video
2015
The work was born from the invitation to think of a project to be realised in the frame of First World War centennial commemorations. During my research I found a military march of the Italian army written in 1940 “Heroes Parade” (by F.Pellegrino), very popular abroad, and also played in ceremonies and civic events (such as during the celebrations of the sesquicentennial of the Unification of Italy).
The march has become the fulcrum of my project, a performance developed along the inner staircase of “Torre dei Caduti” in Bergamo. The performer (myself) tries to play a synthesis of the score of the drum on the tower steps itself, descending one each time the score is complete (as in an ideal parade). Whenever there is an error in the execution of the march, a voice-over (the drum teacher) forces the performer to stop and go back to the first step, where he starts playing again, trying to get off the steps of “Torre dei Caduti”. The results is a loop that ideally refers to the impossibility of playing a parade for heroes who have never returned from war, and what remains is just failure, as a failure is the attempt to play the parade.
