white 0
obscuritas
In White Zero, Silvia Morandi creates a dress by hand, sewing together thin sheets of white paper. The sculptural membrane evokes the realm of insects while also calling to mind a uniform from the medical field. It renders visible the relationship between the solid wall and the internal movements of the body.
Through progressive accumulation and dissolution of layers, the three-dimensional rotation of this envelope-like assemblage amplifies the intimate perception of the
body and underlines the hybridization of the elements.
The range of motion is limited to a corner of the empty room. The incrementally evolving forms and the rustling of paper
become a visual and auditory intervention, mingling with the sense of danger and risk perceived outside the sealed room.
The performance was first realized on May 2nd, 2020, during the lockdown red zone. It was presented for the first time on the digital streaming platform for Free Performance Art Festival in collaboration with Artperforming Festival (Rome), curated by Kyrahm Kessa and Gianni Nappa. In December 2020, during the second period of Italy’s lockdown red zone, Morandi created a second video performance of White Zero in the same room.
Curated by: Michele Fucich
Concept, artistic direction, costume design, and live performance: Silvia Morandi
Camera: Kaya Neutzer
The latest phase of Silvia Morandi’s research began in the spring of 2020, a dark time for humanity, when the earth experienced temporary liberation from oppression on one hand and the tragic retreat of its all-too-arrogant inhabitants on the other. Starting from this “zero point” of human exis- tence, and from the radically new experience of our era, the video performance White Zero examines the most intimate interaction between the body and white paper.
A paper dress, hand-sewn by the artist, becomes the protagonist. The setting is a completely empty and equally white room in her apartment. No traditional division of roles between the human body and dress can be recognized here; both act as inextricably bonded primary elements.
The agitation of this inseparable unit is constant, but often imperceptible. It shows no predetermined direction: not even a distinct beginning or end. The unique human-paper assemblage eludes any fixed form. It is exposed to vibra- tions. There is action everywhere, even where there is the appearance of calm.
If we accept that the human body remains hidden here, almost entirely merged with the white paper, then the crease comes into focus as the driving force. As Gilles Deleuze explained, the fold acts as the epicenter of all phenomena. The fold embodies and reflects not a substance or element,
but a transformation—the processes, the events, and the constant metamorphosis to which all matter is subject. Folding and unfolding can produce unpredictable results and new connections, as a fold creates the sudden juxtapo- sition of formerly opposite points.
The fold is therefore not only inherent in paper, but also in the body itself: in everything that happens in the body at its points of contact. White Zero thus forms a network of micro- scopic events, of barely visible collisions, catastrophes, and rebirths. They do not involve paper and the body separately, but take place in the liminal space that connects paper to the intimate shocks to which the performer is exposed.
In this way, Silvia Morandi actively engages with the forced or self-induced isolation and emotional and social alienation of today’s society. In answer to these conditions, she offers the prospect of reconnection with the forces of the earth, so long as we look beyond dichotomies of human and matter and recognize the human as a knot among knots in a web of relationships—a network of chemical and emotional pro- cesses in dialogue with creation.
White Zero is a kind of ground zero of performative art itself: the performer avoids any direct manipulation of the paper. She does not claim it. She never opposes or faces it. Our bodies become the receptors of everything that happens inside and outside of us—including great upheavals in a difficult era. The body and paper encompass this reality; from this their relationship materializes. Silvia Morandi has contin- ued her research in this direction from 2021 to the present, unfolding new hybridizations of body and matter, always inspired by the expansion of human identity and the relation- ship to other life forms.
