In Trentino, in the “hottest” days of drodesera 2011, an ethnographic survey explores the topic of DROME 20 – the Catastrophe issue, through the observation and the contact with six selected collectives that neither comfort nor repair, but are nonetheless essential.
The first episode of the report about the Fies factory’s companies is with ANAGOOR.
How would you react to the possibility of an imminent catastrophe?
We should, first of all, know if the menace comes from above or from below. In Kaltenburg (2008), Marcel Beyer gives an impressive description of the bombing of Dresden that took place on February 13, 1945. The firepower thrown, back then, by the Allies down into the city made the bombing of the previous year look like a pale anticipation. «See, human beings are capable of anything, you will remember this day for the rest of your life», says the mother to her son, before being knocked down by the explosion. Above, from the red-hot skies of Dresden plenty of birds, charred as clots of tar and blood, are raining down and they hit the boy with a dull thud, while woodpeckers flee from the chambers of burning trees, the already naked flamingos hardly take off, ducks burn all together on the water, and lastly, a few metres beneath the hell, in the dark cellar of a building or a bunker, lays down with the eyes shut, locked in a wooden case, the bare and regal Sleeping Venus by Giorgione. Here is what I would do: once I have decided whether is preferable to hide beneath the ground, or up, on the peak of a mountain, I will seek refuge from the catastrophe trying to save something fragile and precious.
Founded in Castelfranco Veneto (Treviso, Italy) in 2000, the theatrical company ANAGOOR looks far away in order to recover the traces of its visionary temperament. Through several suggestions – ranging from Giorgione’s enigmatic painting to Mariano Fortuny’s genius, not to mention Grimm’s fairy tales and Alda Merini’s poetry -, Anagoor has undertaken a research aimed to stage conflict, anguish, human frailty, the upheaval of growth and the value of memory. Beauty and devastation are the two faces of the same coin…
text by Francesca Cogoni
photo by Carlo Beccalli for DROME magazine
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- Anagoor photographed in the Centrale Fies, at the drodesera festival 2011, by Carlo Beccalli for DROME magazine
web: www.anagoor.com
