THE PAPER WALL
Performance
2019
This pictorial and performative installation was developed through daily sessions over two weeks during a residency at MACRO Museum in Rome. The work begins with the construction of a symbolic wall made of found cardboard modules whose oddly sinister shape seemed to embody the concept from the start. Any wall, whatever its color, latitude, or material, is a diabolical device: it keeps the unwanted out, but it also traps those within. Its function is always double, exclusion and control.
Inside the enclosed space, I marked the territory using the colors, symbols, and forms of the American flag. Small robots became my uneasy collaborators. Equipped with black markers, they contributed to the drawing while constantly disrupting it, extending their random trajectories toward the borders and attacking the cardboard structure as if searching for a way out. The performance unfolded through my attempt to continue the composition while containing their movements, repairing breaches, and dragging them back inside: a clumsy choreography of control and failure.
What emerged was simple: before being an obstacle, the wall is a prison, and it affects those inside first. No system, mechanical or biological, programmed to expand can remain contained forever within a closed perimeter. On one side, the wall. On the other, entropy.
At the end of the action, the robots had completely destroyed the wall, producing a large drawing composed of forty-eight white cardboard panels.
Shows
Macro Museum, Rome - January 2019
T * Danse Festival, Aosta - October 2019
Share Prize, Turin - September 2020 (1st prize winner)
Credits
Concept and art direction - Francesca Fini
Video documentation by Macro Museum
Website of the project