MARTA KLARA

Marta Klara is an artist, a filmmaker and a funeral director. She works in a multidisciplinary capacity and explores how art and technology enable us to go beyond physical spaces embracing the experience of merging physical objects with digital realms. After her degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, she was selected to join the Sarabande Foundation where she is developing her future-oriented project in the aforementioned fields. The storytelling of Marta Klara suggests an eclectic union between vanishing rituals of the past and the future of parallel universes.        

“ini,” the VR experience digitizing the art of memorialization

Her latest work, “ini,” is described as a “digital farewell concierge”; or, as Klara more casually calls it: “digital mummification.”

The premise is simple: a bereaved party (or someone who wishes to plan for their own death) comes to “ini,” in the same way someone would contact a funeral home. Klara would then conduct a series of in-depth conversations about the experiences, memories and details that relate to their loss—“I’d try to understand your stories and get in your shoes,” she says. From this, she creates a visual response. The crux of the response is a bespoke virtual reality environment (built using Unreal Engine), which serves as a celebration of the deceased and a place for the bereaved to explore, reflect and process.

Imagine an otherworldly VR experience in which the landscape, sounds, and colors—as well as physical aspects like smells and sensations—are all meticulously curated based on the stories and memories of the deceased. “Since before the Ancient Egyptians, whose conception of death inspired them to build the pyramids, humans have long sought to ‘create’ around death,” reads the deck that explains “ini.” “A digital afterlife aims to provide individuals and communities with the closure they seek and need, in order to forge a path forward.”

Romaeuropa  Festival 2022  

Enzo Cosimi

Le lacrime dell’Eroe

Enzo Cosimi returns to the Romaeuropa Festival to present the entire Orestea – Trilogia della vendetta which, in recent years, has seen him engaged in both formal and thematic research around the figure of the hero. «Today the hero is in pieces, deconstructed», says the choreographer. He continues: «His identity becomes a mechanism to understand society and sexuality as a whole (a central theme in my work), acting like a mirror for the evolution and transformation of communal customs and uses».  With his punk aesthetic- always biting and irreverent- Cosimi has left a profound mark in the history of Italian dance.

Making its National debut at REF2022, the third and final chapter of the trilogy is dedicated to the Eumenides. Cosimi launches an investigation into the possibility that technology may influence Orestes’ fate, seeking an authentic process where the script is generated by artificial intelligence and which incorporates diverse influences on the theme of creation. What is the purpose? To rethink, perhaps, the modalities of artistic creation, production and use of the event; to consider the possibility of creating a continuous feedback with the public, through a performative installation that moves within a very intimate territory; and to shed light on an aseptic system, whose contents are probably indistinguishable from what is often written or said.

Credits

Direction, choreography, costumes, video: Enzo Cosimi
Dramaturgy: Enzo Cosimi, Maria Paola Zedda
Digital Project: Marcello Cualbu, Felice Colucci
Stage space: Enzo Cosimi, Filippo Lilli
Sound design: Filippo Lilli
Performer: Alice Raffaelli, Filippo Lilli, Lorenzo Caldarozzi
Light technician:  Giulia Belardi
Video contribution: Roberto Gentile
Organization: Pamela Parafioriti

With the support of: Progettoborca – Ex Villaggio Eni di Borca di Cadore, BASE milano, Armunia, Progetto in residenza a Teatri di Vita nell’ambito del programma Artisti nei territori della Regione Emilia Romagna e MiC- Ministero della Cultura. Iniziativa finanziata con i fondi della Regione Lazio

Photo © Gino Rosa