Online project | #04 Petra Rocca & Alice Daneluzzo
Petra ask questions, and Alice answer
PR: So, I wrote down some questions, I wanted to give a direction to this interview but maybe, under these circumstances, I prefer to ask you about yourself. I am not able to program anything right now, and you?
AD: No, I can’t plan too, but I feel in a position of fragility, in which having a general idea of a hypothetical tomorrow could help me. For now I'm not looking for it spasmodically. I believe that at some point it will become compelling. I know, I know, doing things out of need rarely brings positive surprises.
PR: We are not the kind of people too productive, right? but how do you consider your artistic production?
AD: I guess you are not only referring to be productive in this quarantine period... we assume that I do not consider my production as artwork, but as a videomaker I also consider what do I do to live as a constant research for something that is not immediately visible. So, whatever I do is part of my artistic research and my artistic research is not necessarily production, it involves a lot of time and often does not lead anywhere. sometimes there is a urge to communicate something and it starts a series of dynamics more or less easy to manage, which push us to go deeper and try to encapsulate the meaning of what I discovered out of a readable form.
Basically, the artistic urgency is the need to understand, for me. Sometimes studying is not enough to understand, you have to do something. Once, in an interview on commission, one person said a beautiful thing: “going to the bottom of things and looking at the particular means studying, discovering means applying those things to a more general sense instead” So, while you are researching in detail by studying, you’re setting to the universal by exploring. Opinions and points of view of someone else in my work are fundamental, of course. I am a “voyeur" (laughs) I observe, rework, till I stick deep in the gaze of those in front of me, I do not give particular value to me reprocessing things. Sometimes, however, being able to explain things to myself, means saying them out loud.
PR: So communication is important to you. I can presume that communication is as important as the relationship with other people in your work. How do you fit into the community, for example in the Teste Toste project how did you interact with people how would you do it?
AD: Teste Toste is just a good example of explaining things out loud, you can do it alone against a wall or you can do it with a person who contradicts you and generates growth. It was a cycle of informal meetings in which people, artists, thinkers, activists were confronted on complex and transversal themes. It aimed to be an opportunity for exchange and meeting, which we are not always given, to be able to practice serenely some confrontation in a horizontal dialogue, without teachings or hierarchies. It was a space born from a profound urgency of relationship and exchange, but not of formalization.
One of the favorite concept that I encountered in TT and is present in my work is the idea of “keeping space”, making room for certain experiences, feelings or perspectives that want to be recognized and affirmed, that otherwise could be put aside or whisper and slip aside and get lost. I always liked to observe and listen to how these experiences grew together with mine and not thanks to mine.
Wall of femme, TESTE TOSTE background portraits, 2016
TT is a project that I would like to redo, which however had a contingency of time and space, probably now there is still a need to be together, to exchange ideas and exchange opinions. Perhaps above all to be together, of opinions and verbal exchanges now, in quarantine, there are too many, we still have to explain a lot of things!
L.SCARMONCIN, TESTE TOSTE project, vol. 1.1, BUGIARDINO DI ANARCHIA RELAZIONALE
C.SFREGOLA, TESTE TOSTE project, vol. 1.2, JIM MORRISON ERA UNA SGUALDRINA
Exchange is always fundamental for me, I would never want to create an unique communication channel. Even with Melmaridè, which is a documentary film, therefore it lives its own life, for me the exchange with the public after the screening, their stories, their impressions is very important.
Even being part of TOMBOYS DON’T CRY, the parties, the clubbing, the experience as a DJ, the Tatiana Cuoco workshop, they are all opportunities to generate meeting, exchange, new ideas, new perspectives.
Tatiana Cuoco Workshop | A collective experience of AI-assisted conversation, hosted by TOMBOYS DON’T CRY , 2020
For me, spoken language and thought language are very important, so I would never stop chasing them.
The thing that would interest me now is to produce more. Learning while doing.
Tatiana Cuoco Workshop | A collective experience of AI-assisted conversation, hosted by TOMBOYS DON’T CRY , 2020
PR: TOMBOYS DON’T CRY is the collective we are both part of, what do you feel you take from this and what do you leave behind?
AD: With the TOMBOYS DON’T CRY collective, I share and support most of the ideals, points of view, aspirations and expectations. Within it I learned and learn new and vital methods. I take a new way of approaching fundamental issues for me. Dafne (Boggeri) has always been a very important human and artistic reference for me. In Milan it was definitely my first afflatus.
TOMBOYS DON’T CRY, 2018/2019
“The suburban girls are the future” by TOMBOYS DON’T CRY
PR: How do you exist in the city where you live, how has it changed you and how have you changed it?
