Project's aproach

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I AM (T)HERE is an artistic research project that combines two different lines of work, one conceptual and the other formal. 

The conceptual background of our project focuses on the processes of identity construction and, above all, on a certain vision of the idea of identity, understood as a process in constant development.  Our investigation is based on the consideration that change is inherent to all things and is inevitable. What we are - our identity- isn't a fixed idea or image, but a constant transformation. We are a movint object, a body in constant transformation. Nevertheless, the prevailing tendency is to define ourselves through fixed concepts and ideas, we become obsessed with questions like “who am I” and we try to find permanent answers to such questions. We hold on to these believes with stubbornness and that gives rise to a slow and constant battle between the ever-changing and unpredictable reality and our fixed ideas and believes about what and who we are. A conflict between the individual and his environment, at the center of which we find identity. 

On a formal level, I AM (T)HERE investigates the relation between body and voice. Human voice has been always a key element in our research since it works as a link between sound and body. This idea articulates also our discourse: voice can be the driving force that moves the body. At the same time, body acts as a  medium that allows the use of the voice, and as such has been historically used in classical music and specifically in lyrical singing. The use of the body in classical music is a discipline that has been refined over the centuries in order to achieve maximum musical quality with minimum effort and pain for the body. Regarding gestures and body language, classical music tradition has chosen a research based on utility, efficiency and profitability of every single movement. This has result in a aesthetic of efficiency as an unintended but confortable consequence. Clearly the role of the body in the classical music tradition has been always dependent to the expressive demands of the musical discourse. Our will to detach ourselves from this traditional role in which the body is always depending on the voice has lead us to explore new ways of interaction between them and to develop our own language that not only applies in a formal research but also creates new semantic horizons. While constantly singing a repetitive melody, body travels seeking its own movement, a movement that will emancipate it of its voice-supporting physical role. I AM (T)HERE shows a body trapped between two forces (voice and movement) that evolve in opposite directions, creating  a stressed subject engaged in conflict with its own identity.