CRY VIOLET

choreography, performance, costumes Ginevra Panzetti / Enrico Ticconi
sound composition Teho Teardo
video Sergio Salomone
graphic illustration Ginevra Panzetti
originally created as part of Esplorazioni – a project of Triennale Milano
in collaboration with Volvo Car Italia
with the support of Lavanderia a Vapore / Piemonte dal Vivo

CRY VIOLET was born as a performative intervention created on the sound composition proposed by musician Teho Teardo. Using a gestural code that portrays expressions of pain and shame inspired by the iconography of original sin, the human expedient of atoning for one’s guilt through practices that attempt to make up for environmental damage or, in some other way, to conceal it, is highlighted.
Widespread phenomena such as greenwashing indeed represent deceptive practices that elude a real solution to the damage that human action has caused to the environment. Actions, such as cleaning, merge with crying. In this context, a common object such as a cloth or a handkerchief transforms its function from a cleaning tool to an element that accommodates pain, absorbs tears. Recalling Lady Macbeth’s repeated and fallacious gesture in the perpetual attempt to erase the sign of guilt from her hands, the two figures trace the expiatory mechanics of cleaning and concealing. It is in this limbo between a real or façade attempt to make up for the damage caused that Cry Violet takes shape, in a shifting complicity between the aestheticisation of guilt and the act of resolving or concealing it, to the point of transforming itself into captivating, winking, advertising material.
The image of the extinct flower known as Cry Violet forms the backdrop to the action through the video realised by Sergio Salomone, manifesting itself as the vortex of a drama as catastrophic as it is regenerative.
The work was first presented in November 2023 in Milan as part of the Esplorazioni project, in collaboration with Triennale Milano and Volvo Studio Milano.

Ph. Davide Ambroggio