Fair and Lost, by performance artist Francesca Fini @ Rapid Pulse Performance Art Festival

The 6th of June Italian artist Francesca Fini will perform her work “Fair and Lost” at Rapid Pulse International Performance Festival. The event will take place at 7pm at the Defibrillator Art Gallery in Chicago.

the RAPID PULSE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL (1-10 june 2103) aims to represent a range of styles and forms in order to provoke thought and stimulate discourse surrounding performance art.
http://rapidpulse.org/

The 2013 edition of the Festival will show the works of the following artists:
Arahmaiani (Indonesia) | Andrew Barco (US) | Anna Berndtson (Sweden/Germany) | Wafaa Bilal(Iraq/US) | Jeffery Byrd (US) | Pate Conaway (US) | Jess Dobkin (Canada) | Zackary Drucker (US) |Arianna Ferrari (Italy) | Francesca Fini (Italy) | Beverly Fre$h (US) | Anna Felicity Friedman (US) | ArtiGrabowski (Poland) | Fausto Gracia (Mexico) | Allison Halter (US/Germany) | Sara Holwerda (US) |Elana Katz (US/Germany) | Elena Katsulis & Erin Peisert (US) | Joshua Kent (US) | Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (Belgium) | Carlos Salazar Lermont (Venezuela) | Miller & Shellabarger (US) | Şükran Moral (Turkey) | Mothergirl (US) | Boris Nieslony (Germany) | Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz (US) | Jefferson Pinder (US) | Emilio Rojas (Mexico/Canada) | Kambui Olujimi (US) | Rooms (US) | Fereshteh Toosi (US) |Alice Vogler (US) | Dolores Wilber + Sarah Wilber (US) | Julie Wills (US) | Zierle & Carter (UK)

Fair and Lost
"During the performance I'm wearing electrodes on both arms and I try to wear makeup. Involuntary muscle contractions caused by electric shock are very strong so that I cannot control the hands and the makeup spreads all over my face. 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”. The hysterical, uncontrollable, movement of the hand represents the disease of social habit, which reveals its fragility when the system appears on the point of collapsing: the deep conflict between a conscious behaviour and external social conditioning. Even crying is involuntary, caused by the black pencil and mascara entering my eyes since I cannot calibrate the movement of the hand. A mechanical cry that is automatically transmitted to the audience, in a sort of empathic conditioned connection, unconscious and therefore completely useless".
The performance is part of a larger project: http://withanhelmet.blogspot.it/
Link to video of performance: https://vimeo.com/62669680

Francesca Fini is an Italian artist working with video and performance. Her live projects, always addressing social and political issues, are mixed with lo-fi technology, homemade interaction design devices and video. She hacks everyday objects such as surveillance cameras, wi-mote sensors and therapeutic electrodes, mostly used to give to her work an ironic flavor. “Technology is interesting, but rather than call your smartphone I prefer to twist your stomach talking to you in a plastic cup connected to a string”. In 2012 she took part to the first “Venice International Performance Art Week”
web: http://francescafini.tumblr.com/
follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/francescafiniperformance