Rintracciar/ci
Tracing/us/backSite-specific performance
2024
Curated by Margherita Busatto.
Rintracciar/ci is a site-specific performance that is built around the possibility of a newfound participation inside places where knowledge is shared – like libraries and bookshops, for instance.
The performer (a strange figure resembling a lost traveler or a tourist) engages with the space and the books in a frantic yet precise manner: occupying the library with its body, rendering it a homely place where to search frenetically for something that’s hiding in plain sight.
Starting from Warburg’s “law of the good neighbor”, the foreigner accumulates books, skims through them and enunciates brief extracts from the texts, always ready to rush to new ones – as if each word shouted out loud could be a clue for where to search next.
The performer, while skimming through the books, sometimes leaves red bookmarks in them bearing the words CERCA / SEGNA (SEARCH / MARK). These bookmarks function not only as a tool for the performer but also as an installation in their own right, so that they may be collected by spectators or encountered by chance during any visit to the bookshop. They are an invitation to search and to guide those who, after us, will pass through the spaces we have inhabited.