The Academy of Immobility is a travelling school directed by Luigi Presicce. First set up in 2012, it has moved around various venues in Italy including Lecce, Bologna, Capri, Florence and Prato. It is an educational project open to all types of students without any distinction of age, gender or profession. Students learn the art of concentration, of memory and of harmony through exercises that stimulate their minds and their ability to react to given questions. The whole experience is often, though not invariably, designed to produce a performance, or rather a tableau vivant, thus a set of exercises aiming to achieve immobility yet which are not immobile in the least. Succeeding in being immobile and in remaining motionless for a prolonged period of time lies at the base of much of Presicce's work. This is the precise point at which performance art and painting meet. The Academy of Immobility is, above all, an idea spawned by a pure, painterly vision of performance action, in other words of the study method that places painting at the heart of research and that results in a comprehensive performance experience, analysing not only the painterly scene in its narrative and/or in the symbologies enclosed within it, but above all the gesture, the physical and mental effort that freezes on stage. The conception of this picture is largely entrusted to the students themselves who, guided rather than directed, address a pathway of growth for both the individual and the group with their own sensitivity and physicality.
Duration of the workshop: from Tuesday 19 to Sunday 31 March 2019.
Time: 2.00 pm to 8.00 pm