... Everyone is free to participate as they wish, as long as they interpret or represent death, and there are those who have a black or white mask over their eyes, those who have a black pirate hat with a white skull, those who those who wear a sweatshirt or tracksuit with a skeleton print, those who have a black bandana on their heads or just a black mask on their lips, those who have Halloween makeup, those who carry flags with hand-drawn skulls, others carry red cubes made of cardboard , signs or banners with words and phrases about death... Everything (objects and actions) is the result of a long process of workshops, dialogue and collective creation. For Colomer Modena Parade / Corteo Modenese is, as the title suggests, a procession through the city, with the city, in the city. The scholar Claire Bishop would define it as a participatory performance since people are "the medium and the material of the work of art" and the final result cannot be defined in advance by the artist who directs it, but literally happens in the collective development of the event. Compared to the processions of the past, this funeral procession is "à rebours", because its itinerary is the other way around, that is, from the New Cemetery to the Palazzina dei Giardini, home of the "Strade" exhibition, and "the other way around". ” because it is a noisy and festive way of reoccupying public spaces, which the state of alarm imposed by the pandemic had numb and emptied, involving citizens in an action that gives visibility to death, lately more and more spectacular, reduced to a series of numbers and removed from everyday life.
The main question that, in the conception of the work, Colomer raised and, in turn, raises to the public is whether contemporary art can become today a vehicle for the reinvention of popular traditions and ritual forms linked to death, which in the Mediterranean area are slowly fading away and are being replaced by Anglo-Saxon imagery…
fragment of the text Tutta la città ne parla by Cecilia Guida (read here)
MODENA PARADE / CORTEO MODENESE is an idea of Jordi Colomer. organized by FMAV and Collettivo Amigdala, curators: Daniele De Luigi and Federica Rocchi. held on 03-27-2022 with the participation of the boys and girls of the Cittadella Primary School, students of the Adolfo Venturi Superior Institute and the Vecchi Tonelli Musical Institute, the participants in the workshop with Colomer at the High Formation School FMAV, FMAV Educational Department, Quale Percussione? and the Choir Le Chemin des Femmes and Dugoni Facility Management. Dancing skeletons: Daina Pignati, Marta Cellamare, Rosita Martinelli, Antonio Santangelo, Beatrice Rossetti. Photography: Davide Piferi, Davide Sabattini, Jordi Colomer. Ringraziamenti speciali: Luciano Bosi, Silvia Tagliazucchi, Beatrice Pucci, Sara Garagnani, Laura Petrucci, Elia Mazz, Giorgio, Valentina y Helio Colomer, Amanda Zambrano, Milo Adami, Dorian Degoutte, Francesco Tampieri y Anna Tampieri.
https://www.fmav.org/agenda/archivio-attivita/modena-parade-corteo-modenese/