Description

The history of performance art in Italy, with a particular focus on the idea of fixedness, is the concept of the critical essay by Alessandro Rabottini entitled “Still: Life. Notes for a history of fixedness” that accompanies the publication La performance dal tempo sospeso: il tableau vivant tra realtà e rappresentazione (The Performance Where Time Stands Still: Tableau Vivant between Reality and Representation), entirely on the subject of the tableau vivant. Literally meaning a “living painting,” the expression borrowed from French indicates a group of masked figures posing as if they were the flesh and blood protagonists of a painting on canvas, explicitly embodying the intersection between the living world and the artistic depiction that lies at the basis of performance in general. The investigation of this borderline between fiction and reality, presentation and representation, immobility and suspended time is at the center of the conversation between Laura Cherubini and Elena Volpato (“Still subjects”).