The P.R.omised Land (live performance)

Description

Which place(s), and therefore, which bodies are present in a context of migration, frontiers, encounters and futures?
The performance springs from my previous work B.O.D.Y. The Bureau of Domestic Yearning (2020). Places (geographical, social, bureaucratic, emotional, and more) are revealed through bodies. My performing body is a silent, slow, constant, perceptible presence that explores, maps, reframes, and reveals the surrounding environment.
I carry words and phrasings on my skin characterising my life here in Australia as an Italian expat.
I spot an accent
Visa 485
Student visa
Reciprocal Medicare Agreement
Are you travelling or do you live here?
What do you do here?
EXPAT
Visa 475
I assume you’re from overseas
GRANTED
Bridging
Ti chiamo domani, qui è tardi, devo andare a dormire
A.I.R.E. Associazione Italiana Residenti all’Estero
Non-Indigenous-non-Australian
Visa 300
Consolato italiano 1/509 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne VIC 3004
Where is home?
Where is land?
The P.R.omised Land
Unione Europea Repubblica Italiana YB40743185
Rejected
Australian Consulate-General, Via Borgogna, 2, 20122 Milano MI, Italy

These are words told to me in my daily life or appearing on documents such as Visas, Medicare applications, job contracts, or key-words defining my life as an expat. Other immigrants, migrants, and expats can relate to these words. Those who do not relate, will realise realities that they might be not aware of. I carry these words on and through my body: they are part of me and I cannot get rid of them, unless I am in Italy, Europe, or in another country, or I change my political status again. Yet some elements will always stay with my sōma because the experience of migration cannot be undone.
Edward Casey argues that, ‘wherever we are, we are there firstly with our own body’ (1993). In relation to the themes of this conference, I ask, Which role does our body perform in frontiers, encounters and futures, conceived as ever-evolving phenomena?
This is a conference about and around Italian Studies - but is it all we are, Italians and scholars of Italian Studies, once we gather here together? Are our knowledge, expertise, theories, voices, ears, panels, and papers all that we bring along? We come to this conference together with and by means of our sōma, namely, the making present of the whole persona within and in relation to a specific environment. In a process of mirroring, the performance aims to silently make the participants/audience reflect about how they’re occupying the place in which they are, starting from the very location in which they find themselves while witnessing the performance. The awareness of this immediate body-space relationship can elicit awareness and further reflections on broader, intertwined networks of relationships to which they belong with their whole persona: physically, bureaucratically, workwise, emotionally, and so forth.
In which and how many ways do we occupy the place in which we are?
Starting from the venue of this conference, going to this country: for example, I am an immigrant on unceded land, performing on permeable layers of dwelling.
Which kinds of roles do we perform in this/these place/s? I am here as…who and what?

Period	14 Dec 2022
Held at	University of Western Australia, Australia, Western Australia
Degree of Recognition	International