performance and mixed media - 30 mins
production
Contested Desires
funded by Creative Europe
producing partner
BJCEM - Biennale internationale des jeunes créateurs de l’Europe et de la Mediterranée (Ita/Belgium)
partners
D6:EU (Cyprus), ECCOM (IT), Foundation La Bonne (Es), Museo Egizio (IT), Xarkis (Cyprus), MUNHAC - National Museum of Natural History and Science (Pt) , Museo delle Civiltà (IT), Capital of Culture Larnaka 2030 (Cyprus), Cyprus University of Technology, Casa Árabe (ES), Nubuke Foundation (Ghana), Research Centre for Museums and Galleries - University of Leicester (UK), Mu- seo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Chile), Creative Court (NL)
residencies partners
Stichting Herengracht 401 Foundation - Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen (NL, 2025)
Pro Progressione - online (Hungary, 2025)
D6: Culture in Transit (UK, 2025)
shows
Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen (Amsterdam, NL, February 2025) - first study sharing
Great North Museum (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, July 2025) - screenperformance
Museo Nazionale della Scienza e Tecnologica (Milan, IT, September 2025) - site specific live performance
Activated as site specific reflection on the notion of waiting for wars in the context of the artist production programme Contested Desires Constructive Dialogue (2024-26) dedicated to examine colonial heritage across Europe through decolonial artistic practices, Waiting Wars acts a series of performative interventions that investigate affective landscapes associated with the timing of waiting for wars, framing war from an expanded perspective of the term, either intimately and collectively.
Proposing a decolonial approach to art making and to the notion of dancing, the performance develops a study on common postures between those of power in soldiers and the ones used in tarantella dance, a traditional folk dance from Calabria region in southern Italy.
INTERVENTION 1
@ Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, NL
site-specific performance
teaser
https://vimeo.com/1058338572
By looking at the historical heritage of the Fort bij Vijfhuizen - a Unesco
World Heritage Site that was originally designed as part of the defence line of Amsterdam in order to defend the city from a potential enemy who never came - and in the critical framework of reflections on the colonial past of European Union, this intervention consists of a first study performance examining chants and dance movements as tools of embodiment of affective landscapes of resistance. The work enacts a southern Italian lullaby song belonging to the tradition of the Mediterranean region of Calabria, putting it in dialogue with the cultural frame of the Amsterdam Defence Line in the Netherlands. The performance-movement consists of a choreographic study on command and power in non-verbal language, linking the position of soldiers with the dancing figures of “tarantella” dance from Calabria region. Acting, sound and movement merge by creating an ambiguous space of signification.
credits:
site-specific conception and performance / Maria Luigia Gioffrè
sound design and music / Fabio Orsi
voice / Maria Luigia Gioffrè
performers / Maria Luigia Gioffrè, Francien Malecki
INTERVENTION 2
@ Pro Progressione, Hungary (online)
spoken poem and sound
teaser
https://vimeo.com/1087963704
The second intervention works as site-specific online adaptation of its first chapter, developed during the Contested Desires programme of the one-month residency at Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, in the Netherlands.
Entagling wars from an expanded viewpoint, the spoken poem includes multiple writings which range from narrations of loss and nostalgia inherent to daily and intimate western habits such as partners and apartments to the loss of landscapes due to migrating. The work is spoken in the dialect from the Mediterrenean region and mixed to a uncorrect english pronunciation.
The choice to use english in such way is aimed to generate patterns of reflection on the critical approach to english as colonial language, yet among the most spoken worldwide.
credits:
conception and performance / Maria Luigia Gioffrè
sound design and music Fabio Orsi
voice and text / Maria Luigia Gioffrè
INTERVENTION 3
@ Great North Museum, UK
screenperformance
for video please inquiry
The third intervention consists of a performance for screen that further develops the study on common postures between those of power in soldiers and the ones in ‘tarantella’ dance from calabrian tradition. The performance itself and the movement of the performer are put in dialogue with the fairytale ‘I Have a Crush on the King’s Daughter’ written and spoken by artist Giulia Currà, a fairytale taking inspiration from the calabrian novel of ‘Re Pipi’, one of the first feminist texts in the history of Calabria region in Italy.
credits:
conception and performance / Maria Luigia Gioffrè
film and editing / Maria Luigia Gioffrè
conception, text and voice for the fairytale “I Have a Crush on The King’s Daughter” / Giulia Currà - fairytale as part of the production “If you move, something happens” by artist Giulia Currà and supported by Direzione Generale per la Creatività Contemporanea del Ministero della Cultura | Italian Council XIII ed. 2024
