BLEAH!!!

BLEAH!!! is a word that does something. It creates a volume in the space between the palate and the lips, producing a sound that already carries meaning.

In Lucia Marcucci’s visual poem of the same name, this sound-gesture detaches itself from the body’s act of speaking and spreads across the page. It interrupts the perceptual expectation of being heard, instead becoming something to be spoken, seen and read. It is a comment that becomes a work of art.

Studying it together. This invitation brings choreographer and dancer Annamaria Ajmone and musician Laura Agnusdei together for the first time. Lucia Marcucci’s imagery acts as a conversation starter, a way to break the ice, the spark that sets a dialogue in motion and marks the beginning of an encounter. It provides a starting point that informs a process of research and creative work, which then takes its own direction.

BLEAH!!! returns to bodies and their objects. It disrupts the performative conventions associated with the roles of dancer and musician, creating a landscape to be built together, through the shared channel of breath and the objects that are already there. Ajmone and Agnusdei experiment with a form of writing that challenges and redistributes traditional authorial roles. Dance plays music and music dances; sound choreographs the space, while movement accompanies it, reshapes it and multiplies it. The volumes and gestures of the saxophone, the body, the breath and the drums create acoustic zones of encounter and connection, where architectures and temperatures, poetic qualities and emotional resonances continually shift.

Only one area remains neutral and still, like a room. At its centre is a DJ console where vinyl records spin; the two bodies sit close together and activate a set of familiar sounds and worlds, recombining them in new ways. A space apart, where they can meet and where they can pause to comment on the rest of the work — or on the world itself.

BLEAH!!! draws inspiration from the visual poetry, sound poetry and cinepoetry of artist Lucia Marcucci, whose work was featured in the exhibitions L’Offesa (9 June–29 July 2023), curated by Francesca Verga and Zasha Colah at Ar/ge Kunst gallery in Bolzano, and Lucia Marcucci. poesia e no (9 June–3 September), curated by Frida Carazzato at Museion in Bolzano.