The Variational Status
research project and mixed media installation





The Variational Status investigates the relationship between a range of narrative forms (puppetry, street storytellers, flyers, and pamphlets) and a series of pre-political acts of revolt linking Italy and South America, evoking a narrative constellation among animation, suggestion, and orality.

The project revolves around the striking similarities between the espiritado, a Colombian puppet character presumably inspired by the murder of a policeman during a village celebration, and Italian soldier Augusto Masetti, who, in 1911 in Bologna, shot his commander in an act of insubordination against the colonial war in Libya. The two figures both experience total amnesia regarding their act of revolt, carried out in a trance or in a state of somnambulism.

Drawing on archival documents, oral testimonies, and theatre scripts, the project intertwines the real and fictional stories of the two characters to investigate a possible connection and to question the status of documents that are not based on fixed, authenticated media, but exist solely in the form of variations.

The Variational Status was co-commissioned by ar/ge kunst (Bolzano, IT), Centrale Fies (Dro, IT) and FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Reims, FR), and developed in collaboration with Franco Citterio and the Compagnia Marionettistica Carlo Colla & Figli (Milano, IT), Carteles La Linterna Edigraphos (Cali, CO), Herlyng Ferla, Carolina Valencia, and Paola Villani.

The project comprises a book published by Humboldt Books.

Genealogy of a Research.
Conversation with Emanuele Guidi and Antoine Marchand about the project.

Conceived as a cutaway view of a puppet show, the installation comprises a marionette lying on the floor, performing an automatic choreography activated by a mechanism that pulls its strings.

The series of movements reproduces hypnic myoclonia — the involuntary twitches that occur as a person is just about to fall asleep.
The marionette was constructed in collaboration with the historic Compagnia Marionettistica Carlo Colla & Figli.

Behind the marionette, a plastic curtain serves both as a visual reference to traditional backdrops used in puppetry, and as a storyboard for the various episodes of the Colombian puppet show El Diablo en el pozo, whose protagonist is the espiritado character.

The installation includes a series of posters about the El Diablo en el pozo script, printed using a 19th-century letterpress machine in Cali, Colombia.














Installation views at ar/ge kunst, Bolzano. Photos: Tiberio Sorvillo












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The project was also presented in a performative version at Centrale Fies (Dro, Italy), on the occasion of the performing arts festival Supercontinent (Drodesera XXXVII), under the name Occhiacci di legno [Wooden Eyes].

The performance was constructed as an underground, darkened tour through a series of rooms where a series of episodes exploring the constellation among animation, possession, and robotics took place. Objects, documents, masks and a sleeping figure appeared, while the recorded voice of singer/songwriter Alberto Camerini accompanied the visit.

Photos: Alessandro Sala. Video: Lino Greco.

performance documentation, Centrale Fies, 2017

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In 1972 the Teatro del Parque Nacional in Bogotà, Colombia, until then used for puppet shows for children, was occupied and turned into a communist/anarchist Commune. Many Colombian puppeteers took their first steps in that context, within that political climate.

Indagación sobre la forma de los milagros [Investigation into the Shape of Miracles] is a radio documentary that, like a puppet show in the dark, conjures the voices of Bogotá puppeteers recalling the 1972 Commune events. The narration then focuses on a traditional puppet character, el espiritado, supposedly inspired by a real event: a man shot and killed a policeman, subsequently claiming to have no memory of the act—thus becoming an icon for the anarchist movement.

As the vocal texture develops, latent connections emerge among sleepwalking, anarchy, miracles, and puppetry.
The radio-documentary was produced in collaboration with the Fonoteca Nacional de Colombia.

Full radio-documentary (60'. Spanish, English Subtitles)





Installation view at lugar a dudas, Cali, Colombia




Another outcome of the research is a slideshow in loop, focusing on the espiritado puppet character, on its controversial and untraceable origins, as well as on the mysterious murderer that supposedly inspired it.

The texts featured in the slideshow are excerpts from interviews with puppeteers from Bogotà.

Exhibited at: Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, Russia (2018); FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France; Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy; MAC (Metropolitan Arts Centre), Belfast, Northern Ireland (2017); ar/ge kunst, Bolzano, Italy (2016); lugar a dudas, Cali, Colombia (2014); Bulegoa z/b, Bilbao, Spain; Viafarini, Milan (2013); Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia; Colombian National Radio; Universidad Nacional, Bogotà, Colombia (2012).