Manuela Barile & Rui Costa

La Scatola

Objects. People.

People’s objects.

People of yore.

Close people.

Memory of deceased people.

Dear people.

Family. Friends.

Relatives.

The objects tell stories.

Said things and things not said.

Objects hanging by threads.

Human fragility.

Time.

Time that flows.

Time as space.

Death as an integral part of life.

An old house not abandoned yet.

Melancholia.

Order and disorder.

Presence and absence.

Shadow and light.

Happy and sad melodies.

“La Scatola Nodar” was a site-specific performance/installation made at the “Centro de Residências Artísticas de Nodar” (Portugal).

Old personal objects were collected from the old house of Rui Costa’s aunt,a house built in 1863, where whole generations have lived. The objects are imbued with a strong emotional charge not only because they have been there for ages (and so they are loaded with the energy of the people who used them) but also because they remind Rui of his past, especially his childhood.

The personal objects were hung from the ceiling of an old barn using monofilament. In this way there was the feeling that they were suspended and floating in space. A contact microphone attached to the ceiling captured the sounds coming from the first floor.of the barn They were produced by playing a crystal glass and some items found on site (potatoes, nuts, hay, etc.).

Using previously defined parameters, these sounds were captured, processed and mixed together with pre-recorded sounds using a computer, which created a real-time composition in an “autonomous” way.

ABOUT “LA SCATOLA”

‘La Scatola’ is a transdisciplinary project by Manuela Barile and Rui Costa that explores the notion of confinement using multiple approaches and workson the border between the ‘I’ and the outside world. “La Scatola” (“The Box”, inEnglish) can be thought as a narrative device that representsa diffuse space between the “inside” and the “outside”, between the “I” and the “other”, in which multiple and sometimes opposite lines of force are present: sensitive manifestations of the incarcerated and/or protected body, distorted visions of the external world, anxiety, wishes and memories.

These lines of force are interpreted in purely spatial terms (“forbidden zone”,“abyss”, “barrier”) but also in terms of bidirectional “energy fluxes” created bythe sensitive and emotional projection of the incarcerated individuality into the outside world (pain, desire, resistance, impotence, etc.) and by the representation (idealized, distorted, diffuse) of the outside world in the mind and body of the incarcerated individual.

WORK APPROACH

The several narrative devices were organized in order to create enigmatic situations, between the familiar and the strange, the near and the distant. The images or objects, used in their simplicity and depuration, are transformed into a mirror capable of facing the audience with their own memories and individual experiences. The aim of this depuration process was to open metaphorical possibilities that are not mere illustrations, to absorb the largest possible number of interpretations and associations.In “La Scatola”, the interactivity and the “transcoding” processes inherent to the transmission of information between the different media used (sound, video, performance, sensors) are deliberately used in a controlled manner, trying not to saturate the desired expressivity and simplicity, and allowing the possibility of “revelation” regarding the elements at play in the several installations/performances.

“La Scatola“ involved several phases of research and development, startingin September 2007, making useof technological devices (hardware and software) and performative artistic expressions. The authors didn’t intend to use objects, images, sound and movement in a separate way but rather to continuously reflecton the reciprocal possible connections between them.