourself and the processes you are immersed in.

She comments that it’s not easy because we get caught up in the 'glitches of our everyday life,' as Saverio mentioned in their text. Lacan said, 'Not everybody can afford to go mad’, in the same way, not everybody can afford to be political in the way that we, here, have the privilege to be, for different reasons. We carve out this space of privilege to be political. Antonia concludes that’s going to be a tremendous responsibility when processing the prospect of planetary healing as a political project. She identifies that we, as artists, writers, curators, because we’re weak, because we’re broken, because we’re fucked up, because we’re a freak show to most people on this planet – that that’s exactly who we are: the dead political avant-garde and the artistic avant-garde at the same time. Exactly because we’re good, exactly because we’re evil. She clarifies that she doesn’t just say that because it sounds good—she means it from the bottom of her heart.

Inti Guerrero: After sharing a personal story of his time living in Berlin and 2008, Inti reflect that the presentation is not only about Berlin it’s about the Berlin that manifests in different ways and the oppression that exists in different ways. He reflects on the dance floor the restrictions of hearing and references the film Babel and a scene where one of the characters is on a dancefloor and takes ecstasy for the first time set amongst the backdrop of the world falling apart after 9/11 and the ripple effect of the war again so-called terror. 

Initi reflects that this moment we’re in currently is a very sepfici and darktime, but during the last four days we’ve seen moments outside of doomscroolling – where we can do some analysis on whats happening through aesthetics and feelngs and the biographies and the forms of witnessing that has been presented over the course of the last few days. And this, is what he sees as Saverio empahsising – you are being witnessed. And you can wither be a passive witness or not, and this is what he thinks Saverio is trying to unravel, how not to be a passive witness.

Ramon Amaro: Ramon feels like it's situated in many different spaces that are both here and outside of Saverio. He explained that every so often, in the programs he teaches, there’s an individual who prompts a question: "Why are they here?" And it's not a derogatory question.

Ramon clarifies that it’s actually a cosmic question because this is an individual that has a deep study of their craft, that has such a deep awareness of their peers, that seems to have such a deep awareness of themselves and how they relate to their craft and how they relate to their peers. He ask the question “why are they here?” because they have exceeded anything that the academy can teach them. He reflects on the depth of the presentation that Saverio can translate these different materials based on deep experiences that have obviously been captured. And what he measn by translate is that there is clearly a dissatisfaction with the all-knowing or that dissatisfaction with knowing with every individual texture of your performance. Ramon sees this question mark that he presumes in Savrio’s head: Is this enough? Is this enough to convey the message? Is this enough to, in that sense, is this enough? Is this enough?

And it maybe Saverio’s answer is that it's not enough so they will add their own voice. They will add an artificial voice. They will add light, they will add bodies they will subtitles and visual texts and more and more. Ramon comments that some people fail miserably at the more and more as it often can become oversaturated, but that the person that can position the more within the question itself is a very special person because that more that Saverio’s ads doesn't overwhelm, it actually forces us to join you and in that question to say, is there more than I need to say?

The presentation reminded Ramon of the distinction that Deleuze makes between an artist and the cosmic artisan, the cosmic artisan is the is the artist that is not one who represents the world or even one who expresses the soul, but extends or continues cosmic events through extreme sensitivity to levels of experience and habits of sensation and perception of others. He reflect that wherever Saverio’s life has taken them has sensitized them enough to interact with the genral public on a multitude of sensory levels that resonate at the exact frequency that they need to resonate in order for you to bring them into that question of is this enough and are you enough and is the answer enough. "And I think that is quite skillful".

About: Saverio Cantoni

Saverio Cantoni's "Forbidden love’s journal" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 4th.

Find the overview of all 38 AEROPONIC ACTS 2024 here: Chameleon Orbit