Utopia Gym, 2024

Video Sound Art presents Marilisa Cosello’s performance Utopia Gym on October 19 at the Palazzina dei Bagni Misteriosi during the INCONTRO festival organized by VIDAS.

Professional artistic gymnastics athletes perform sequences of unconventional exercises. The rhythm is marked by a sound composition from the pre-recorded sounds of the athletes’ movements and breaths in dialogue with a new video work in which they are caught in the most intimate moment of sleep. The body is removed from its exclusively performative function and reintroduced into the context of vulnerability and care. The utopian gymnasium becomes the microcosm of an ideal society, where the body is free to express itself beyond the limits imposed by social and political expectations and to produce error. Marilisa Cosello’s project, curated by Laura Lamonea and produced by Video Sound Art, is an invitation to a possible reconnection with one’s physicality, with its limits and possibilities, as advocated by the work of VIDAS.

Marilisa Cosello, Utopia Gym, performance with sound and video. Ph. Paolo Poce

Utopia Gym
by Marilisa Cosello

October 19, 2024, h 20:00
Palazzina dei Bagni Misteriosi

Performance by Marilisa Cosello
produced by Video Sound Art per Vidas
curated by Laura Lamonea

Sound composition Painè Cuadrelli
Lighting direction Cesare Rossi
Film by Marilisa Cosello and Lino Palena
Director of Photography Riccardo Casiccia

In collaboration with:
Ginnastica Artistica Lissonese
Società Ginnastica Pavese A.S.D.

Athletes took part in the performance:
Amato Erica Fabiana, Amatruda Martina, Arosio Sofia,
Bandini Elisa, Basile Giorgia, Bersani Anna, Brenna Ginevra, Del Bo Ines, Furno Emma, Sali Marta.