AD: I have a strange relationship with Milan, because it was part of my past and it was very different when I left her, at the end of the 90s, and when she returned to my present 10 years ago, I also was very different. Now Milan represents the place where my emotional network is rooted, it is a great source of stimuli for my career and training critical antagonistic spirit above all, because I do not accept a lot of aspects and I oppose to a lot of issue of this city and that definetly teaches me to reaffirm what is important for me every day.
You can really arguing with this city. If I wanted to say that Milan returned me something, I could say that it gave me back the critical spirit and self-indulgence, because Milan is not indulgent at all with people and here you have to learn how to be so for yourself.
In general, if I changed something, trying it, I didn’t notice it. No, I haven’t changed anything. Maybe I would say that Milan hasn’t changed me but it wouldn’t be true. Change-Me l’anus.
PR: Do you think about tomorrow?
AD: Yes, at least … I think about tomorrow at least a dozen times a day. But now that I smoke fewer cigarettes I think of tomorrow, you can say... 5 times a day. Whenever I smoke a cigarette I think of tomorrow.
PR: I close with a Survival question. You have to leave everything and go away, you can choose an object, a means or a destination. What do you choose and how do you feel?
AD: I will bring spare panties and a toothbrush, it has already happened to me and they are the only things you really miss when you’re out and about in the future.
The feeling I could summarize it in one sentence: “Oh no, not again!”
The gaze, out of focus, 2020
PR: In reality it was not my last question, do you feel you are surviving, today with what we are experiencing? What is your position compared to the time we are living in?
AD: So, for me what we are experiencing is an alternative. It is not a surviving or not surviving, we all try to survive always, everyone does what they can.
I am living it as another way of living the days, so .. I don’t know.
New tools are formed, priorities are re-evaluated, but also no... I don’t know. What I know is that there are waves of different sensations and approaches even during the same days so it is very difficult to give an univocal reading of the situation of how it feels. Maybe we’ll talk about in front of a beer after 10 years, if we’ll be there. A lot of very clever things will come out, hindsighted evaluations.
It was always just an illusion to be able to build something, as it is an illusion now that it said it's only a phase. If growing means losing the veil of illusions, we are all growing. If one wants to tell stories to explain reality, they can continue to do it even now. If someone is a voyeur like me, probably they will continue to look at things. In short, we remain in observation of ourselves, of others, of the world.
Collaboration: Giuliana Racco, The Limbo Party, 2020
Collaboration: Giuliana Racco, Matteo Guidi, Leish'la, 2016
PR: It makes me smile the fact that you only think of looking, but when you talk, you always have a fairly coincident point of what happens to you, a rather clear thought, when we talk about your position you express it in a very real way. You insist that you are only an observer but I think to have a very active and present information assimilation metabolism, I don’t know if you do not perceive it in such a definitive way but it seems to me that you do.
AD: My point of view is obviously interesting and I like to share it, in the sense that I like it even when it is contested because it widens, so… I simply prefer to watch, to look at what is there rather than explain or tell or invent worlds, for this I consider myself more a voyeur. But I am very aware that telling what it seen is absolutely giving one’s point of view. This is the responsibility of the gaze, for me. On the other hand, I love collaborating on projects of artist friends. I like being part of the creative process and adding my gaze and my knowledge. I love collaboration as dialogue. I am also a hoard of methods.
Videoclip, Go Dugong, Ghetto Mala, 2016
PR: But you not only have an idea, you can express a clear representation of how you live your reality. For example, when you made Melmaridé, what was for you to communicate your vision in a language as a documentary film?
AD: First of all, for me working is a group experience, it is not to be done alone. But there is a really important and fundamental solitary part in which you leave the known path and question yourself, the following step is fundamental in the practice, I think for almost every artist, and that is consist to build a will from a doubt. Find the resources to complete the project.
E.Bozzarelli, A. Daneluzzo, Melmaridè, documentary, 2018
With Melmaridè it was made possible because of an incredible team partnership with Elisa (Bozzarelli). It was a project that could have jumped a thousand times, like a thousand other projects, during its 3 years of realization, but there was the determination by both of us to consider the message we were working as fundamental, it was so important that it wasn’t got lost.
But it was a very personal job on so many different layers, so in its realization there were moments of great difficulty for both of us, for me it was when the topics I was working on the films were really at odds with my life, it was almost an inner battle between morals and ethics.
