Fronte Vacuo: Humane Methods [ΣXHALE]

Transdisciplinary group Fronte Vacuo, made up of Marco Donnarumma, Margherita Pevere and Andrea Familari, works with performance as social experiment. Following a decade of individual work in the fields of visual arts, media, and performance, respectively, they established their collaboration in Berlin in 2019, reacting to the interaction between ecological destruction, socio-political polarisation, and technological progress. The complexity of this human-nature-algorithm- interweaving reoccurs in the formal approach of [ΣXHALE]. This piece constitutes the third season of their long-term project Humane Methods throughout which the group takes a critical look at the world in which systemic intolerance, environmental degradation and immoral technological developments have created a ubiquitous structure of violence. [ΣXHALE] takes the form of a collective, transitory experiment encompassing four episodes. The audience receives an invitation to become a witness and a part of this complex contemporary mesh in one or more episodes.

The piece is a living biome that combines dance, theatre, interactive music, body art, and biotechnological installation. After the initiation ceremony, the audience will be led into a garden-like environment, where the audience will be isolated while also being right in the middle – an ecosystem of natural and synthetic elements, of human performers, AI algorithms, plants, and fungi. A mutual solidarity and interdependence are created through a choreography of repetition, intimacy, and tension that surrounds and moves the audience as a cathartic ritual.