Research Catalogue

Art and science are not separate domains, but rather two dimensions in the common cultural space. This means, research is not then or only artistic, if carried out by artists, but deserves the attribute artistic, where, when and by whom whatsoever been made to a specific quality: the mode of artistic experience. Artistic experience is itself a form of reflection. And furthermore, whether implicit or explicit, artistic knowledge is embodied knowledge. The knowledge that artistic research strives for is a felt knowledge.

Today, Performance art could be considered a paradigm of contemporary culture, since the position of the performer – as faber of actions and images - moves the idea of the world from something already given, which exists as itself, to something, which is perpetually to be deciphered. Out of this perspective Performance art seems to be intimately linked to Poetry, becoming also a kind of meta-commentary on the world and on cultural emancipations, reflecting the essentially transitional alternation of possible meanings and (inter) subjectivity. The liminal space in which the ephemeral and performative images, produced by the performer, are continuously deconstructed and rebuilt, is by its very nature, a dynamic performative dimension of cultural, poetic, therefore civil negotiation.

In his prophetic Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino enhances Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and Consistency as indispensable qualities to cherish literature. It can be considered a definition or, better, a six-faced metaphor that can also be easily applied to economy, Internet and media communication and, specifically, to Art, interactive Performances and Art Action. Hence also the performer’s role is changing: by becoming increasingly less an ‘actionist of reputed and supposable nonsense’, and increasingly more a ‘communicator’ of things once considered impossible, the performer's work helps to accomplish these things in a better and clearer way.