"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star" -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Bodies and identities that want to look alike, to correspond to one another, in the mutations, flow and differences of exchange and encounter, of works and of texts: "Does the text have human form, is it a figure, an anagram of the body? ... The pleasure of the text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas." (Roland Barthes). Identity as a voyage through desire, a body in a state of alert and at the same time in a state of abandonment, identity subtracted from repetition, identity transformed into capture of phrases, quotes, fragments. The body as screen. Samantha Stella uses the body to take back a portion of the imagination that performance art always brings with it, the imagination concerning that which we cannot see but which suppose, imagine, believe. William Burroughs said: "What we call art - painting, sculpture, writing, dance, music – is maginal in origin. That is, it was originally employed for ceremonial purposes to produce very definite effects".
Symphony in Red is a solo in which the body reacts to the emotional stimuli of an imagination, in which entrances to the body open up and move it. A study, an artistic experiment with music, movement, objects and space. Bodies as pure energy, simultaneous emergence, intangible support... cold skin. The body as sensorial pressure, the body as shock. The boundless body, sensorial architectures, grafts, contamination of data and theories, desires and mathematical formulas, accessories as sophisticated, invisible machines and human bodies, and neoclassical visions... Beauty as the geometry of pure energy which, like a poetic identity, is lost and expanded over the body... Not a show, but a ‘station’ of pure research, a study. Samantha Stella of Corpicrudi’s live actions seem to have something to do with fate. Romantic, legendary, fractured, projected, dematerialised… a body, the body of art, marking the aspiration toward a vision that goes beyond production of the artistic object and manifests itself as an act in the dimension of existence. Samantha Stella conceives of a work as a living organism and a centre of symbolic irradiation, becoming the tool through which the artist creates a radiant vision. In Samantha’s work the body becomes a symbol, or rather, a process through which energy is released in instinctively poetic forms of behaviour.
Symphony in Red is a live installation set up and performed by Samantha Stella of Corpicrudi specifically for the Nonostante Marras space in Milan; it originated as a drop of paint falling to the floor from the previous installation project Symphony in Black by Corpicrudi for Traffic Gallery Bergamo and its live transposition, Prelude for a Symphony in Black, conceived by Corpicrudi with choreographer Matteo Levaggi and presented at Teatro Elfo Puccini in Milan with noise-rock band The Death of Anna Karina and at Ace Museum for Los Angeles Fashion Week with post-punk band Von Haze, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute.
A red stand standing out against the black and white of an evocative trip in which life and death penetrate one another, drawing on evocations from the world of classicism and dark-wave and post-punk culture. Drawing on number of symbols recurrent in the artist’s vocabulary – neoclassical sculpture, the triangle, the motionless body and dark sounds – Symphony in Red traces a crack in the immortality offered by Danish neoclassical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen’s goddess Hebe.
Samantha Stella co-founded in 2005 the Italian visionary project Corpicrudi with electronic producer Sergio Frazzingaro. They presented solo and group shows and events in art galleries and museums, theaters and suggestive locations like castles, cathedrals, ancient prisons. Their own photos, videos, installations and events performed by themselves or other bodies directed by them, are often based on a wide network of collaborations with visual artists, fashion designers, choreographers, poets, writers, composers, musicians and directors, and offer reflections on the body, death, eternity, beauty and harmony. Since 2007 they collaborated with choreographer Matteo Levaggi with premières in the theaters of Lyon, New York, Belgrade, Miami, Biarritz, Los Angeles, as well as in Italy. Samantha Stella is also set and costume designer for other productions by Levaggi, she was assistant to the artistic direction at Balletto Teatro di Torino, she is art director and assistant for fashion and private events. Reviews by international magazines including Financial Times and The Brooklyn Rail New York; a documentary by Sky Classica TV. She is collaborating in the production team of the first movie by director Roberto Rup Paolini, and with Slovenian artist Jasa for Venice Biennial International Art Exhibition 2015.