Camera F | Silent Show

The Silent Show

> April 15, 2021 - World Art Day

> 10:30 - 14:30 Live Stream Edition (Instagram)

> Location: Lugano (City)

The hungry artist and the hunger of art.

Deprivation is central to Franz Kafka’s short story ‘The Hungry Artist’ and the film adaption ‘The Art of Fasting’ by legendary filmmaker Masao Adachi. The principal character of this shared story is an anonymous individual who refuses to eat, speak, or talk until the moment he no longer exists. His acts of self-denial draw a crowd of spectators that observe, question, and provoke him wishing to make him move again or catch him eating secretly. It is an act of individual non-action. Camera F adopts this story once more into an interactive performance and live stream.

This act will be staged on a strapuntino, a folding seat used cinemas in Turin. This improvised performance and cross-media artistic experiment become a silent yet active embodiment of the surrounding world. The self-denial of words and food is a renunciation and reflection. It is a denouncement of hunger. Society has a hunger for art that nourishes itself by looking at images and entertainment. The providers of this nourishment are the artists, also with a hunger that is satisfied by recognition, audience, exposure, and exhibition.

Control over hunger through an act of fasting increases the strength of the individual and of the social body. Fasting allows for more reflection and differentiation between states of hunger, and what is consumed is more nutritious because care is taken for preparation and production. A fast from externalities and from inputs is a break for the body. A discomfort that helps us learn to live in this body and become more immune to the outside. It is a crisis that we can learn and grow from. Following crisis arrives a critical condition, both of which are medical terms.

It is voluntary abstinence to discover and feel new sensations and acknowledge and address symptoms before reaching critical. This is an open experiment to share and develop a collective immunity in this period of crisis.

April 2021,

Camera F

References:

- The Hungry Artist (Franz Kafka, 1922)

- The Silent Show (Ernie Kovacs, 1957)

- The art of Fasting (Masao Adachi, 2016)

- Artistic Immunitiy (Aldo Milohnić, 2010)

Press release

- Unesco, World Art Day (WAD)

- The International Association of Art (WAD)

- Visarte-Ticino, comunicato stampa (WAD)

- Matteo Fieni, Spunti di riflessione sulla scena artistica ticinese, Lugano Agenda (WAD)