FRANCESCA FINI

WITH AN HELMET

WITH AN HELMET is a performance and videoart project conceived as a work-in-progress. The original idea comes from a reflection on the state in which the country is. We are prey to an hopeless and soporific resignation. Our dull look accompanies the degenerative process that poisons the political world and civil society. The crisis and its "cure" are killing us. The surreal world of technicians is grotesquely lost in numbers, light years away from our lives, unable to include in the calculations the coefficient of flesh and blood, the suffering of real people.

Can we continue to believe in the "national values" when all around us these values ​​appear systematically ignored by the same representatives of the institutions? Is it possible to wave the flag when every day before our eyes, the country sinks into the hole left by yet another corrupt treasurer, by the latest political mummified in a chair pretending to be alive on talk shows, by yet another maneuver to "rescue " us that seems made ​​for dissolving the latest material and spiritual resources of this country? 

Can Art regain his place in society? Can make a difference through his intrinsically non-violent instruments and its language that speaks directly to the unconscious rejecting the banality of contingency and inviting reflection on a more extensive and comprehensive level?

WITH AN HELMET - wag the flag (2012)

written, directed and performed by Francesca Fini

This is the first video of the project WITH AN HELMET

Therapeutic electrodes, set to high, determine strong and uncontrollable muscle contractions that make the flag dancing on my skin to the tune of the national anthem. What is left in a diseased country is just the mechanical and grotesque rhetoric of the national anthem and the respect demanded but devoid of any genuine feeling.

This videoperformance is one of the episodes of a larger project, open and traveling, that will grow with guerrilla performing throughout 2013. 

WITH AN HELMET - fair and lost (2012)

written, directed and performed by Francesca Fini

This is the second video of the cycle "With an Helmet".

In this second video I'm wearing the electrodes on both arms and I try to wear makeup. Involuntary contractions caused by electrical impulse are very strong and the makeup spreads all over my face, uncontrollably, turning me into a monster. In the background we hear the chorus of Nabucodonosor by Giuseppe Verdi, which has a very strong symbolic value in the history of my country, bringing along the ghosts of old struggles for freedom that no one remembers anymore. "My country, fair and lost". Even crying is involuntary, caused by the black pencil and mascara entering the eyes because I cannot calibrate the movement of the hand. A mechanic cry that, through those close details of my eyes, it is automatically transmitted to those who watch the video, in a sort of empathic conditioned connection, unconscious and therefore completely useless.

WITH AN HELMET - live performance (2012)

written, directed and performed by Francesca Fini

The protagonists of the performance are offered naked and vulnerable to the audience.

They wear working helmets as an ironic transposition of the legendary helmet of Scipio that, in this case, relates the rhetoric of the Roman glorious past, of which there remains not even the dust, with the unheard sufferings of the true heroes of everyday life in this country. They are the ones who live "with an helmet" and sometimes die with it, in factories and dockyards, while what is left of their stories is hastily hidden under the carpet of this diseased country. On their arms I place electrodes that cause strong involuntary muscle contractions forcing the workers to a grotesque dance that makes the flag moving on its own, to the beat of the national anthem. What is left in a dying country is just the mechanical and grotesque rhetoric of the national anthem and the respect demanded but devoid of any genuine feeling. A collective weariness and resignation that turns into hysteria when the puppeteers also discover their wires and the simple act of drinking a glass of wine becomes a fight against a greater, dark and invincible power.

More about Francesca Fini 

With an Helmet : http://withanhelmet.blogspot.it/

website: www.fransecafini.com

[2nd MULTIMEDIA SHOWCASE]

© Park  2013