La parola ai corpi

LA PAROLA AI CORPI is a research project conceived by Gaia Vimercati within Quattrox4 to support the professionalisation of international circus artists in Italy. It was launched in 2021 and has developed through six editions, each co-curated by Gaia Vimercati and a different artist-researcher that takes the role as a co-curators upon invitation.

Each edition has gathered once a year a small group of professional circus artists for a seven-days residency around an open call that presents the yearly theme of investigation. Gaia and the co-curator together work on ways to overcome the binary between theory and circus practices through embodied knowledge. 

The project was born itself from a simple yet radical research-question: what happens when circus is understood not only as a performing art, but as a way of thinking? 

Developed in cooperation with hybrid spaces not (necessarily) equipped for circus, the project wants to defend thinking-circus as a practice and legitimise artistic work as something that exists as well in absence of circus technique. It is a project that aims at breaking the binary between the ideas of circus “thinking” and “doing” – it looks at doing as a way of thinking already and viceversa. Instead of treating theory as something external to artistic work, LA PAROLA AI CORPI understands knowledge as something that is produced through bodies, relationships, movement, language and collective experimentation. It resists the hierarchization of knowledge. It fights the superiority of the mind over the bodies and works as a “counter-device” for resisting hegemonic forces in the circus field.

Rather than supporting the creation of the selected projects individually, LA PAROLA AI CORPI questions each project in co-relation with others within a broader discourse, thus creating a collective thinking-doing space throughout the week. It creates opportunities to rethink how bodies shape and carry knowledge and histories. LPAIC creates the conditions for artists to rethink their own practices together, questioning the boundaries between artistic creation, critical reflection and embodied experience. It defends research as a vital space for situatedness, inviting all the participants to renegotiate their roles and postures in knowledge-meaning processes through their circus practice.