At that moment it was really a problem to realize that the feminism I supported, defended, for which I got angry and on which I reasoned during the shooting, then it was not applied at all in my daily life, and that was a very strong and very significant moment that has marked me deeply and that I hope will happen often with my works, to be projected out of the comfort zone, to get undressed, for using technical terms. Whoever is behind the camera and tells a story must get undressed, all those who tell stories can use their own narrations as they want, even to hide behind them (the stories), exposing yourself and your point of view is still an act of sincerity, but if you reveal something deeply related to yourself, then the work of you acquires a particular force, and you can recognize it very well.
E.Bozzarelli&A. Daneluzzo, Melmaridè, documentary, 2018
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Alice ask questions, and Petra answer
PR: About that, speaking for myself I believe that my works are always driven by a personal influence, there is always something about me that I reveal both when I write and when I propose visual works, but this does not lead me to deal with what I do necessarily, in fact it alienates me even more from what I am writing, from what I am doing at that moment, from what I am communicating, as if giving a part of me to others set me automatically to distance myself.
QUELLO CHE RESTA DI ME, still from video
AD: It’s kind of an objectification process, isn’t it? Once you said it, you got rid of it, a bit therapeutic. What do you tell in your lyrics? Do you consider yourself a storyteller?
PR: I don’t think I can tell anything, they are not tales, there is no narration in what I write, I don’t know, maybe I can tell sensations, maybe I can tell moments, then in some parts of them, someone can also perceive some kind of time and space and can imagine to go through some parts of texts. I have no narrative intentions but otherwise we often seek narration while reading and maybe it's not my role to give this type of definition to my text.
NON MI BAGNO, Blade Bunner, SPRINT, 2019
AD: Who are your works aimed at?
PR: Maybe to myself, even if they are always dedications to someone else or something else.
TOMBOY LOST, still from video
TOMBOY LOST, video installation by Petra at N.0 Exhibition in Fuzao studio, 2018
It is important to bring out things, sometimes they take forms that also help me to change my mind, to take a different position. I become a reader, a user of my own works. Let’s say that my works often arise from a need without strings, and these new rules are formed around the work itself, sometimes during its development, sometimes after its finalization.
SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT, exhibition in Studio Court, Petra + m, 2017
AD: What is your essential kit to be able to work and what do you need ideally, anything from a space to a tool?
PR: I often work with what I have around and I build my needs also according to my possibilities, when I don’t do it, I often found myself in trouble (laughs) but I think a smartphone can be enough, I can write and make notes on visual things as photos or videos, my first artworks start from this device.
I also need connections, I have worked a lot with videos found on the net and therefore a real connection, but also human connection, because as much as I struggle to communicate with others, I always need the exchange with people, even if it is not really a direct exchange, I mean, I often do not talk about my work, my intentions, but I absorb from the conversation with others or between them, everything that can help me and that I always find within my works, so... I don’t think I can isolate myself working as I’m working now, at least.
AD: Are you a very disciplined and rigorous person even as your job?
PR: No, I don’t consider my work so disciplined, it escapes me like a wild animal instead and I feel very severe with this behavior, maybe too much. I experience my work as that part of me which escapes from rigor and this helps me to have a more clear vision of my mind and usually also refilled with contrasts.
Leave my tear to drop in to the meadow, still from video
https://soundcloud.com/erica-zhang/bdcvoce-c04-online-audio-convertercom
leave my tear to drop in to the meadow, only audio
AD: Do you consider yourself a person and an artist who works on the margins, in the fringes of the community where you also lives geographically, or do you consider yourself as central, essential, fundamental?
PR: No, of course not even essential. I struggle to consider something essential, I always try to never need anything. Specifically bout art, centrality makes me a little uncomfortable. I believe that the city in which I live plays brutally with the issue but I cannot delineate the boundary that separates which is my problem from the one of the context.
Watch me do me, still from video
AD: What is a project that you would like to carry out in the future, even just as an idea, is something taking shape?
PR: I have some works in mind, one had to stop because of the quarantine, others will remain in my head waiting for the right moment and some will be forget. It’s always like that, it’s a struggle for survival (laughs)
AD: What is the right moment?
PR: When there is the possibility of seeing it completed. Certainly the quarantine, for some reasons, had demolished many possibilities, appointments, certainties. I’m trying to put some of my works into a zine and within it I can leave them to be in the public’s hands, which I’ve never done before.
UNTITLED, still from video
AD: Your works have always been linked to an occasion such as in the case of performances or videos, which are by their nature immaterial, visible only on certain occasions. What importance does the public have in your work, what importance does it have in its fruition?
