AI MIGRANTI
After the loss of Glissant, After a disturbing dream of Sicily zigzagged to the point of nullity with red permanent marker then staying on the bus alone,
After a powwow with Agency about their too-timely project of finding an architectural/planning solution for housing the Roma population in Rome, who hope for permanent settlement yet are reduced to unthinkable conditions in camps abandoned, ejected, and/or centralized/consolidated in suburbs far from the resources of the city in a sort of cruel twist on trendy talk of "nomadism," having above all to combat infrastructural racism in the process,
After becoming, as mere writer, even more aware of the bravery of architects and the sublimity of their labor—
Then witnessing "To the Migrants" at Renzo Piano's Parco della Musica by Collettivo 320Chili (320Kilos Collective, identifying itself by collective weight): a merging of dance, acrobatics, & performance art calling itself a "contemporary circus," the circus being inherently nomadic—
moving from a slapstick of sleeplessness in on and over travel trunks through a remarkable aerial struggle/swing with shiprope/noose/snare, and flickering episodes of making-do with light and fire, and a stammering monologue on foraging for every possible kind of vegetable to feed the hungry and inventing a "vaccine for doubt," and an Anna-Halprin-like moment with bound tables and a mattress and brimming Chinese sacks, all scattering, devolving to mess, and a hoop done up shimmery with noisy brutal packaging tape, surfed selvatically by a boy-man vertiginous, before being abandoned to its own spinning, spinning, spinning, and resonant fall—most poignant end.
Beginning as what we feared would be "modern dance" or mimetic theater, slowly unraveling into athleticism and process, weaving over the hour the most compassionate, wily, sincere votive I have yet witnessed to this endlessly pressing topos, and reality.