CORPI MEZZI III

[Body Performance, 20 minutes]

Bergamo - Art Festival SPARTIACQUE

2025

CORPI MEZZI
by Chiara Marini Ferretti

with Carola Demarchi, Milena Inge Grigolo, Chiara Martini, Giulia Zini

“Mezzo”, from the Latin medius, meaning “in between,” “intermediate.”

Here it is understood in its dialectal use as “wet,” “damp,” referring to something soaked, impregnated with liquid. This usage derives from a semantic shift of the word mezzo, which normally indicates “partially,” “halfway.” Mezzo has undergone an extension of meaning linked to the perception of an intermediate state: “partially wet” = “damp,” halfway between dryness and complete wetness.

This work arises from the urgency to engage with the overload of information and mental matter—absorbed as much as produced—and with the constant pressure of productivity, which projects us into a future dimension, straining the capacity to be present in our bodies with ourselves and with others. The performance reflects a collective condition: our inability to stay, the fatigue of rooting, the difficulty of inhabiting the present.

Here we inhabit the in-between dimension, the body only halfway present. It is a work on the dissociative state between mind and body, unfolding in three distinct movements.

Movement III – Reintegration: I Exist

Mind and body are indeed separate. We enter the space of the mind and observe what happens to a body overwhelmed by a mind overloaded with matter.

Action.

In the space, one performer is in a basin full of water, while separately illuminated, a table hosts four performers. At the table, the performers read texts collected from a research project on the workings of the mind. Body and mind engage in dialogue from a state of separation, while the audience remains immersed in darkness, gradually experiencing a trance-like state and observing their own bodily condition.