The MAN Museum, on the occasion of the “Prelude” of the “Isola delle Storie” Festival in Gavoi, to be held from June 13 to June 14 2015, is going to present the project Setta. Quadri di comportamento, a thematic personal exhibition by Claudia Castellucci, curated by Silvia Fanti. The initiative is a cooperation between the Marino Marini Museum of Florence and  MAN of Nuoro. Until July 5, into the Civic Museum of Gavoi (ex-Lai House) will be presented works created between 1985 to the present day along a route that revolves around the Performance, through sculpture, stage action, and language. During the Opening the artist will also present the oral performance “Celebrazione dei gesti istoriali”. 

Artist, choreographer and educator, Claudia Castellucci has composed theatrical and theoretical texts as well as acting in many theatrical performances by the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio,crossing and expanding different performance methods, and has created a range of theatrical and rhythm schools combining gymnastics with philosophical practice. Claudia Castellucci is the leading figure in a personal path of research that, after thirty years’ experience, has given rise to the composition:Setta. Scuola di tecnica drammatica,a book/instruction manual that presents 59 days of exercises and suggestions useful to reformulate daily activities.

The book Setta. Scuola di tecnica drammaticahas a transparent and openly stated purpose (schools) and a structure very closely connected to this purpose (the exercises and daily activities).  The schools (under her direction between 1989 and 2011, as well as potential future schools) are, in reality, a dimension of awareness/knowledge, and do not represent a pivot in the transmission of this learning.  On the contrary, with an 'anathema' the author challenges anybody practising these exercises to contextualise them according to some canonical method. As Claudia Castellucci writes: "the suggestions contained in this book are not designed to be meditated, but to be practised. This practice is aimed at establishing a method of being together: the school.The book founds a school anywhere that at least three people decide to apply the practice. Theatrical technique is the environment used by this school to become competitively aware of reality, and therefore it is only a means and not the aim of this school. The ambition of the book is to be used as a tool useful for developing a school.  The revolutionary nature of scholastic relationships that bloomed in ancient Mediterranean countries focusses on the method for acquiring knowledge together with an importance that prevails over the actual knowledge of the disciplines. This method is performed by doing the exercises. We choose a relationship that can be used to facilitate our own knowledge; we do not simply follow another person. This book attempts to facilitate these relationships. It will become clear that even the location is not an essential factor”.  

The exhibition, Setta. Quadri di comportamento, is the implementation of the book. The works suggest what to do: they represent a handbook for behaviour.   As Castellucci herself states in her Appunti per l’arte didascalica: "I decided to explain the contents of my book through a sequence of teaching pictures. I choose the explanation, not the theory, as I do in the book. I invite readers to criticise the theory.  There are practical thoughts: exercises that are used to establish a real school, just as the decisions that are taken according to contact are also real. The works I create are all explanatory, in one way or another. I do not want to express a theory, but to invite people to put a method into practice. In any case, the method or practice is a domain of a metaphysical order that pushes away utilitarianism and the utilitarian: it accepts only the useful.  This art, the art that accepts this order, is an art that is of use”.

Claudia Castellucci was born in Cesena in 1958. She studied at the art school of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna. In 1981, she was one of the founders of the theatre company, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, for which she wrote theatrical and theoretical texts, and with which she performed in the most important capitals around the world. At the same time, she created schools of rhythm, some dedicated to dance and others to the study of representation Since 2009, she has divided her work into two branches: on one side, she has carried out deeper research into dance as a rhythm discipline practised by expert dancers. The other activity continues with her idea of schooling as a work composed of relationships. She continues to perform sporadically, reciting her own works such as recent performances: Il Dialogo degli Schiavi and Il Regno Profondo. She has published two books: Uovo di bocca. Scritti lirici e drammatici, Bollati Boringhieri, 2000 and Setta. Scuola di tecnica drammatica, Quodlibet, 2015.

Museo Comunale – Gavoi (Nu)

Via Margherita s.n.

13/14 giugno h 10-22

16 giugno – 1 luglio (da definire)

2-5 luglio h 10-22