PR: Yes, in the past I did some works as performances, which interact with the public and it was important for me on a physical level because as the body is often the protagonist of my works, in that specific moments the body of the user became the means by which that protagonist fully developed and it was very important to me at the time. Now I am thinking in making this fanzine that is putting me quietly in crisis, or rather we can say in plain discussion... there is a lot of meat on the fire (laughs). I have never been able to put my works online and now I am taking up a whole series of things that I have kept only for me, for let them go, it's not easy to find the right way to communicate them.
TOMBOYS DON’T CRY collective
AD: What is it that you like to make public instead, what is easy for you?
PR: Almost nothing is easy for me, however... Certainly since I am part of the TOMBOYS DON’T CRY collective too, the musical aspect, public aspect and also the collective part, because we are still 5 people who relate to each other, taught me a lot and it gave a lot back to me, it led me towards a sharing approach that I missed. Through the parties we organize I learn another way to communicate, giving a message that is personal but also collective.
I don’t consider music as an artwork, also because i’m still not a producer, I consider it an excuse for building and sharing a common imaginary. Years ago I approached TOMBOYS DON’T CRY parties, just because there, I could experiencing that feeling about not needing to explain that everything was allowed.
It is like building a small parallel reality for a few hours, hoping that the sensation that is experienced within it expands and extends into everyday life.
For example, in this moment of imprisonment I am still fighting with myself about the importance of being with others without being physically present, in a virtual representation of something that I want to give or want to be, even if I am always fascinated by new ways to adapt to new imageries, at the moment I’m just looking.
TOMBOYS DON’T CRY collective
TOMBOYS DON’T CRY | CRUISING UTOPIA | Pride After Party | 2019
AD: On one hand you don’t want to show your work on the internet, for you it is a very private, very serious thing and on the other you use your image on social media as if it were not you. For a person who works on the body and with herself it’s like a very clear division between the image of the body and the search for the meaning of the body in one’s work. What do you think, is it a dichotomy more linked to the generation and use of the self-image for you, or is it part of a personal research too?
PR: No, I never thought about it, (laughs) it seems like a nice thought to explore, I hadn’t done it yet, at least not explicitly. So, in reality I don’t think that social media are really a way of venting for me, in the sense that I’m not so present as user, I use them of course, but I wonder a lot about my public image and obviously I think there is some sort of generational reasoning on the use of social media and the use of technologies for which I do not feel like the spokesperson, however, I am certainly influenced by it. I find that Social Networks make self representation easier than others’ gaze. As much as I can think of it, when I publish something on social media, it results just an image easy to abandon. For everything related to my work, instead, which obviously has a different shape, I find it very difficult to abandon it, to feed it to others. I’m aware of using my image as a bait on social media, like “there is something I’m not saying, let’s play” and I don’t know if it’s the medium that taught me or if I use it in this way, maybe both, but it amuses me thinking to know other's secrets just because I know their fictions.
AD: Do you prefer to work alone or work with someone?
PR: I always start from something that I don’t know if I can call it a reflection, something that after becomes a reflection but it starts from an outlet; I usually take out the phone and write, ok?! I always start from an intuition or a personal need.
“but then it will be true that we are united?”
“it is not for these objects to respond”
However, as I said before, I found myself to be better able to stratify my work with other people, on one side there is the collective TOMBOYS DON’T CRY, on the other side there is m, who is an artist with whom I have collaborated and whom I respect and who always helps me a lot, I think we help each other. By working with her as a couple I can better discover myself within her eyes and through her work which is ours, I don’t know how to say it. So in collaborating with others I also find an ignition to act, I am much more destructive alone about my thoughts. Obviously it can’t be done with everyone, but I felt growing a lot in sharing, even if my work always starts from a personal and private analysis.
LADDER, performance, at N.0 Exhibition in Fuzao studio, by Petra+m 2018
AD: Come on! answer the survival question!
PR: I think I would choose a backpack, a backpack with what I need inside, important things, such as a smartphone. However, it is a very difficult question, perhaps for this reason that in the best evacuation instructions they always suggest not to bring anything with them, so as not to have to choose.
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Lives and works in Milan, she is a videomaker by training and transfeminist by adoption, deals with video narration, especially documentary, but extends her research to many other languages and narrative forms.
She collaborates with international artists and is part of the queer collective TOMBOYS DON'T CRY.
Was born on 9th of November, she graduated in Visual Arts at the Brera Fine Arts Academy in Milan, Italy.
In her research, she explores proximity and relationship, within constant cross-references to the body, which is not always present.
Using video, text, audio e performance experimentation, she is interested in the complexity of intimacy and its consequences.
Narration, discontinuous and paradoxical, remains in the balance between reality and imagination, autobiographical datum and subjective experience.
