Installation at Dirty Art Department Graduation Show, Deep Sea Baby Dark Doom Honey, 2022, Amsterdam
Title: Malo Vento III
Year: 2022
Duration: 00:08:44
Malo Vento III is the third chapter in an ongoing exploration of illness in Italian magical traditions, particularly those of Lucania in Southern Italy. Illness is understood as a form of external domination—feeling bound (1.)—while healing is symbolized by the untying of knots to free body and mind. Drawing from Ernesto De Martino’s Magic: A Theory from the South (1959), the performance employs physical constraints to reflect on the body-mind relation in healing, conceived as a layered and psychic-physical process.
Photo Documentation from Magic: A Theory from the South (1.) ; La Terra del Rimorso (2.).
Video Stills
The performance involves the use of several meters of metal rope and eight metal poles planted in a piece of land in Italy, located in the surroundings of the artist’s home.
1. Ernesto, De Martino, Magic: A Theory from the South (HAU - Classics in Ethnographic Theory, 1959). Kindle edition, 66.
2. Ernesto, De Martino, La Terra del Rimorso (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1961).