Alone, or almost alone, on the old coast among the ruins of ancient civilizations, it could be Ravenna, Ostia or even Bombay – it’s the same – with peeling Gods, old problems – such as class struggle – that dissolve…
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Una disperata vitalità (1964)
Posed between cartography, soundwalk and sound documentary, Agnese Cornelio and Massimo Carozzi compose a participatory dramaturgy for eyes and ears that recounts and reinvents the territory of Nuova Ostia. Guided by a group of artists, activists and residents in exploring the neighbourhood, Agnese and Massimo collected environmental recordings, conversations and interviews. They crossed a complex territory, illuminated by that “excruciating light” into which Pasolini had imagined decomposing. A neighbourhood isolated from the rest of the city due to an obsolete and malfunctioning railway, the last outpost before gentrification, a landing place for circuses and religious people, people looking for a place to call home. Abandoned by the city, the Ostians have developed practices of housing and cultural occupation, and collective practices of management for the common good. Forms of resistance against abandonment.
In 2022 Agnese Cornelio and Massimo Carozzi, after a period of criss-crossed dialogue with that part of Rome wedged between the sea and the mouth of the Tiber river, imagined and shaped a participatory performance in the form of a soundwalk: 00121 Ostia: sound ethnography.It was a profoundly generative intervention: the group of people involved in the project autonomously activated a training course on sound and acoustic creativity – Sonodramma – while Cornelio and Carozzi produced a radio version to be broadcast on Radio Tre with the title Between the river and the sea. Now all these trajectories can be found in Ostia and in the Short Theatre 2023 programme, with an in-depth study of the work, again in the form of a soundwalk entitled La linea immaginaria (The imaginary line).
The public is allowed to insinuate itself into this interweaving of voices and sounds, a sort of acoustic documentary. In fact, it is the listener, moving between places on a map, who creates the montage, in an contemplative experience of the urban space that blends reality and imagination.
Massimo Carozzi is a visual artist, musician and sound designer, who explores the relationship between sound and image, sound and scene, sound and literature, sound and space. He has dealt with the sound design of numerous documentaries, films, theatrical and dance performances, on his own as well as collaborating with writers, directors, choreographers and visual artists. In September 2000, with Anna Rispoli and Anna de Manincor, he founded Zimmerfrei, with which he participates in group and personal exhibitions, film, music and theatre festivals, both in Italy and abroad.
Born in Italy and artistically raised between Germany and the Benelux, Agnese Cornelio is a video and theatre director whose work crosses performance and film. She has realised numerous projects for German and Italian-speaking theatres and for international festivals. Her documentary Fondata sul lavoro was awarded Best Experimental Film at the Florence Film Festival in 2019. Since 2020, together with Massimo Carozzi, she has made several sound works, some of which have been presented in the Tre Soldi broadcast on Radio3.
concept and realization Massimo Carozzi e Agnese Cornelio
field reaserches and contents in collaboration with Flavio Del Gracco, Federica Balducci, Laura Schettino, Ivan Gasbarrini, Chiara De Angelis, Dafne Rubini
production AREA06 in the frame of fermento \\\ territori suoni moltitudini
sustained by Ministero della Cultura – Direzione generale Spettacolo, winner of the public call Lo spettacolo dal vivo fuori dal Centro – Anno 2022 promoted by Roma Capitale – Dipartimento Attività Culturali
in collaboration with Teatro del Lido di Ostia, Alter Eco
ph. Maria Giovanna Sodero _ fermento \\\ territori suoni moltitudini
