Simone Forti's "Planet" (1976): performative "morphing" between inter-species dialogue and ecology

Authors

  • Francesca Pola Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano

Abstract

The essay focuses on the performance work Planet by Simone Forti, with music by Peter van Riper, presented for the first time at the MoMA P.S.1 (New York) in 1976, where it was interpreted by David Taylor, Terry O’Reilly, Pooh Kaye, David Appel, Paul Langland. Planet is a crucial passage in Forti’s work related to non-human species: the artist created a specific edition about it, published in 1977 in 200 copies by Edizioni Pari & Dispari of Cavriago, in collaboration with the Archivio Conz. In consonance with the physically and emotionally dialogic process of “morphing”, which is central to Forti’s entire creative path, Planet is a performance work totally characterized by hybridism. It is hybrid in the first place in the behaviours and gestures it proposes through the actions that the interpreters are called to perform. There are evident signs of this linguistic and conceptual hybridism also in the accompanying text, which is at the same time its programmatic score and its poetic extension. The piece is analysed in the context of the artist’s work and writings, and through branched reflections that are articulated between gender and ecology perspectives.

Author Biography

Francesca Pola, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano

Francesca Pola is Associate Professor of History of Contemporary Art at the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, where she teaches in the Master’s Degree in Theory and History of the Arts and the Image and collaborates in the activities of the ICONE and CRISI research centers (of which she is a member of the board of directors); she also teaches at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and at IES Abroad (Milan). She was Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer Chair in Italian Studies 2016 at Northwestern University in Evanston (Chicago), where she also participated in an interdisciplinary workshop held by Simone Forti. Among her many professional experiences, she was curator at MACRO in Rome from 2009 to 2011, where she paid particular attention to Simone Forti in the exhibition and publication L’ATTICO di Fabio Sargentini 1966-1978 (Electa, 2010).

Published

01-12-2022

How to Cite

Pola, F. (2022). Simone Forti’s "Planet" (1976): performative "morphing" between inter-species dialogue and ecology. Elephant & Castle, (27). Retrieved from https://elephantandcastle.unibg.it/index.php/eac/article/view/210

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Section

Articoli