The Project

The Project was born during the Lockdown of the Coronavirus Pandemic as a reaction to the social crisis caused by it. That moment encouraged the founders of theatre companies to develop new perspectives, methodologies and languages, in order to keep an active intercultural dialogue between artists from all over the world. Through the use of the new media and digital platforms, this international dialogue transformed the limit into an opportunity.

Beyond Borders aims at experimenting with innovative processes of artistic creation and contamination based on the continuous confrontation between tradition and innovation, by enhancing ancient techniques and knowledge from different cultures as well as bringing them to the digital era.

Beyond Borders

The Project involved of two phases of work: an in-presence phase
that focused on intercultural exchange and artistic creation, and one at a distance, which supported the entire project with training and promotional purposes. Both phases have seen the participation of artists and performers from different disciplines.

The first phase represented the heart of the Project, the fundamental moment of the encounter, confrontation and artistic sharing. It involved periods of research and artistic residency abroad, and periods of restitution in Italy, where Italian and foreign professionals could share knowledge, techniques and methodologies of work, and undertake co-creation paths able to develop shared co-production projects.

The second phase of at-distance work involved a series of on-line meetings through a global forum, and the realisation of web video performances. These activities were designed to implement an innovative communication strategy, but were also ment as important moments of training and exchange between artists, practitioners and thinkers from all over the world.

Throughout all the work stages, the main concept of “border” was declined in different ways by going through political issues and instances of our global era. It opened an intercultural confrontation on a number of interconnected and opposing political and social issues: confinements and new migration routes, limitation of personal freedoms and social revolution, mass exodus from the megacities and return to nature.

Thanks to the specificity of the involved partners, special attention was given to the relationship between performing arts and community, creative processes and sustainability, culture and landscape, theatrical action and political action.

The creative process has been carried out in close contact with the host countries, in synergy with the different cultures and natural spaces, which represent a heritage to be safeguarded as well as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the artists: peripheral, border places immersed in nature, small towns rich in culture where it is possible to work with a criterion of proximity to local communities. Sometimes inaccessible places where new processes of co-creation have been established, accessing an artistic and cultural heritage still little present or completely unknown in European circuits: from the performing arts of the tribal region of Nagaland, to the songs of oral tradition of Senegal, from classical Indian dances to contemporary folk music.

Partner

Thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture, the Beyond Borders project extends to a prestigious network of national and international partners since 2021. In Italy, it includes institutions of the contemporary theatre scene that sees Instabili Vaganti as leaders, together with ATER Fondazione, the Arboreto Teatro Dimora and La MaMa Umbria International. Abroad, it involves important festivals and cultural institutions like: La MaMa ETC from New York, the Cross Currents Festival of Washington DC – USA, FINTDANZ and FITICH festival – Cile, the Folk Canarias festival – Spagna, Ahum Trust, TAFMA and Hornbill Festival – India, Studio Ramli Hassan – Malesia, Centre Culturel Regional de Dakar Blaise Senghor, KËR Théâtre – Senegal, Centre national des arts dramatiques et scéniques du Kef – Tunisia

Artistic residences

The 2021/22 edition included 8 stages of exchange, research, creation and production in 5 countries: Cile, USA, India, Senegal, Tunisia, and 3 stages in the Italian territories in which the realities of the grouping operate: Caselecchio (BO), Mondaino (RN), Bologna.

On-line Forum

The On-line Forum represents a moment of reflection and intercultural meeting, a virtual place capable of generating a “shared global memory” that takes a snapshot of the delicate historical period that we lived and we are still living. A virtual space where it was possible to continue to nourish thought and reason about the function that theatre and art have nowadays. A meeting space that has built an international and multicultural community able to generate mutual support between operators, thinkers and artists, even remotely. The Forum provided many on-line meetings with international guests – partners of the project, performers, thinkers, critics, university professors, artists – in order to share and explore some issues affecting our new post-pandemic era.

Theatre as a window on the world

The first thematic nucleus that fuelled the Project is based on a series of questions that emerged during the isolation period, generated by the long Lockdown. During this period everyone saw the condition of fragility in which the artist, but also the human being, finds himself. Those are questions that we can still pose these days:

What do we really need? What do we experience Absence of? What is the sound of Absence?

The different artists and thinkers involved in the Project answered these questions, declining them in various ways and bringing further themes into the focus of the investigation. Those themes were: Absence as Lack, as Loss, as Death, as Distance, as Different Presence – on video, online, through a screen – Absence as deprivation of something we had but no longer have: Silence, Loneliness, Suffering, Hardship.

The artists’ difficulty in continuing to create and the sudden mood swings linked to the difficult situations in which each of us was living brought to the surface the different problems of the social contexts to which each of us belonged: the USA protests, the uprisings in Chile, the exodus to the countryside in India,
the tragedy in the city of Wuhan and the awakening that followed, the precarious working situation of artists in Europe.

The development of concepts related to these themes then extended the reflection to the international socio-cultural crisis. Each artist became the mirror of the community he or she represented, its fragility, its problems. The artists entered almost on tiptoe into this particular historical moment through
their art, and, dealing with it firstly from an individual point of view and secondly from a global one, they formed
a chorus of voices that rose up to reiterate the fact that there could be no immediate return to normality, because normality was already the problem.

Artists and thinkers

The Project developed remotely and involved on-line meetings with artists from different parts of the world. It was led by Anna Dora Dorno and Nicola Pianzola, founders of Instabili Vaganti, with the scientific advice of the philosopher and researcher Enrico Piergiacomi.
Alongside Instabili Vaganti, an international community of directors, actors, singers, and dancers from all over the world was generated, and questioned their own artistic making in order to face the CRISIS of live performance in a proactive way, reflecting on digital and mainly on remote collaboration processes.
Participants: Sun Young Park – South Korea, Juliana Spinola – Brazil, Anurada Venkataram – India, Cecilia Seaward – USA, Jesus Quintero – USA/ Colombia, Ana Gabriela Pulido – Mexico, Maham Suahil – Pakistan, Jialan Cai – China.

Performing web series

Web video performances are serial video works that combine theatre, dance, cinema and video art, and are based on an innovative process of remote collaboration between the Instabili Vaganti theatre company and one or more foreign artists. The working process involves the use of online platforms for the exchange and discussion of ideas and the use of video as a tool for artistic creation and interaction. The video performances were conceived specifically for the web audience and for fruition through social networks and digital product platforms, as well as transmedia products capable of complementing the production of the live show.

Prizes and Awards

2020

Winner of INCREDIBOL! prize, promoted by the Municipality of Bologna and the Emilia Romagna Region.

Selected for the ICARO “Gymnasium of entrepreneurship” course promoted by Fondazione Golinelli, in collaboration with University of Bologna, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Parma and Ferrara

2021

Winner of the 3rd edition of the Boarding Pass Plus grant – promoted by MIC – Ministry of Culture 2021-22