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 has given her glasses and scarf to a student to respond in her place. Stand-in Antonia comments that we enter a scene with two figures crossing each other, dressed in white, and then a newsboy appears, creating a kind of “Newsies” reference. It’s a mix of musical theater, immersive theater, and a punk show all at once. We’re marked at the door, encountering these various cultural touchpoints right from the beginning. This raises the question: what kinds of “brawls” do we find ourselves in against the colonial backdrop? There are layers of psychology here, of facing siege, displacement, and two very different kinds of struggles.
So, in this space-making, we have two characters who might be fictional but are also part of a “critical fabulation.” They’re sounding out a geography for us, perhaps beginning a coalition or maybe not. The way you leave that political ambiguity open is very clever. This brings up questions about abolitionist geographies or psychic geographies, entanglements, and new relationalities. Could this new form of connection lead to overcoming the siege? What happens outside the door, in captivity? And how does that second “brawl” disrupt the beginnings of a communitarian consciousness? In your writing, you use the term “nation,” and whether this piece is sounding a new layer of protection.
Inti Guerrero: Inti begins by acknowledging the elements of the piece, particularly the concept of light—creating a sense of “daylight” for the audience. He searches for the right term, noting that it resembles a simulacra, creating an idea or parallel of daylight rather than actual daylight. This concept, he explains, brings in a sense of time, bridging past and present, with the historical context powerfully evoked through the flyer. Though serious, the piece also functions as a form of self-critical commentary, almost like a smart joke, around the act of forcing oneself to confront political trauma.
Inti goes on to discuss the art world and the impulse to present something formally, observing that it often carries an underlying sense of resentment toward authority—toward institutions, curators, and other structures of power. He reflects on the tension that can exist between artists and curators as two sides of institutional influence.
This leads him to recall the Croatian feminist collective WHW, who curated the Istanbul Biennial. For WHW, this was their first major international opportunity, yet they came from a disobedient practice and struggled with a sense of self-betrayal by entering the international art world. They used creative strategies to stay true to their rebellious roots, notably at the second press conference, held in a theater, where they stood on chairs, confusing the journalists in attendance. It was a clever use of fiction and déjà vu that disrupted conventional expectations.
In this performance, Inti sees a similar challenge to the industrialized, coded nature of the art world, with the piece poking fun at artistic jargon and buzzwords like “entanglements.” He is reminded of a piece by Pablo Guerra, which humorously critiques the bureaucratic language often found in art institutions. He notes that art programs today sometimes even teach students how to write artist statements—a development he finds sad.
In closing, Inti thanks the performers for bringing “a little dynamite” into the fiction of the art world they all navigate, expressing his appreciation for the work.
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
